Good morning. Welcome, everyone, to Ypsomed Half-Year Results 2025-2026 Earnings Conference Call. Today, with CEO Simon Michel and CFO Samuel Künzli, we'd like to go over our first half-year results. We'll go over the key achievements and the financial drivers for this first half-year. After a short presentation, we will open the floor to questions. Thank you for joining us again, and a warm welcome to all. Without further ado, I'll pass on then to Simon. Please.
Thank you very much, Sam, for the introduction. Good morning, everybody. Great to take the time for us here this morning. We have great results. You have seen it this morning. Let us deepen it. I will do a channel overview and then hand over to Samuel for the financials. As you know me, I always start with our purpose. This is why we get up every morning. Ypsomed is making self-care simpler and easier. Those four are our structural growth drivers: therapy, go home, drugs have to be injected, more and more biosimilars are available, and the new large new class of GLP-1 incretins that is giving Ypsomed a strong push. We profit a lot. We have a lot of tailwind that supports Ypsomed in its growth. We are really well set up. Ypsomed is a pure-play injection specialist. We are a leader in innovation.
We have our operations under control, and we have very robust financials. I will deepen now with you the first three pillars, and then Samuel will go with you through the financials. Let me start with the injection specialist focus. As you all know, we have done our homework. We have finished the transformation after three years, a very clear path, selling Dia Expert to Mediq in 2023, selling Pen Needles to MTD in 2024, selling Diabetes Care to TecMed this year, and selling Ypsotec last week to Callista. With that, Ypsomed is now a really clear setup, really focused self-injection specialist focusing on the high-profit, high-margin self-injection B2B business. The new Ypsomed is a delivery systems-only company. I will not further deepen the figures. I will leave that on to Samuel in a couple of minutes. Innovation leadership.
Ypsomed is strong with by far the broadest portfolio of devices, the auto-injectors to the left with the YpsoDose for larger volumes, the pens to the right, and the digital assets. As you may have read, we have received FDA approval as the first company at all with a digital device in America to support clinical studies, clinical trials with smart devices. We are also very proud that we were able to launch and present three new platforms to the community in our industry: YpsoDot, YpsoFlow, and YpsoLoop. YpsoFlow is a flexed hutch-like device. It is a spring-driven disposable device for insulins for GLP-1s. YpsoDot is a GLP-1 optimized device, a click, very simple device. YpsoLoop is the next-gen auto-injector. What is in common for those three platforms is that they are all recyclable. They consist of one or maximum two different plastic parts.
They used to have seven different plastic types. Now we are down to two different plastic types, and that makes them recyclable. That is our new technological S-curve. It gives us at least four, not even five years of advantage towards competition. We are really, really much further now here in the new cycle. Big Pharma Biotech, they want to order devices that can eventually be recycled. With YpsoMate Net Zero, YpsoMate Zero, the first version, we reduced by 22%. YpsoLoop now is reducing 64%, remaining us at 85 g of carbon equivalent. This, of course, in the end, we can offset and will further work on in the recyclable scheme. The main focus of Ypsomed on the innovation is sustainable devices for our pharma partners. We have launched 12, 13 new products. We just mentioned three here.
We are very proud to be the partner of Innovent with Mazdutide. That is a GLP-1 incretin, the first of its kind in mainland China. We had a very good start. We are producing both out of Switzerland and out of China now. We will move, of course, the volumes there to deliver out of China 100%. We have a client for Alzheimer out of Japan, you may know. We have a Japanese client here as well on the new innovative autoimmune therapy in the space of psoriasis. Very high, high value drugs that we present here, especially in the 2.25 format. I mean, a very important topic probably is how we are set up. We always hear Ypsomed is dependency on GLP-1s. We have indeed over 30 deals in the space of incretins and GLP-1s. Absolutely.
They make only at the moment a small part, much less than 10%. Overall, we have not one client that is delivering more than 15%, 15% of revenue. That is important. It will stay even in the foreseeable future, next five years. Not one client will make more than 15%. That is very important. We do not have this clump risk, this risk of being too dependent on one client, on one molecule, really broadly set up with 130 clients, 230 projects, 70 in the market, 160 in the pipeline. This is how Ypsomed is set up. This shows also this graph here, how broad we are active. We work in a large range of indications, in a large range of therapy areas, as you see here on this slide. Ypsomed is not a diabetes company. Ypsomed is not an obesity company. We are very broad.
We are an injection systems, injection therapy company. That's what we are doing for all kinds of therapies. Many more will follow in the coming years. Ypsomed is winning not only because of its unique platform portfolio. We are also winning because we do excellent service, because we pick up the phone after 3x ringing, because we answer the emails in 24 hours. It's the way we work with our clients, the way we listen, the ability to customize devices, but still have to manufacture on the same lines. We have now a setup that really lets us accelerate, really lets us profit from what we have been installing over the past years. Let me give you a couple of insights on the operation side. What has happened?
I mean, the main topic obviously is our big plan to move to 1 billion device capacity to the beginning, the end of this, the beginning of next decade. 1 billion installed capacity today, we are at 350-ish. So we almost tripled the capacity in the coming three years. It does not mean that we will deliver 1 billion devices end of the decade, but we are ready to deliver in a five, six, seven days model such volumes. You see on this graph here where this is going to happen. Switzerland is remaining an important place. Switzerland here in Solothurn, we are moving old contract manufacturing out, and we move new auto-inject to Ypsomed in. It will still be a very important site with roughly one quarter of the total volume. The main site obviously is Schwerin with tripling our current installation, our so-called Schwerin 2 program.
Also, China, Changzhou, which had an excellent start in the team there, and Holly Springs, near Raleigh, which we are going to sign this week and then really start installing the factory. Ypsomed is becoming a much more global company. We have a footprint closer to our clients. This makes sense from a client perspective. It makes also sense from an ecological perspective. We have much less freight, much less cost on that end. This is how Ypsomed is going to be positioned in the future: China for mainland China, U.S. for North America, Switzerland and Germany for EU and rest of the world. As I just mentioned, Solothurn remains a very important place. Diabetes Care business now moved out, so we have some office space left. We are going to fill that over the time. This is not the first priority.
The main priority is manufacturing. We're installing a new high-beam warehouse. We're installing a new tool shop, as you know, and we are installing tool lines for auto-injectors. In China, we had the opening in June. A great team, really ready, really proud. The team wants to succeed. They want to show us how it works. We want to learn from our friends in China. I have a very good feeling here that they will succeed. In Germany, we had the topping-out ceremony with the Minister President Schwesig a couple of weeks ago. You see here just a small glimpse on the new warehouse for 15,000 pallet places. This is now being built. It will be 40 m high.
It gives you an idea on how large this site will be, tripling basically in two phases our current Schwerin 1 site, which is going to be full by end of 2026. North America in the Research Triangle. We decided for North Carolina, a bit more south on the East Coast, a great area, fastest growing state in America, Raleigh, third fastest growing city in North America. Raleigh, the Research Triangle with most Big Pharma being very close to our site. Holly Springs, a small town. We are able to buy here, acquire a finished building, 15,000 sq m. It will take us now 18 months to install our equipment in, to install first lines in, and then to be live end of 2027, deliver first devices 2028 for our customers in America.
It's very important that we have now this message out there since SHL also delivered the site in America. We are now also present. That is important now that we are really close to our clients. It is no longer an argument for our customers that we are not in America. Very proud we found that spot. I was there last week. I had a very good impression. I met the Governor. I met many chancellors of universities. Also on the people side with the community colleges, the apprenticeship programs they have. They acquire 150,000 people per year that move to North Carolina. I believe we will have not an issue here finding good staff, well-educated people to ramp up our site in the course of 2027. My last slide before I hand over to Samuel. This gives you a glimpse on the people side.
As you see here, we are still growing a bit in Switzerland, but the main growth is now happening obviously in our manufacturing sites in Germany and in China. That will also be the case in the coming years. Switzerland will only grow slightly, some specialty functions in R&D here and there, but the main growth of colleagues here is going to happen in Germany, China, and then in two years in America. In Germany, we are going to move from 500 people to 1,000 people over the course of the next three years. This is where the music is going to play. This is where we're going to manufacture. We don't need more people in overhead, in admin, in R&D. The main growth now is happening on variable side, on volumes, on factory side. 780 people, as you see here, moved out now last week.
They are now part of the TecMed group, roughly 250 in Switzerland and 500 in the countries. It's no longer part of the Ypsomed family, but many of them are nearby in Wonkdorf. With that, I would like to hand over to Samuel, who will give you an insight on where we are on the financials and how we are set up financially. Samuel, please.
Thank you, Simon. A warm welcome also from my side. I will give you the highlights of the semi-annual result in the next 10- 15 minutes. Let's start with the top line. We reported sales of CHF 363 million in the first half year. On the left side, you see the breakdown. I do start with the green part, the Diabetes Care business. CHF 75 million of sales, the Infusion Pump business realized in the months April to July.
You remember, end of July, we had the closing of that business. Then CHF 21 million, that is in the red part. This is all discontinued operations, and this includes Ypsotech. You heard, we sold that business end of October. In the first six months, that was fully included. This includes also still the phase out of the Pen Needle and PGMS business. This includes now also what we started for Diabetes Care, the contract manufacturing for infusion sets and reservoirs. Now let's focus on the Core business, the remaining business, the Delivery System business. Here we had sales of CHF 267 million in the first half year. Let's deepen that. You see, we grew from CHF 220 million last year to CHF 267 million. A 21% top line growth in the Core business. We are on track with what we guided.
You remember we said we will grow in the Core business around 20% in the business year 2025-2026. What is especially a good sign and what I want to highlight is how the project revenues developed. We grew from CHF 43 million to CHF 52 million, so around 20% growth in the project business, pen and auto-injectors together. That is a very strong signal that we have a good pipeline because those project sales, so the clinical devices we sell, the customizing we do for our customers, they translate into midterm commercial sales. This is the future then for the commercial sales. Now, the commercial sales, there we also had a very strong development. The main growth drivers were the auto-injectors. They grew by 46%. Now, what did we earn? How does the profitability look?
We reported an EBIT in the first half year of CHF 152 million. That EBIT is high. It needs some explanation because, you know, we had certain one-off effects. I want to highlight that. Let's also have a look on the left side of this graph. The Diabetes Care business in those four months in which it was consolidated in our P&L made a loss of CHF 5 million. That business was not yet break even. Now, in other, we report a profit on EBIT line of CHF 70 million. The main driver was the book profit we realized from selling the Diabetes Care business. This profit was CHF 75 million. Some of you expected a higher profit from this sale. We were reading numbers in your reports from CHF 90 million-CHF 100 million.
Therefore, I want to explain why we have now the CHF 75 million profit. One important factor, and we mentioned that when we sold the Diabetes Care business, is the earnout components. The earnout depends on the sales of the business we sold for the next three years. When you value earnouts in a balance sheet, you always have to assume a certain uncertainty because the competition in that business, Insulet, Tandem, they're not sleeping. From this total possible earnout of CHF 90 million, you see that in our books. We took CHF 45 million in our books. The second point I want to mention, why this profit is maybe not so high as some of you expected, have in mind, we sold a business which still was also at the closing, not break even. We had still - 5 negative EBIT.
This, of course, does also not help for this book profit. Now, let's focus on the Core business. In Delivery Systems, we earned CHF 87 million. This is an EBIT margin of 32.4%. Let's have a look now at how we make sure that we also grow and that we are profitable in the future. For that, we did the investments. These are mainly growth CapEx. You remember we have our growth plan to reach this 1 billion device capacity by the beginning of the next decade. For this, we want to invest around CHF 1.5 billion until end of the decade. This program we started already last business year. Partially, this is financed also by customers. Have that in mind. You see here very well, we are on track with those investments, with the fixed assets.
Simon showed you the investments we did in Schwerin. From this CHF 126 million, the biggest part, roughly CHF 120 million, went to the Core business, to the Delivery System business. Yes, Schwerin is a very important site now we invest. We invest in Solothurn, but we invest also in China in Changzhou. That were the main drivers on the fixed asset side. The intangibles as well. We developed the future platforms, the pen auto-injector platforms. Simon showed you the Ypsomed, the dot and the flow. We have invested around CHF 20 million overall. Roughly half of it is for the Delivery System business. When you compare that number with the previous year for the intangibles, you see that in the previous year, we still, we capitalized CHF 39 million of intangible assets.
The main driver was that the Diabetes Care business in the previous year was six months included and was heavily investing at that time. It is not that we invested less in R&D in the Core business. Now, could we finance the growth CapEx with the operating cash flow? For this, we look now at the cash flow statement. Let's start with the operating cash flow. Again, have in mind, this is the operating cash flow for all the businesses, including the Diabetes Care and the discontinued operations. The CHF 130 million is for everything. If we just look at the Core business, that number is even slightly higher. We would be above CHF 140 million cash flow we generate from the operations. That is a very strong number. The cash flow from investment activity needs an explanation because you just saw we roughly invested CHF 150 million.
Why net we are here positive? The reason is we sold the Diabetes Care business and received a little bit more than CHF 300 million already now in cash. That makes this cash flow from investment activity positive, roughly CHF 160 million. The free cash flow around CHF 290 million. Even if you take that extraordinary cash we got from TecMed for the sale of the Diabetes Care out, you see we are only slightly negative. We nearly managed to finance with the operating cash flow our growth CapEx. Having in mind that the operating cash flow from the Core business is even a little bit higher. We would nearly finance that with the operating cash flow. What did we do now with this money? We paid back our short-term financial liabilities. We deleveraged. I come to that.
The net cash amount on our bank accounts end of September was roughly the same as it was end of March. Now, since we are in a capital-intensive industry, we have to look also at our balance sheet. For us, not only EBIT margin counts, for us counts the capital efficiency. We measure that with the return on capital employed. For us, a very important number is this ROCE in the Core business. We realized, again, we created value. We realized a ROCE of around 21% in the Core business. That shows that we create value for our shareholders. The second point I want to mention, our balance sheet is very solid. We have an equity ratio of around 67%. The ratio net debt to EBITDA from the last 12 months is 0.3.
The last 12 months EBITDA was CHF 245 million. That is a very high and important number. The last 12 months EBITDA, CHF 245 million. As you see, we are well set. We are on track to finance that organic growth, growing up to 1 billion device capacity, investing in total this CHF 1.5 billion with some co-investment from customers, with our own cash flow and our own resources. Now, let's finally look forward. We confirm our guidance for this business year. I mentioned already the top line. We expect to grow around 20% with the sales, with the Delivery System business. The EBIT, remember, in the first half year, we had now CHF 87 million. Mathematically, we are not on half. You need to have in mind that for us, typically, the second half year is stronger than the first half year.
We are also comfortable to reach that EBIT range between CHF 190 million and CHF 210 million. In the last slide, I want to even look further in the future, our midterm ambition. Many of you followed our Capital Market Day, and you saw our midterm announcement. We want to grow with our sales between CHF 900 million and CHF 1.2 billion. That is basically when you look at the Delivery System sales of 2024, 2025, which was around CHF 500 million. That is basically doubling the top line. We want to reach between CHF 280 million and CHF 340 million of EBIT. We also want to clarify, so this time we wrote it also, that the EBIT margin stays above the 30%. I last time only mentioned it on the other way. We want to really clarify this. This is our ambition.
The capital efficiency should stay on the level we have now, around 20% ROCE. With that, I want to finish the presentation. We want to open the floor for questions. I give back to Sam.
Thank you, Samuel. Indeed, strong financials, great performance for the first half year. Simon, as well, thank you for going over our key achievements. We will now open the floor for questions. Please click on your Microsoft Teams raise your hands icon. I will go through in order of the question asked. You will have to unmute your mic then, and you can ask your question. Now we have on the screen number one, Sandra, I believe that that would be you. Please feel free to unmute and ask your questions.
I have two. One on the gross margin and one on the Pen segment.
I think maybe we go one by one. First on the Pen segment, can you comment on the current growth rate of your Pen business? You mentioned that commercial sales of the auto-injectors grew 46%. The overall segment grew 21%. That implies that commercial sales from the Pens might have declined. Does that interpretation make sense? What do you expect from this segment going forward, especially with the new platforms such as the YpsoFlow and YpsoDot that should support the pens midterm outlook? That would be my first question on the Pen segment.
Indeed, we have been flat on the Pens. Maybe Samuel, you can explain why this has happened. Then I can give a couple of comments on the new platforms.
Yeah, it is the right observation. Yeah, the Pens were more or less flat.
Have in mind with Pens, there is quite a wide portfolio. The Pen sales are heavily driven by product and customer mix. Your observation is right. For now, it was flat. The second part, when we look forward, yes, we assume a growth rate for the Pens as well. For you, it is fair to assume that the growth rate for the auto-injectors, also when you look midterm, will be higher than what we expect from the Pens. We expect also the Pens to grow, especially having also our new platforms in mind. Simon, please add from your side.
Sure. I mean, the main growth on Uno Pen is still happening on the disposable Pens, is still happening on Uno Pen. We have new clients in China, and we have new clients in the Western world on GLP-1s.
Those GLP-1s will only launch in 2028, 2029, 2030. These three years in between now, we are basically bridging with Chinese volumes. This is going to start as of now-ish. Therefore, we are going to fill the capacity and then swap steadily with higher margin Western products. That is for the Uno Pen. This platform is still very much alive. YpsoDot and YpsoFlow are new platforms. We have presented them now at PDA and CPHI the first time. We are now discussing and starting a dialogue. This is something we will see the first revenues in three to four years from now. It is a new platform.
Okay, very helpful. Just to clarify, the commercial sales were flat. You are not talking units, but rather sales?
There is a mix.
We have also a couple of older products in Pen, as you know, which declined a bit. But we have on the in total volumes on Uno Pen, we had a slight increase. In Swiss francs, we were flat.
Okay, super. Thank you very much. My second question is on the gross margin. The H1 gross margin has still been diluted by non-core segments, the 41%, I think it was. What would be a reasonable assumption for the gross margin of the Core YDS standalone business? How should we expect that to evolve given the factors such as price pressure and lower ASP from high volume contracts, but then also potential efficiency improvement and positive mix effect from higher auto injector shares? That would be very helpful to have some guidance there.
Gladly, I want to give you, let's say, calculating backwards a view on how you can imagine that gross margin developing midterm. If we say midterm, the EBIT margin is still above the 30%. It is for you fair to assume that a little bit more than 10% will be needed for SG&A and R&D. What you need to realize still is a gross margin of at least 45% that you still end up above the 30% EBIT margin. Just ballpark numbers. I tried to speak for a mix of auto-injectors, Pens, project business. As you know, many factors influence that. Just to give you a rough idea on how we think of that number.
Maybe a comment to the profitability since Sandra is asking on that. Yesterday, we have launched YpsoFit .
It's a fitness program that we have rolled out over the whole company. We believe it's the right moment. Not that we really are under pressure, but it's the right moment since Diabetes Care is leaving us now. We see some potential for stranded cost improvements that we take out elements. We have four programs in the space of organization, space of procurement, IT data, and systems. This is a program that we roll out in order to really also work on the cost on the bottom line to achieve those margins.
Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Sandra, for your question as well. Now we'll move to the second person. Odysseus, please feel free to unmute yourself and ask your question.
Thank you for taking my questions. And thanks. My first question is on the Solothurn plant organization.
Could you give us a feeling on the full year 2026, 2027 impact on the Delivery System sales growth and EBIT? I mean, is high single-digit growth for Delivery Systems likely in that year? Or am I being too conservative here?
I mean, I'm not sure just to the question get right. For 2025, 2026, the Delivery System segment, and which growth rate you were speaking of?
2026, 2027.
2026, 2027. Okay. So already further looking at.
2026, 2027, we do not really guide there, but it will be a bit low, a bit below. In the end of the day, we have those waves. We have also months sometimes. We cannot really predict yet. It depends a lot on a couple of large launches. We will talk more about it in May.
In the end of the day, you have to see this billion that we look at, end of the decade. This is where we are heading to. It might be a bit of a small one since we have now had a bit of a stronger one on the 20% area. Overall, we will be in this 13%-17% growth, right? It can be a bit a softer one. We have certain indications, but for us, the important element is the 2028, 2029 timeframe where we are heading to.
Yeah. If I may add to that one, Simon correctly said, look, we have this one billion you see midterm, which is the midpoint of that guidance, which implies this 15% CAGR year- on- year top line. When we look now at next year, of course, the launches, the individual contracts.
One important factor you need to have in mind, we have also the phase out of the contract manufacturing, which is going to end next business year. Just roughly from that, not having this contract manufacturing business within the delivery system. If you just have CHF 20 million-CHF 30 million of sales less from that, this automatically gives you a lower top line growth rate. As Simon said, we will do the guidance for 2026-2027 when we present the annual results in May 2026.
Understood. Thank you for your clear answers. My second question, have there been any changes to your Novo agreement announced in September 2023 in light of the CagriSema readout , NQ4, and given some pipeline reorganization with the company?
No. Zero change. We are fully on track installing the capacity here in Switzerland and in Germany. Everything is on track.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you, Odysseus, as well for your question. Now we'll move to Daniel. Daniel Le Clouvin, feel free to unmute yourself and ask your question.
Yeah. Hello. Good morning. Do you hear me?
Yes.
Excellent. Three questions, if I may, and I just ask one by the other. The first one is, would you be willing to share the dilution to the still very good 32.4% EBIT margin for YDS? I mean, how big was the dilution of the ramp-up with Novo and Innovent? Because I have no idea. Is it 100 bps , 200 bps , 300?
I think it's a good one. Let's talk a bit about the comparison, 35, 36 to 33 now percent, those two three percentage point in EBIT. Maybe you want to start with it, Samuel?
Good question. Yeah.
It is right in the first half year, 2024-2025, the EBIT margin in the core business was rather around 36% on EBIT margin level. Yes, now we report the 32.4%. I want to highlight a few points. First, have in mind we sold a business area, the Diabetes Care business. Of course, we used certain functions for both areas. It is normal to have a certain dyssynergy, a certain strand that costs, Simon mentioned, that has for us a high focus. We have an internal cost optimization program, the YpsoFit going on. We want to really be on top of that. We talked about the Pen business. I mentioned product customer mix. That for sure does also not then help to keep that level. Your assumption is right. Yes, we have new contracts ramping up, Innovent and also Novo.
That, of course, is also a factor to be considered when you want to explain why in the Core business, the EBIT margin goes down from 36% to around 33%. I also want to highlight what we announced in May this year when we did the full year guidance. If you take the midpoints from this full year guidance, you are on 33% EBIT margin. We expected that already. We at that time already guided it in that way for the first half year. Because for those who observe us closely, they know that in the first half year, we rather have a little bit less sales. That means in the first half year, the EBIT margin is rather a little bit lower because you have the distribution of the indirect costs is a little bit worse. I hope that explains those main deviations.
Simon, feel free to add from your side.
I think it's also good to assume that in general, now speaking, that when you install new capacity, you will always have some cost until it's full. You can also assume that Solothurn is now really optimized. It's full. So you don't have cost laying around. It's really used. Fixed costs are all covered. The same for Schwerin 1. It's almost full. It's really used. Now we put Changzhou online. This is now just one part, maybe 1/3 , a bit more is now running. We have space left that is generating cost. We will now put in end of 2026, you will see something like three months of Schwerin 2 going live. It's huge. We will have one or two lines in when we start in 2027, step by step.
We will have a bit of fixed cost there that we need to be covered. The same thing will happen one year later in the U.S. That is why it is probably right to assume that this idle capacity costs us something like 2% constantly. Therefore, you will not see a 36% EBIT anymore. That is why we actually guide in this direction above 30%. Samuel just made the mathematics on it. That is a very good question. We take a very close look at that. We have to do big steps. We cannot do whole, whole, whole, whole. You have to build a building and then you install. It is a very important topic where we put a lot of attention on.
Yeah, that is very clear. The dyssynergy point is actually a good point as well.
At least, yeah, that's good that you highlighted. The second question, thanks. The second question is, I mean, the 20% growth in Project revenues. I mean, at the CMD, you said it will rather be stable or decline a bit. Of course, I'm happy to see 20% because it's very good for the future. Why is there such a big deviation, basically?
I start and feel free to add then, Simon. The Project business by nature has a higher volatility because that is the business. What we invoice there is we do customizing for our customers of those devices. We sell clinical devices. By nature, you have there, if a clinical trial starts, you might have a higher delivery of clinical devices. You might reach certain milestones. By nature, you have more volatility.
I mentioned we are also positively, let's say we are pleased that we have that 20% growth. But I stay with the opinion what we said at the Capital Market Day. It's not something we can just assume to grow in parallel with the commercial sales. We have new platforms coming in, should adding to the Project business. But we have also platforms which are getting more mature. So the main statement stays. It stays more or less stable and only grows a little. Simon, feel free to add from your side.
That's great. And thank you. The last question. I mean, the Alzheimer, you hear me?
Sure.
The Alzheimer device caught my attention, of course. A hot topic. But Alzheimer probably isn't that important for you because the volumes are probably not that big. I mean, this one device now, is that in a commercial drug for Alzheimer?
If so, how often do you need the autoinjector for Alzheimer? I have no clue. Is it also weekly, like obesity, or? Yeah, thanks.
It is LEQEMBI, right, by Biogen. It has been launched in the U.S., but I am not sure about if it is once weekly or I think it is once weekly. As you know, it is just starting now, so it is slow. We are launching it now. We are delivering it now. We are just delivering.
You do not talk about huge volumes.
It is a maintenance therapy. I think probably if we look at their communication, it is probably best to see how they see the future of this particular therapy.
Great. Thank you.
Next one. Yes. Thank you very much, Daniel. Now we will turn to Palav. You raised your hand, please. Palav from Berkeley, feel free to unmute yourself and ask your question.
Palav, if you hear us, you'll have to click on the mic icon to unmute yourself. Here you go. Unfortunately, Palav, we cannot hear you. If that's okay, we'll move to Sybil and come back to you in a moment. Sybil, if that's okay, we'll move to you. If you can unmute your mic, Sybil, and ask your question.
Morning, everybody. Does it work now?
Yes.
Thank you. I was quite happy with your development in YDS. In there, you have also the contract manufacturing for the French customer. Is it still correct that this part of the business is not growing and you will end production in November 2026? Or has anything changed because they ask you to produce longer for you? What does it mean afterwards?
You will have a couple of months no production there because you have to move the production facilities out and the next in. Will this mean that end 2026, 2027, you will have less sales due to that?
Thank you very much, Sybil. As Samuel said before, and then I'll let you answer the question on the amount. Yes, absolutely. That is what we said before. That will have a slight impact on the growth rate for 2026, 2027. We will have roughly actually almost half a year less. We do it in two phases. The first line, SoloStar, we took out already. There is no manufacturing at all anymore. We manufactured last SoloStar in the summer. We are now installing the first autoinjector line.
Then the same exercise will start half a year later in spring when we move out, or summerish, summerish, we move out to Cheo. Then we install that one. We have twice in a row, something like 4-6 months, no manufacturing on one floor. Therefore, you, of course, will see then in the same time we are ramping up. I mean, for the autoinjectors, we do not manufacture from day one, five shifts, seven days. You also ramp up. That will have an impact on the autoinjector growth rate, 2026, 2027. Maybe you can add some, give some more flavor on the contract business.
Yeah, gladly can give you, Sybil, a little bit more that you understand the numbers. In the first half year now, this business made a little bit more than CHF 20 million of sales.
In line with what we saw in the previous years, in the previous years it was roughly CHF 40 million for a full year. Now we have a half year, around CHF 20 million. For the second half year, it is for you now fair to assume that it goes slightly down, but not yet significantly. We still might see around CHF 15 million of sales in the second half year now of this business year. Your assumption is right. In November 2026, it is going to stop. That means we have in the next business year still a little bit more than six months. If you take October and November as well, you might have eight months. You might still end up also again having around CHF 15 million of sales of this not continued Contract Manufacturing business. I think Simon explained very well what the challenges is.
That is a reason why we have next business year a challenge with the top line growth.
Thank you. The second question is about the broadening of your portfolio. You mentioned it in Schwerin with the Capital Market Day. Any news there on possible acquisition targets or in what direction you could go?
We are really doing our analysis. We have a lot of lunches, a lot of dinners. We continue to understand our space better. We are in such an excellent position. We have such a great opportunity ahead of us in our Core business. This is our main focus. We are focusing on delivering the capacity, on delivering the device to our clients. At the same time, we do our homework. We listen, we talk a lot. We also look at the market specifically with some consultants.
They help us to understand better margin profiles, etc. We are not there yet to explain to you our next steps.
Thank you very much.
Thank you also, Sybil, for your question. Perhaps we'll have another try. Palav, if you can maybe try again to unmute or type in your question into the chat, and I can read it for you.
Good morning. Can you hear me now?
Perfect. Yes.
Sorry about that initially. Three questions. I'll take it one by one. Firstly, on your 20% revenue growth for the full year, given the second half is traditionally stronger versus the first half, are you being conservative here? Because your H1 growth is already touching 21%, or are there some moving parts which I'm missing?
I start, and Simon, feel free to add.
Yes, the 20-year around the 20%, sorry, the 20% growth for the full year is our guidance. When you now look at the second half year, which we now basically compete or compare against for what is ahead of us, you need to keep in mind that we had in the last business year a very good second half year. You remember we had even some pharma customers anticipating tariffs. We even had very strong deliveries in February and March. For you, it is fair to assume that it will be challenging to also overtake this already strong second half year, which we showed last year by 20% or more. It is fair to assume that this will be more difficult to reach. That, of course, you can make then the conclusion also for the full year.
I think that is important here to note this and gives you a little bit of flavor. Feel free to add if.
No, sure. I mean, we compare half year with half year. Fully on track.
Sure. Second question. There is a lot of discussion around GLP-1s now over the last few months. Now the expectation is that pricing is going to be lower. How are you thinking about the impact of that on your volumes? Also, how are you seeing the risk of Oral GLP-1s in your medium-term ambitions that you laid out at the CMD?
I mean, we are just a device deliverer. We deliver devices according to contracts. Those contracts are set in stone. They are rock solid for the next five to ten years. There is no impact on Ypsomed side. We just deliver the devices.
We have 47 contracts in GLP-1. We close all the large deals out there. We cannot give you the names. We are well set up. This is not a topic at all. We have no risk with Novo or any other company. We are just delivering our volumes and will profit from GLP-1. As I said very clearly, we will not do more than 15, 15% with any client in the future. We have a clear broad spectrum. For our 130 clients, we have roughly 30 in the space of GLP-1. Mainly China will be interesting, actually. Actually more interesting in the next two years than Western world. Orals for us, it can orals will play a role, of course. As I said again, we deliver such a small volume of the overall GLP-1 opportunity out there.
If you look at what Lilly is manufacturing themselves with their five or six contract manufacturers, and when you see what Novo is doing as HL next to us, we are just all growing. Of course, oral will play a role. Oral will play a role eventually together with the injection. For some patients at the BMI of 30, 35, they will take a one-shot, one-pill therapy. There are new formats coming. We wait for the new molecules coming, the new molecules that are less problematic on the muscle. You have so much things going on. For us, this is not a risk at all. It's a huge opportunity for Ypsomed. We will profit from GLP-1. We are not dependent on Novo, so.
Sure.
Lastly, just to fact-check, any impact from FX in the numbers in the first half, if you could quantify? What should we expect for the full year?
Yeah, FX. Yeah.
I gladly take that, Palav. We really have the huge majority of our contracts in Swiss francs, so the currency we are reporting and the currency in which our stock is listed. We do really have very minor FX impacts on the top line and also on profitability. For modeling, you can really ignore that effect. It will also stay for the second half year that way.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you also, Palav. We'll now move to Peter. Peter, feel free to unmute yourself and ask your question.
Okay. Can you hear me fine?
Yes.
Okay. Great. Good morning. A couple of questions, please.
The first topic is just on some of the ramp-up of facilities. As you've highlighted, you've closed the first part of the Contract Manufacturing over the summer. You take six months or so to put new machines in. Does that mean, say, around Easter time, you'll start to ramp up again on the first phase of the Solothurn part?
Yes, absolutely.
That is a similar question. Yeah. Okay. You'll start to ramp up from around Easter. Okay. Good. You're meeting the rest of the sales out of inventory, I presume. Okay.
From existing lines. We have obviously also installed capacity in Schwerin. You talk about autoinjector now, right?
Yes.
Yes, of course, we have installed capacity in Schwerin. As you know, we are a platform company. Also, Novo is on a platform. They run on the same line.
We are quite flexible here to deliver volumes for the ramp-up phase, especially now we have this machine learning phase where all those final assembly lines have to be installed. Therefore, we can deliver this also from different lines.
The first part of Solothurn will start to ramp up. The beginning of Schwerin too, as you said, a couple of lines will be starting in H2. They will also start to ramp up in the fiscal first half, from early fiscal first half. Yes.
Exactly in 2026, in the first half, one large line will ramp up a bit before Easter here in Solothurn. The second line will only ramp up in the beginning of 2027 because we have to finish the Cheo until October, November on the second floor.
Then we need again those four months of redoing, putting paint on the wall and put the 40 plastic molding machines in and the big micron line. It will take another four months. We will start in March-ish. Maybe we'll see one month more from ramping up 2027 for the second line, a large line here in Solothurn. Is that answering your question?
Yes, it is. Thank you. The other part was just on the U.S. facility. Since you're able to buy a completed building and you can start putting machines in, can you give a sense as to when the first sales you would expect would come out of that? We started to take that in phases.
Peter, this is really brownfield. I've been there last week. It's a building, but it's just a shell. There is soil on the ground.
We are actually now deciding, I mean, we are ramping it up now. I think we are signing today the contractor. We will have to do the flooring in. We have to do the engineering in, the cooling, the pressure. We will put there the granulate system, et cetera. The building will be handed over, including everything which is technically relevant to operations, to manufacturing in fall 2027. In roughly 20 months from now. The team will take roughly six months until they have installed the molding machines and the first lines. The first goods will leave Holly Springs in Q1 2028. That is realistic to assume. That is where we have to plan together with our clients in the U.S.
That is great. Thank you. I had two questions just on the cash flow statement.
One is you have a significant prepayment from customers for the first time that I can recall. I was wondering if you could give some background to that and to what it relates. I guess it's maybe ramp-up of the new facilities. If you could talk a bit about how that's coming through and how that impacts cash flow.
Gladly. I take that question, Peter. It's true that we have co-investment, co-financing structures with our customers. There are two elements I want to describe, which we also mentioned at our Capital Market Day, of how customers participate. Yes, the one thing is they finance equipment. They really pay advance payments for those equipments dedicated for them. The other element we have are capacity contributions. They somehow reserve and co-finance platform capacities which we build up.
You will see that now more often in our cash flow statement because of this CHF 1.5 billion we are going to invest, roughly CHF 400 million we expect with co-financing from customers. You will see that now more often, such co-financing advances are coming into our balance sheet. This will help, yes, the operating cash flow. These are the two elements there.
Okay. Thank you. The last question was just on the intangible CapEx. I think you said of the CHF 20 million, about half related to the Delivery System business. Is that more or less the run rate going forward now?
I think it was all of it. It was actually half of the CHF 39 million. CHF 39 million, half with Delivery Systems.
Yeah. Peter was talking of the CHF 20 million in the actual year. That is right. Roughly half of it is the Delivery System business.
The other half was still because we had still four months of Diabetes Care business in our business year. We capitalized that. For you, you might not like that answer, but the decision when you capitalize, that depends always at which stage you develop something. There is, like I told about the projects, a certain volatility there is because whatever, it's not always that you're constantly just developing and capitalizing new projects. There is a certain volatility in those capitalizations. You will see that going forward very clearly because we are now a pure play B2B company for the Delivery System business. You can very clearly see what is capitalized and what is expensed.
It's probably right to assume that this first half year is not a typical year because we had a much larger amount in the P&L.
We were putting more money in the innovation phase for YpsoFlow, YpsoDot, YpsoLoop. If you are in the innovation phase, we put it directly into the P&L. Now we are moving those platforms over to the product areas. Now it is going to be capitalized to finalize the development before they are then industrialized. In H2, you will see a higher amount of capitalized R&D. Maybe it is CHF 15 million. Overall, we do not give a guidance here, but it will probably be a bit above CHF 20 million in the long run for R&D capitalized.
Oh, yeah. Okay. That is great. No, thank you very much. That is very clear. Thank you.
Thank you, Peter. In the interest of time, maybe we will ask a few shorter questions. Xian, please feel free to unmute yourself and ask your question.
Yeah. Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yeah. Hi. Thank you. Congratulations on the strong performance in the first half. I just have a question on the sale of the Diabetes Care to TecMed. Since this is the company controlled by the founder, Michel, I just want to ask about the risk of contagion between Ypsomed and TecMed. This would be helpful for us also to analyze the consolidation scope. Thank you.
There is no consolidation happening. It is absolutely a separate organization. TecMed is a company 100% under control of my father. Ypsomed is a stock-listed company where the Michel family has roughly 70% of the shares. Or did I misunderstand your question?
No, no, no. This was the question about the risk of contagion because this is a special construct. Thank you.
I mean, you know, I think it is not really a special contract. It is just different investments.
We have investments in other industries as a family. We have a very clear contract manufacturing relationship between Ypsomed and TecMed for the Orbit reservoir and the Orbit infusion sets. We manufacture those two devices in Schwerin in our clean room. This contract lasts minimum three years, maximum five years. Both parties have an interest to move it out as early as possible because we charge too much for them and we earn not enough. We would like to charge this dilute to our overall margin. Obviously, that's why we put it into others. We will need the clean room as well in roughly four years for our YpsoDose ramp-up, our large volume injectors. It is a very clear, very transparent logic contract manufacturing relationship, very alike of the Sanofi relationship we had. It is not even covered by Product Management.
It's all done in operations directly in a very lean manner.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Brilliant. Thank you. We'll move to Ed, please. Ed, feel free to unmute yourself and ask your question.
Good morning. Thanks, guys, for taking my question. My question is just on Holly Springs. I think you said this is set to open in Q4 2027. And you mentioned that labor is available, but can we talk about the gross profit margin here compared to European facilities? What's the pull and pushes on this? Is this anything from automation to sort of premium prices for onshoring in the U.S.? That'd be really helpful to understand. Thanks.
Thanks, Ed, for the question. So Ypsomed is installing the same equipment in Germany as we do in Switzerland, as we do in China, as we will do in the U.S.
The manufacturing setup with Engel on molding and with our partners, Mikron ATS on assembly, and eventually ASIC is remaining identical. We have a lower energy cost in America than in Germany, massively lower energy cost, but we have higher building cost than in Germany. We have lower people cost in America slightly than in Germany, almost the same, but of course in China, they are lower. If you compare all the four sites, America, Germany, Switzerland, and China, then America will of course be more expensive than mainland China. I mean, we talk a range of all sites of less than 10% difference on the cost of goods. The logic is identical how we work. Would you like to add something?
Oh, absolutely fine. Summarized. Nothing to add.
Perfect. Thank you.
Brilliant. We'll move to Daniel.
Daniel, please, feel free to unmute your mic and ask your question.
Yeah, just a quick one. Thanks. Holly Springs, I mean, do you already have fixed contracts with some customers, or is it just you just build it at the moment?
No, we have contracts. Good question. That is actually why we waited another year. We wanted to have to ink. We have a couple of customers where we have contracts that we will deliver, we will move, and other customers are really new. We want to ramp up the U.S. step by step, of course, but we have to fill this large site. Yes, no, we have contracts, not just the building.
The risk is relatively limited, as we can probably say.
Yeah, no, I mean, you know, our team really proved that we can industrialize in a different place.
I mean, when I look at Schwerin, we're now just installing ASIC 10, the 10th line of its kind. This is very smooth programs. The same teams come together with the builder, the contractors. We move it in and we ramp up. It's really smooth. We are going to do the same thing now in China and in the U.S. In China also, the first two lines, they went just online. We didn't have it once in the executive board. I assume the same thing will happen in America. Obviously, we have to train the people. We will get them also to Switzerland. We train them for three months. They will get to know their lines. They will go back to America and ramp up their lines. I had an extremely good impression when I was there last week. I was in several community colleges.
We will work very closely with those colleges to get staff that have basic education. America, what I've seen in North Carolina is much further than what we think here in Europe in terms of education. We have certain areas where the government really knows that biopharma, pharma, medtech, and specialty industries need people with an education. Those community colleges go to the high schools. They grab the students. They take them into the colleges. Together with the companies, they make four days in the company, two days at school. They make those joint programs. These programs run in North Carolina for five, six years. I'm really confident we will find the people. Also, if you look at the wage level, it's way below Massachusetts up in the north. We are in the area of below $60,000 per operator.
We are actually on the German, even below the German level. From that perspective, I believe we have made a very good selection. I wish you further good progress.
Thanks.
Thank you, Daniel.
Thank you.
Thank you also. Daniel, we'll move maybe last but not least. Anna, please feel free to unmute your mic and ask your question.
Perfect. Thank you. Can you hear me?
Yep.
Okay. Maybe just a quick follow-up on that. I guess outside the U.S., you're obviously expanding in Germany, but how much of your overall capacity that you're coming online between now and 2030 is already contracted? And then just another follow-up, the auto-injector growth of 46%, maybe just how much of that would be just driven by GLP-1 versus capacity coming online or just broader growth trends?
Maybe if you could just talk about the 46%, if that would be sustainable growth rate. Thank you.
Sure. I will have you specify it, Samuel, but you know, GLP-1 again, it is just about to start. It is a smaller part of the 46%. We grow on various platforms. We can give you a bit more flavor to GLP-1 just in a minute. On your other questions, we basically try to fill five out of seven days. When you ask us how much we have contracted, obviously we have not contracted yet the full five days, two days of the capacity we are going to have by 2030, 2031. What we see in the pipeline and from our past, we close roughly 35 deals per year. Roughly 25, 27 survive.
If you look back and we assume and we look at our pipelines, we have quite a good overview on global pharma pipelines, not only of new molecules in phase two and phase three where we are in with devices, but also in emerging markets with biosimilars. This gives us a high level of confidence that we are going to close certain contracts that will lead us to a five out of seven day. This is very important. Obviously, in an optimized setting, you want to manufacture seven days, but we need to have this spare capacity. This sometimes hurts a bit, but we had situations in the past where customers just needed more devices and we were always able to deliver. This is still our promise. This makes us special compared to others that we are always able to deliver.
This is also why customers pay a premium at Ypsomed because we can always deliver. That is why we will always have some spare capacities. When you look at the weekend shifts in Germany, the sixth day, I mean, you pay 25% more. Switzerland, the same thing, Sunday, 50% more. From cost of goods, of course, you want to run them as much as possible, but it also makes it a bit more expensive. Overall, you can assume that we do not build capacity without contracting behind.
Yeah. If I may add to that one, we are lucky to be in an industry in which you have very good visibility of the volumes. Our devices serve people with chronic conditions. We get those customer forecasts for drugs where we are already selected with switching being very difficult in our industry.
We really have a very good visibility. Based on that visibility, we industrialize. Yes, Simon mentioned a certain idle capacity we assume to serve to have the flexibility for those customers. We industrialize with visibility. To your second question about the auto-injector growth, the more than 40% top line growth, the main drivers, these are now these platforms, the 1 milliliter and the 2.25 milliliter, which are now in a growth phase. Have in mind, we start now still on a low basis. In percentage, that's always a lot of growth. Now, incretins are kicking in, not yet being significant, but you start from a very low, from a very low basis. These incretin sales come on the top. Relate that now to the overall top line growth.
We said midterm when the overall top line growth is a CAGR of 15%. Yes, I said that auto-injectors grow stronger than pens. Nevertheless, it's also fair to assume that this growth rate a little bit comes down. We grow in auto-injectors, but not year on year, always by 40% and more. That gives you a little bit color on that one.
You look at overall GLP-1, that makes for the full year clearly below 10%. This is customers in China, customers in Russia. We have Victoza, GLP-1s, liraglutides out there. We have a whole bunch of GLP-1 products out there. Slowly, of course, certain volumes for our Danish customer. I mean, this is, it's a smaller part that is gradually increasing.
Thank you. Very helpful.
Perfect. Thank you very much, Anna.
Thank you all of you for joining us today. Thank you, Simon and Samuel, for presenting our great achievements, the great financials, and we will be discussing very much, looking forward to continued discussion with you. Thank you all.
Excellent. Have a great week.
Thank you.