BICO Group (Stockholm:BICO) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Welcome to BICO Q2 twenty twenty six Report Presentation. For the first part of the presentation, participants will be in listen only mode. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key 5 on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers, CEO Maria Force and CFO Eva Linzader. Please go ahead. Thank you everyone for joining us today. It's a great pleasure to be here. My name is Eric Gattenholm, and I'm here today in my power as chairman of the board. We will spend the first minutes of this earnings call to comment on the press release published yesterday evening regarding the leadership transition. We will then proceed with the BICO Group q two earnings call.

0:46 Today, I have the pleasure of having Maria Force, CEO, Yevalinsatter, CFO, and Anders Vogerberg, current CCO and incoming CEO in the call. The purpose of my remarks is to provide the board of directors' perspective on yesterday's announced leadership transition. After constructive discussions together with Maria Forrest, the board of directors concluded that this is the right time for a leadership change as BICO enters its next phase of development with amplified focus on commercialization, customer engagement, and profitable growth. The board is pleased to appoint Anders Vogelberg as president and CEO effective September 1 As chief commercial officer and a member of the executive management team since 2024, he has already played an important role in driving global commercial execution and advancing key market positions.

1:39 I would also like to sincerely thank Maria Forrest for her contributions and dedication to BICO. Maria, you have, together with the team, played an important role in strengthening the financial position, strengthening of the balance sheet from net debt of negative SEK $877,000,000 to net cash of SEK $2.00 7,000,000, and improved net working capital from 27% to 10%, improving operational discipline and integrating the acquired companies into a more streamlined organization. Thanks to Maria, the company now stands on firmer ground and is better positioned for the next phase of development. On behalf of the board directors, I would like to wish you all the success in the future and at the same time give Anders Vogelberg a very warm welcome to this new role.

2:32 I now hand over the word to you, Maria Fors. Thank you, Eric. It's been a privilege to lead BICO Group during an important period of transformation. And I have worked closely with Anders during the past years. And I'm confident in his ability to lead the company moving forward. Anders knows the organization. He knows our customers, our strategy, and opportunities well. And I look forward to supporting a seamless handover over the coming months, and I wish him and the entire team every success. Thank you, Erik. Thank you, Malia. I'm honored to be appointed president and CEO of BICO. Having served as chief commercial officer and a member of the executive management team, I've had the opportunity to work closely with our colleagues, customers and partners around the world.

3:22 I have a strong passion for this industry and the important impact that our people and our customers perform every day. I have been prioritizing deep customer engagements, operational excellence, and profitable growth since joining the company and I will continue to do so also in my new role. BICO has an attractive position at the intersection of automation, intelligence and life science workflows, serving leading pharma and biotech customers globally. The opportunity ahead is substantial. My immediate priority is execution, supporting our customers, driving commercial performance, improving operational efficiency, and delivering sustainable profitable growth.

4:09 And I really look forward to engaging with all of you over the coming months. Thank you Maria and Anders. I'll now hand over the word to Maria and Eva to present BICO Group q two earnings report. Thank you, Eric, and thank you Anders. I will continue today's session, by summarizing quarter two twenty twenty six and also describe how BICO serves the world's leading pharma and biotech companies with solutions that transform how labs operate, innovate and solve our customer challenges. Following that, Ieva will then present the group's financial performance. I will also comment on our R and D pipeline with our ongoing product development efforts. Additionally, I will highlight some recent product launches.

4:56 The session will then conclude and before we open up our Q and A's about the financial results. In the quarter, we saw a continued good sales momentum navigating in a dynamic market still affected by geopolitical uncertainty. But we are gaining confidence in a gradual market recovery. Although the academic end markets remain soft due to reduced funding. Sales amounted to SEK $336,000,000 and organic growth in local currencies of 7%, mainly derived from continued strong bench of instrument and consumable sales- -while still experiencing challenges in the project based business. Due to continued currency headwinds, our total growth was 4% in quarter two. We also see an improved profitability in the quarter as commercial and operational excellence activities are paying off, decreasing our overall costs resulting in an adjusted EBITDA of SEK 20,000,000 or an adjusted EBITDA margin of 6%.

5:55 Cash flow from operating activities totaled negative SEK 53,000,000, which is mainly stemming from changes in working capital. After the period ended, Cyanion, one of our business units successfully signed long term supply and license agreements as a prolongation of its ongoing business with one of its current customers. And the agreements have a combined contracted value of approximately 15,000,000 Euro over a ten year term. All numbers presented are in million SEK unless otherwise stated. Before Ihaba provides more details on our financial performance, I will present how BICO serves the world's leading pharma and biotech companies with solutions that transform how labs operate and innovate, which is what our vision is about.

6:55 BICO supports customers to advance science so that therapies can reach patients faster. Our solutions with predominantly benchtop instruments enable smarter, faster and more efficient labs in which we see an underlying strong demand. Pharma and biotech companies all face the same fundamental challenge, long and costly development cycles for new therapies. The development of new therapy often takes more than ten years and costs between 2 and 4,000,000,000 US dollars with a probability of approval after phase one at just 10%. And to overcome this, our pharma and biotech customers are investing heavily in automation and AI to increase efficiency, speed and quality to bring innovations to market faster and at a lower cost.

7:45 AI accelerates discovery and then the wet labs become the new bottleneck. Generative models and predictive biology dramatically speed up hypothesis generation. Jet wet lab automation and validation, sorry, remains the hard constraint. In fact, more AI driven candidates mean more experiments, not fewer. Intensifying pressure on lab throughput, system uptime, and data reproducibility. This means that wet labs become more critical than obsolete. AI breakthroughs have made wet labs even more central to r and d. And the lab is now a biological compute cluster validating AI predictions. So high throughput automation and trusted data become mission critical. Customers using BICO Lab Automation Solutions consistently report measurable gains in productivity and reliability, including reduced hand on time, faster turnaround time, and higher instrument utilization.

8:43 So to summarize, BICO leads the way in solving the challenges of life science with speed, accuracy and efficiency. All in all, our customers can run their processes faster, improve the quality of the data and ultimately make better decisions. Now I will now hand over to Eva to present the results for the second quarter. Thank you, Maria. I will now give some more details to the numbers presented by Maria. Navigating these dynamic market conditions, sales in Q2 amounted to SEK $336,000,000, representing organic growth of 7% compared to a weak comparison quarter. Due to the continued currency headwinds, our total growth was 4%.

9:29 As Maria mentioned, the commercial and operational excellence activities are paying off, decreasing our overall costs, leading to an improvement in adjusted EBITDA of 21 percentage points, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 6%. While the market will experience geopolitical uncertainty, we are gaining confidence in gradual market recovery. Although The US academic end markets remain soft due to reduced funding. Sales amounted to $336,000,000, an organic growth in local currencies of 7%, A continued good momentum with growth in our benchtop instruments business while still experiencing challenges in the project based business.

10:22 Also, consumables had nice development during the quarter and grew by 10%. Last year's sales were negatively impacted by a re estimation of remaining project hours of approximately 40,000,000 due to the project delays in our integrated lab automation project business. Excluding this adjustment, organic growth was negative 4%. We see growth year on year in Europe and Asia, while North America is declining as expected. The decline in North America is due to continued soft academic funding, as well as timing of customer projects within our European based diagnostic business. While the underlying demand remains within the diagnostic business, the industry continues to experience longer lead times for larger automation investments, extending the uncertainty around sales cycles.

11:18 The emerging market for integrated lab automation solutions is in the transformation phase, where pace of development and the competitive landscape have changed substantially. As described in Q1, we see execution challenges in part of our US based integrated lab automation solution business. In combination with lower demand as the legacy projects are nearing completion, The US business has been right sized to align with current staffing requirements. We are now reassessing our position in the market to regain trust and grow the business for integrated lab automation solutions in a sustainable way. We saw substantially improved gross profit margin this quarter from 44% in q two last year to 59% this year. Part of the improvement is due to the negative adjustment from updated cost estimation in ongoing projects within the integrated lab automation project business last year, but the improvement in gross margin this year is due to continued favorable product mix and higher share of direct sales.

12:30 EBITDA amounted to 60,000,000 with adjusted EBITDA being 20,000,000. The difference relates to a restructuring provision of 4,500,000 in relation to our US based business project project business. Sorry. Adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 21 percentage points, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 6%. Excluding last year's SEK40 million adjustment, EBITDA margin improved from negative 2.6% last year to 6% this year. The improvement was mainly driven by our commercial and operation excellence initiatives supported by favorable product mix. Operating expenses decreased with 7% year over year.

13:19 During the quarter, we launched a group wide program to identify opportunities to improve how we work and further streamline core processes across the group. The program focused on areas with clear potential for standardization, automation and efficiency gains across the full value chain, primarily related to our ERP system. The restructuring project launched in q one aimed at improving cost efficiency and r and d pipeline execution by consolidating the activities in the site in Lyon to Berlin. The project progresses successfully, and the completion of the project is expected this fall. The anticipated annualized savings from the project of 30,000,000 communicated in q one remain fully achievable.

14:06 The effects will start to materialize in the second half of the year. Cash flow from operating activities amounted to negative 53,000,000, impacted by negative net working capital change of 54,000,000, mainly derived from lower accounts payables and increased accounts receivable as well as inventory of raw materials. Cash reserves by end of the period was $628,000,000, of which 57,000,000 were restricted. As mentioned on the previous slide, the effect of changes in working capital amounted to a negative 54,000,000 compared to the previous quarter.

14:52 Operating receivables increased by 15,000,000, mainly in relation to accounts receivable. Inventories increased by 6,000,000, mainly in relation to raw material. Operating liabilities decreased by 33,000,000, mainly in relation to accounts payable. In percentage of the last twelve months sales, net working capital in the quarter corresponded to 10%. Over time, we expect working capital in relation to sales to be in line with industry standard of closer to 20% of sales. I will now hand over to Maria to present the R and D portfolio and some recent product launches. Thank you, Ella. One focus area for growth is continuous product innovation. And we have a solid R and D pipeline and roadmap in place, which is based on the portfolio strategy being part of BICO two point zero.

15:49 Multiple product launches are planned for this year and these include both software, instrument and consumables. The fast development of AI is an opportunity for BICO as AI accelerates discovery and shifts the bottleneck to the wet lab as I described earlier in this call. And this is where our automation solutions are at the core. We had two key launches during the quarter. Deepure, which automates DNA purification and yet another AI solution. This time for cell culture workflows. Our company Echo's new Confluence AI turns one of CellCalter's most subjective steps into a quantitative reproducible metric, which we deliver as a licensed software feature to our Rebel and Revolve systems already in the field.

16:38 Confluence AI is built directly into our microscopes through our software to detect and calculate the number of cells more reliably. This removes subjectivity and improves decision making, timing as well as reproducibility. The other launch this quarter is the GPure Gen two, which automates DNA purification, delivering rapid reproducible plastic tip free sample cleanup for seamless NGS library prep workflows. And this saves the use of 300,000 pipette tips per year for a mid sized laboratory. It's also 10 times faster, which significantly increases the throughput. And saving eighteen minutes per plate means roughly four working weeks of technician time per instrument per year.

17:24 And these are just two examples of technology and solutions delivering customer value, which are the results of our efforts within R and D. This will be my last quarterly report for BICO Group. And I'm proud of what we have accomplished together during my tenure. We have focused on commercializing, consolidating and professionalizing the group to position the company for long term success. I now hand over the leadership to Anders Waglerberg in whom I have great confidence. And I wish every success in the next chapter and look forward to following BICO's continued development as the group enters an exciting new phase. Thank you to our employees, our customers, partners, shareholders and the board for your support and commitment throughout this journey.

18:13 This was the final slide before the Q and A. I will hand over to the earnings call host for further instructions. The next question comes from Ludwig Lundgren from Arctic. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, guys. And thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to start off a bit on the license and supply agreement, which I already deserves a bit more spotlight given the significant effect it should have on the P and L here in Q3. So starting off on the last part of it, of almost €11,000,000 which will be recorded as revenue in Q3, if I understand correctly. So I just assume this relates to another company licensing your micro dispensing technology in Cyanion.

19:13 Maybe if you can just give some flavor on what type of IP they're licensing and what type of product that is going to and the end market for that? If you can, yeah, just give some more flavor on that would be nice. So this is with our diagnostic business. So it's in the technology license that we have with the customer. Okay, thanks. And just on the margin for this license agreement, I suppose this is a bit higher than what you have for these typically. We don't comment on margins for specific products or licenses. I'm sorry for that. Okay, fair enough.

19:59 Then just somewhat of a, know, because I guess you've had this is somewhat of a follow-up licensing agreement that you have now, and you've had it before, but I guess this spans over many years. So have we seen this type of negotiation before in BICO numbers? Or was it the last time this was negotiated was before it was even acquired by BICO? And also, was on the cash flow profile of this. So I assume you don't get the full cash flow here in Q3 for the revenue, but yes, just how it expands over the next few years would be nice. Yeah, some more clarity on that. Thank you Ludwig for the question. I will start and answer in terms of what this has been before and then I'll hand over to Eva to answer about the financial implications accounting wise.

20:49 So this type of agreements, there are two, one license agreement and one supply agreement is a prolongation of earlier business that we have done with this customer. And given the tender of these type of contracts, this was the original contract was something that was signed with the customer and Cyanion prior to BICO acquiring Cyanion. So we have not communicated to the market about these contracts before. But it's been a long negotiation with the customer for this prolongation and given the nature of supply agreement as well as license agreement over a tenure of ten years, that has some accounting and cash flow implications. And please, Eva, if you can give some more flavor on that, that would be helpful.

21:38 So as you can see in the report, for the license, we will take €10,600,000 at the point of time in the Q3. So that is the revenue recognition of the license part that is non cancelable. And according to IFRS, we need to do it at point of time. That means that it will deviate from the cash flow. So the cash flow will be invoiced on a yearly basis going forward, but the revenue will need to take at the point of time in Q3. Thanks. Very, very clear. Yeah, yeah. And then just a final one from my side on this matter. So just on the supply part of it. So you take some revenue as well from previous deliveries, if I understand correctly, for like themselves.

22:32 But like do you expect this prolongation or new deal to drive any incremental extra sales for the hardware or is just run as a test done for basically? This is the contract is primarily the license and consumable business. However, what sometimes happen when you enter this kind of partnerships that there are additional opportunities. But there's nothing that we can comment on. But of course, that's in our commercial interest to pursue. Okay, you very clear. This is what we've had in past years Ludwig. Yeah. Okay, great. Thanks. I'll jump back into the queue.

23:19 Thank you. Thank you, Ludwig. The next question comes from Maria Carlson Osipova from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead. Hi, hello there. Thanks for taking my questions. So I'm going to start with the same topic that you guys started with, with the CEO transition. And promoting from the firm is practically as low drama as it can get. So rather than asking actually Jose Bravo, since there is no drama, I'll flip it. Maria, what's the one thing that you would actually expect Anders to change once he takes over the reins? And maybe for Anders, could you give us a little bit more color on your immediate priorities once you take the lead on September 1? Yeah. No, as you say Maria, there is no drama in this. I was recruited by the Board of Directors three years ago with the with the task of focus on commercialization, consolidation, and professionalizing the company. And as we have presented in the in the report today, we have come quite far in that transformation.

24:24 And I recruited Anders Foglberg, our chief commercial officer, six months into my tenure, and we have worked closely the past two years in together with the rest of the executive team. So together with the board, we have agreed that this is a good time for a shift in in leadership. Now when we're entering into a new phase with an additional increased focus on on executing the commercialization, continue our engagement with with the customers, and and also ensuring profitable, sustainable growth. So Anders, in terms of your focus and any comments from you, please? Absolutely. Thank you for the question. And of course, I've been with BICO for these two years and with Maria.

25:13 In some ways I continue what I've done which is support the global customer base at building a commercial engine and strengthening the market presence. Of course, over the next few months and my executive management team and the board, we look at the business and we might come back with additional perspectives or insights. But for now, when I start the September 1, it's all about the commercial engine operational efficiency and to drive profitable growth. And I will remain as a senior advisor for a quarter to ensure that we have a smooth transition and handover process to Anders. But of course, Anders knows the customers and knows the market.

25:58 So there's no drama or big deal in this. And I really, really hope that we'll have good success moving forward as well. And I'm sure that will be the case. Alright. Thank you so much for the comments there. And now a little bit on the numbers. The instrument picture is a bit mixed. I mean, we've seen some organic growth now, but instruments in total declined. However, you do mention that the desktop instruments are going well and then they're staying strong. Could you maybe quantify a little bit on the split between these benchtop instruments and maybe larger ones that you have? And maybe describe some trends that support your comment that you're gaining confidence in the market recovery?

26:44 I think overall Maria if we look at our peers who are operating in the same market as us, we see the same type of trends in the quarter as everyone else is doing. And I'll come to instrument shortly. But first of all, both consumable which is increasing by 10%, we also see a slight increase in service. That's also seen by our peers. When it comes to instrument sales, despite the softness in academia, our bench top instruments are going really, really well in several of our business units, which is really pleasing to see. When it comes to the instrument decline in the quarter, that's due to the project based business. That's the reason for the decline. So, that has nothing to do with the benchtop industry part of our results.

27:31 So, that's expected given how lumpiness that you see when you start new projects, then there will always be big instrument sales. And then you get a peak in those quarter where big new project starts. So that's the reason. Anders, do you want to comment anything further? I think as you said Maria, we see what our peers are seeing and there is some improvement in the demand. Everyone sees that the specialized instruments are being sought after. Instruments that are more commodities might not have the same demand because of the funding situation primarily in The US. And we see that dynamics play out in our industry in our market as well.

28:20 Yeah. All right. Thank you for the comments there as well. And to finish off my short part here, a short comment maybe on capital allocation. You've mentioned this in Q1, if I'm not mistaken. Is there any short follow-up you can give us on those dialogues for instance bolt on acquisitions or something that you referenced in Q1? Thank you, Maria, that question. I mean, course, we're quite happy that we now have a balance sheet in order and we brought in new capital in quarter one which is a good foundation for continued both organic and potential inorganic growth. As we have communicated the market before. Smaller bolt on acquisitions could be opportunities, but also we are increasing our collaborations such as the one we have with Satorius and looking for different collaboration partners. So, it's a mix of ensuring that we can continue to invest with R and D, continue to explore strategic and commercial collaborations as well as looking at potential strategic fit smaller bolt on acquisitions.

29:38 Yeah, thanks. That will be all from me. I'll get back into the line. Thanks. Thank you, Maria. The next question comes from Philip Einersen from Redeye. Please go ahead. Hi, everybody. So my question is actually on the sort of BIO0 side to start off. And I know we have discussed previously of the legacy projects within BIO0. And so my question is maybe if you could provide just some guidance of sort of the duration expected of these legacy projects and what the reasonable expectation would be for how long it can continue to provide headwind.

30:27 Thank you. Yeah, thank you. The legacy projects is something we focus on quite a lot. And if you look at the lab automation space and what we are achieving here, it's used projects often custom made hardware, custom made software solutions in an industry that do not really have standards yet in place. And it's quite groundbreaking. We're working with scientists at big pharma to set this up in a good way. And it's an entrepreneurial work. And as we have communicated many times, some of these bigger projects take longer than anticipated. And that's something we face. That's something many of our competitors face as well. And our main priority is to make the customer satisfied with the solution. That is priority number one.

31:23 And we are working very hard and close with these customers to make that happen. And at the same time, we are as we said in the quarter report, we are reassessing the space. What does this mean for us? How can we scale this in a good way and how should we be positioned lab automation to have a sustainable profitable growth. And this is something we're looking at. At the same time, we do our utmost to make our customers happy with what we deliver. And then a short follow-up Yeah, to that, if I think it's important just to distinguish. We talk about lab automation overall, and we do lab automation in most of our companies. So what Anders described now with BICO is our lab automation solutions business, which is project based.

32:16 But we have a lot of lab automated solutions also with a benchtop instrument. So so we don't just say that lab automation is BICO Group because that's not the case. Okay. So a short follow-up then for me would be maybe if you could help us. Are there any of these legacy projects that you maybe think will will be completed, let's say, during 2026? And will this be sort of a fading a fading headwind or or anything on that? Yes. We have completed several of these projects in 2025.

33:03 We had dozens of them completed in fact in the quarter four twenty twenty five. If you look at 2026, yes, we have completed some. We will complete a few more of them. And when you look at this business, have the building phase when you build it at the factory, you have this site built at the pharma sites. And then when it gets operational, there is of course a service component and the aftermarket component when you work with the scientists day to day. So in a way the projects, yes they get built, they get completed but in a way they were continuous for years afterward partners to these customers. Okay, that's fair. Thanks. I have one more.

33:53 So would you say that Q2's product mix and sort of share of direct sales to be a fair proxy to extrapolate for the second half of the year? We cannot guide you on the forward looking numbers. But for Q1 and Q2, we saw the desktop instruments, the growing. So you would say that sorry? Please, Filip, go on. No. So I just what I'm out for is more in terms of would you say that Q2 is sort of an outlier quarter or is this something we can extrapolate in those? As I said, we're not guiding for the future, but as we have reported all the years, our business is quite seasonal where usually the first half of the year is slower than the second half due to how budgets are put into our customers' pockets.

35:03 Okay. Thank you. The next question comes from Ludwig Lundgren from Arctic. Please go ahead. Yes, hi. So just a few follow ups from my side. So first, just on the academic end market, which you say is still a bit slow. However, I've heard from some peers at least that it seems to turn around now as budgets are not down that much or not at all actually on the NIH side. So just some comments on that would be nice. If we look at the NIH funding, which is very important for the academic projects in The US, the way that they fund and the way that they pay this funding is a bit different.

36:01 They pay for longer time periods. They incentivize longer projects and there are fewer project starts. If you look at their project lists, we have some delays when there was a in Washington DC that they had a standstill. So there were delays of payments. Then there are fewer starts, which means that those that sell commodities to the academic segment, they will struggle more than those that sell niche products. Because commodities that's what you normally buy when you start up a lab and you start something. Whereas the niche products you buy later on in the projects. So if you look at our portfolio, we as everyone else, we are facing challenges when it comes to commodity products.

36:53 Okay, thanks. Very clear. And then just a final one, a bit of a follow-up to the licensing supply agreement question before. So just are there any similar type of licensing deals that you have in Saenion that could be renegotiated this way? Or was this like a bit of a one off when it comes to, yeah, size and so on? Of course, we cannot give guidance on future opportunities. But it's not a very common setup for us to go after these kind of license agreements. And in this case, we have worked with them for several years before. And we've renegotiated our contracts for several reasons. And we are happy to have this continued trust from this customer.

37:46 But it's not a core offering. It's not the core strategy to go after these kind of contracts. Okay, Andrew. Thanks a lot. That was all my questions. There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments. Thank you for all the questions received, and thank you for your continued interest and support in BICO Group. And together with Eva, Anders and Erik, I wish you a great Wednesday.