SRTOY - Sartorius Stedim Biotech S.A. (SDMHF) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-01-26 15:51:05 ET
Sartorius Stedim Biotech S.A. (SDMHF)
Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
January 26, 2024 07:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Dr. Joachim Kreuzburg - IR
Rene Faber - Head of Bioprocess Solutions Division & Member
Conference Call Participants
Vineet Agrawal - Citi
Matthew Weston - UBS
Oliver Reinberg - Kepler Cheuvreux
Charles Pitman - Barclays
Richard Vosser - JPMorgan
Thibault Boutherin - Morgan Stanley
Odysseas Manesiotis - Berenberg
James Vane-Tempest - Jefferies.
Naresh Chouhan - Intron Health Research
Falko Friedrichs - Deutsche Bank
Oliver Metzger - ODDO
Sezgi Ozener - HSBC
Virendra Chauhan - AlphaValue
Markus Schmitt - ODDO
Presentation
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Sartorius and Sartorius Stedim Biotech conference call and live webcast on the preliminary full year 2023 results. I'm Sascha, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.
At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Dr. Joachim Kreuzburg. Please go ahead.
Dr. Joachim Kreuzburg
Thank you very much, and also welcome from our side here and thank you for being available a little bit earlier than usually. So therefore, good day, but also good morning, I guess, to some of you.
So let me start the presentation by walking you through the most important highlights of the year 2023, which really has been a year of transition in a very volatile life science industry where everybody has been impacted by several partially expected, partially unexpected developments.
So first of all, the preliminary results for the group and both divisions are well in line with the adjusted guidance that we shared with you in October. You will see the numbers in a minute. We have seen that the demand continued to gradually pick up. So for both divisions and therefore, of course, also for the group, the book-to-bill ratio for the entire fourth quarter has been slightly above 1x. We think that's quite encouraging. Nevertheless, of course, still maybe not a completed normalization. We'll talk about that later.
We definitely would like to highlight the Polyplus acquisition as being an important milestone for the Sartorius Group, and particularly in the context of building up a strong and differentiating technology platform in the area of cell and gene therapies.
We have continued to make significant investments into organic growth. So that means into capacities on a global scale, which has to do with our view that we should invest into customer proximity and resilience. And I think it's clear that now maybe differently to 5 or maybe even 10 years ago, that needs also a bit of different idea about the global footprint that one has to develop. And sustainability, of course, is part of our investment program as well.
For 2024, our guidance is that we expect group sales revenue growth at a level of mid to high-single-digits. This reflects a positive outlook on the -- regarding the general market trends. And at the same time, a certain caution regarding how quickly these trends will fully kick in and the actual trends of normalization will have been really completed. And we expect the EBITDA margin to increase to slightly above 30% for the group.
We are fully committed to reduce our debt leverage rapidly through a strong organic cash generation. However, at the same time, we want to underline that potential additional equity measures remain an option, as you know, from all of our previous communication....
Sartorius Stedim Biotech S.A. (SDMHF) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript