2024-01-26 13:14:05 ET
Lonza Group AG (LZAGY)
Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call
January 26, 2024, 08:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Albert Baehny - CEO ad Interim and Chairman of the Board of Directors
Philippe Deecke - CFO
Conference Call Participants
Richard Vosser - JPMorgan
Vineet Agrawal - Citigroup
Maxwell Smock - William Blair
Daniel Jelovcan - Stifel
Patrick Rafaisz - UBS
Charles Weston - RBC Capital Markets
Anja Pomrehn - Mirabaud Securities
Charles Pitman - Barclays
Peter Welford - Jefferies
Thibault Boutherin - Morgan Stanley
Falko Friedrichs - Deutsche Bank
Sebastian Bray - Berenberg
Yifeng Liu - HSBC
Paul Knight - KeyBanc Capital Markets
Naresh Chouhan - Intron Health
Charlie Haywood - Bank of America
Presentation
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Full Year Results 2023 Investor and Analyst Conference Call and Live webcast. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode. And the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.
At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Albert M. Baehny, CEO ad Interim and Chairman of the Board of Directors. Please go ahead, Sir.
Albert Baehny
Thank you for the introduction. Good morning, and good afternoon to all of you, and thank you for joining our full year results presentation. I will share our performance at the group and divisional level, Philippe Deecke, our CFO, will present the details of our finances. We will also ensure that there is time at the end to take your questions.
Let's start by taking a look at the group results. In 2023, we delivered sales of CHF6.7 billion, corresponding to a sales growth of 10.9% at a constant exchange rate. A core EBITDA of CHF2 billion delivered a margin of 29.8%. While maintaining high levels of investment with 25% of sales invested in CapEx, we also delivered a free cash flow of around CHF330 million. For 2023, we are proposing a 14% share dividend increase of CHF0.5 to CHF4 per share. We are also continuing to return excess capital to our shareholders via our share buyback program of up to CHF2 billion.
Finally, we confirm our midterm guidance 2024 to 2028, which was issued at our Capital Markets Day in October last year. Looking across our four divisions, we saw softer sales and margin performance in Cell & Gene and Capsules & Health Ingredients.
However, there was strong performance in both sales and margin from our Biologics and Small Molecules divisions. Collectively, these two divisions were responsible for more than 70% of our revenues and both delivered a margin of more than 30%....
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Lonza Group AG (LZAGY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript