Dermapharm Holding (Xetra:DMP) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Dermapharm Hldg Se Q2 2026 Results Conference Call. I'm Moritz, your Chorus Call Operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and 0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. It's my pleasure to hand over to Britta Hamberger.

0:31 Please go ahead. Thank you for your kind introduction. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Dermapharm's H1 webcast and thank you for joining us today. With me is our Chief Financial Officer Christof Dreibholz and our Chief Marketing Officer Andreas Eberhorn. Andreas and Christof will guide you through today's presentation and afterwards we will be open with Q&A.

0:59 Andreas, the floor is yours. Thanks a lot, Britta. Also welcome from my side. For the first half of 2026, I want to show you a few highlights we see which support the very several trends we see on the operational side, structured in a way, as you know, in branded other healthcare and parallel import segments. If we look briefly at the branded piece, we see nice growth in our core business, Germany. Specifically, the brands that we focus on, where we put our investment in, really grow nicely and show both internally but also on the market growth above the relevant market. Is it brands like Miditin, Tromkatin or Ketocilin and develop further nicely.

1:55 As you know, after the acquisition of Muco's business from Nestle, we had the task also to relaunch Woop Enzyme after a period of supply issues in the market, which is really nicely done in Germany. And end of H1, we already achieved a distribution rate in pharmacies above 60%, which means the brand is back and is nicely growing. So this is a very Faber Trent and asset supports also the overall growth and also the rest of the portfolio is showing a good trend in the German market. If we look on another piece in the market, specifically the Alagology portfolio, on the one hand, this is Alebo Pharma, as you know, the trend continues since last year or last years.

2:50 We see we are the strongest growing Brand in the injection market in Germany. We have excellent internal numbers both for Allergoid and Novo Helisane and outperforming the market as mentioned above the other brands. This is done by very strong execution of our strategy during this process of TAF. We mentioned this in some course where Brands needs to have new registrations for the German markets. Not everyone achieved these registrations. There have been patient potential outside and we have been able to capture this potential far above, I would say, fair share. So this helps us very much in the development of these brands. And the trend is as well, if you look a little bit outside Germany for the other, international allergopharma markets and specifically China showing here strong development but also this specific for this year we have overall a strong allergology portfolio growth brands like Wolon which is also used here for allergies as the season is quite or was quite strong in Germany if you look a little bit outside internationally our dermapharm affiliates continue to grow

4:21 fueled by both the in-market portfolio as well as new product launches we have specifically here of existing products from the Dermapharm group portfolio. If we go to the other segment, other healthcare, specifically I'm looking at Arco Pharma. Arco Pharma is in H1 ahead of budget and the new strategy which is fully implemented beginning of the year shows Continuous, really good results. Spain, Italy are nicely ahead and growing above past year in plan. France is on plan. And then specifically in France, the biggest market, we see positive market signs and since three months market growth of our French business above the normal market, which is really great.

5:09 Looking at Euromate, also here we have nice numbers, specifically driven by increased demand in Europe and Asia.

5:20 This also helps to overperform a little lower U.S. business, which is linked to the tariffs, so in some nice growth on the Euromed side. Those are not 100% there to compensate the less favorable trend we see for two other businesses in the other healthcare market like Hübner where we see specifically in the German market the trend in the health food stores where we have normally higher prices that consumers tend to go more in the lower price channels like drugstores and for our medical cannabis business Pandoro Ethics, specifically on Drona Binol, which is the biggest brand here.

6:19 There is increasing price pressure, which on the one hand leads to lower demand and on the other hand led us to adjust prices to be competitive in the market. If you look at the last segment, parallel trade, this is mentioned. So we are continuously optimizing our portfolio to find even further sweet spots. On the one hand limits the top line. but on the other hand will maximize the growth on profitability. So here a brief glance what happened in H1 and gives us a good view and a very positive operational trend. And I would hand over to Christof Dreibholz.

7:06 Christof Dreibholz Thank you Andreas and good afternoon from me. My name is Christof Dreibholz. I will guide you through the remaining slides of the presentation. Along with the operational trends that Andreas Eberhorn explained, Q2 2026 has been impacted by the following non-operational events. There are three. The first one is that we acquired 4.3 million in shares, or slightly below 8% of our share capital. for a consideration of purchase price for the shares of 181 million. These shares have been redeemed in the meantime and the equity number has been reduced accordingly.

7:54 The equity ratio declines mathematically to approximately 24%. Part of the share buyback has been debt financed. The corresponding leverage ratio increases to three times adjusted EBITDA. The leverage ratio is still below the covenant agreed with the financing banks. In line with the provisions of the SPA that we contracted with Nestlé, the review of the purchase price calculation by the parties regarding the MUCOS acquisition with the Wobenzahn product portfolio is not finalized yet. The current purchase price allocation has been based on our best estimate of the final purchase price and currently points at a badwill of approximately 24 million. The release of this badwill is shown as other non-cash income and is adjusted at normalized EBITDA level.

8:56 Thirdly, the German financial supervisory authority BaFin is currently examining the valuation of a I will not comment on the status of the ongoing investigation. We still believe that our valuation and disclosure has been appropriate and was in line with the underlying accounting provisions. As of June 26, we have reviewed the information

9:31 that has been made available since the preparation of the year-end 25 accounts and the finalization of the audit for 25. Most importantly, the competition among growers increased beginning of 26, resulting in a notable market price decline of recreational cannabis in the Netherlands. This new information led us to record an impairment of the financial receivable of 30 million. This impairment expense is disclosed in a separate line as part of the financial result below EBITDA. Slide 5, please. If we look at the Q2 figures of the group summarized on this slide 5, the strong branded products momentum drives revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA margin expansion. None of the non-operational effects mentioned before have had an impact on revenue and adjusted EBITDA in Q2.

10:33 The income from the MUCOS purchase price allocation has been eliminated in order to arrive at adjusted EBITDA. The impairment expense regarding the financial receivable is recorded below EBITDA in financial result and the share buyback has balance sheet implications only. The operational trends explained by Andreas Eberhorn before resulted in an approximately 5% growth of revenues driven by the high margin German and international businesses. This led to disproportionate increases of adjusted EBITDA plus approximately 14% and EBITDA margin plus 2 percentage points. At reported earnings after tax level, the release of the bad will to income and the expense from the impairment of the financial receivable largely met out.

11:23 Earnings after tax result increases by approximately 11% to $23 million. Slide 6, please. The half-year performance summarized on this slide mirrors the Q2 trend with solid revenue and disproportionate adjusted EBITDA and earnings after tax results. The favorable operating performance in the first half of 2026 further leads to a remarkable growth of the operating cash flow by 35 million, representing a 17 percentage point increase of the cash conversion ratio to 65% of EBITDA. The operating cash flow is not impacted by the non-cash, non-operational income from the purchase price allocation the before mentioned impairment of the financial receivable and the balance sheet related share buyback.

12:22 As in previous webcasts, we bridge key elements of the first half in 2026 performance leading to a growth of approximately 14 million at earnings after tax level. All segments contribute to EBITDA growth as explained before. At earnings after tax result level, the net impact from the impairment of the financial receivable and the adjustment to EBITDA is approximately 5 million. The major amount as part of the adjustment is obviously the release to income in connection with the MUCOS purchase price allocation. Interest costs mainly for the syndicated loan declined following the covenant improvement, leading to a lower margin on top of the yearable compared to last year.

13:10 The interest rate hedging terminated end of 25 impacts from the comparison to Q2 2025 or the first half of 25 are minor. Corporate income and trade tax payments also decline in the first half 2026

13:27 as previous periods have been impacted by payments for prior years. Depreciation charges are approximately at prior year level. Slide eight, please. briefly regarding the normalization adjustments, which mainly comprise the reversal of the income from the release of the badwill, as mentioned before. Other adjustments are 2.4 million, resulting from restructuring and other exceptional costs. Slide 9. The strong operating performance lifts the interest cover to now nearly eight times

14:15 partially also, of course, impacted by the declining interest cost. As explained before, the share buyback leads to an increased debt number and a lower equity ratio following the cancellation in equity of the related shares. Slide 10.

14:41 The increase in assets, equity and liabilities is due to a combination of operational working capital related impacts and non-operational effects. Especially assets are impacted by the initial consolidation of MUCOS. Additionally, current assets increase from generally higher trade receivables, reflecting the disproportionate growth of the branded portfolio segment. Non-current assets also increased from the first-time consolidation of MUCUS. However, the impact is offset by the impairment of the long-term financial receivables. The equity figure has been impacted by the cancellation of the shares that have been acquired as part of the share buyback, the reclassification of the dividend liability to current liabilities, and the earnings after-tax result in the year-to-date June 26 period.

15:40 Non-current liabilities are higher following the contracted new financing

15:45 in connection with the share buyback, and current liabilities have been impacted by several effects, including the reclassification of the dividend liability from equity, the preliminary remaining MUC purchase price obligation, slightly higher trade liabilities, and additional financing.

16:07 Networking capital is approximately 9% higher than the level seen as of June 25, a reflection of the underlying growth in the business, especially in branded product segment. The increase in inventories and trade receivables is only partially offset by higher payables. The growth of the business, being the main driver of the networking capital, can be seen in the trend of the working capital of the days, especially the unchanged capital

16:37 The average quarterly DPO since Q1 2025 was 75 days, i.e. in between the DPO as of June 25 and June 26. H1-2026 shows a remarkable increase in the cash flow from operating activities compared to prior year and also this KPI underlines the very good operational performance of the business. As explained before, the non-operating Q2 events have had no cash impact, i.e. the operating cash flow represents the underlying operational performance of the business. Main contributors are the underlying EBITDA improvements across segments and sustainably lower tax payments. Recurring capex was approximately 22 million in H1-26, slightly above prior year level.

17:47 Details of the improved operating cash flow are shown on the next slide 13. Along with the improved cash EBITDA as mentioned before, operating cash flow is mainly impacted by The sustainably lower tax payments is prior year's burden by tax payments related to historical financial years 22 and 23.

18:10 And finally, the outlook. Thank you. Based on the H1 results and the scheduled re-forecast, we confirm the outlook for FY26. Growth is expected to continue, driven by portfolio expansion, seasonal demand for anti-allergy products, International Growth and Improved Product Availability in the Branded Segment. No material impact from the German Financial Stabilization Act is anticipated for the remaining year 2026. Revenue growth in other healthcare products is expected to recover in H2, supported by continued momentum at Sanella and Euromid and a strong second half at Arco Pharma.

18:56 and in parallel import, the positive earnings trend is expected to continue further supporting profitability. Thank you very much.

19:09 I hand over to Britta. And now we can open the Q&A, please. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and 1 at this time. One moment for the first question, please.

19:44 And the first question comes from Christian Eman from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Hello everyone and thanks for taking my questions. I have a couple. So first of all, I would like to know more please about the impairment from the financial asset from the recreational cannabis company. Is there any more risk of further impairments from this kind of participation?

20:08 The second one would be how do you plan to use the significant positive operating cash flow you have? Can we envision something of debt reduction in the future and then subsequently what can you do with the kind of reduced leverage originating from this? and the third one would be in regard to the ongoing BaFin investigation. I appreciate that you said you want to comment on the ongoing investigation, but are there any further downsides that you can envision at this point? Thank you very much.

20:42 Thank you for the questions. The impact of the receivable and the BaFin investigation are the same. So I would answer that together.

20:59 So this financial receivable resulted from the unwinding of a contract to acquire participation in a Dutch cannabis grower called Futa. The payment for approximately 24% of the participation in this business years ago was 60 million. and this represents the purchase price we paid for the participation.

21:29 The receivable now is in total 65 million resulting from this purchase price payment less a payment of 10 million received from the sellers since the unwinding of the contract plus interest cost.

21:52 FUTA itself, so this grower, acceded to the contract. And FUTA is a leading grower among a number of growers who are engaged in a Dutch governmental program to legalize the sourcing of cannabis by Dutch coffee shops.

22:11 As a result, economically, the financial receivable that we disclose will most likely be settled by payments from FUTA post-op. In 2026, competition among growers increased, resulting in a notable market price decline of recreational cannabis in the Netherlands. And based on this information and this trend that we perceived in 2026, we have calculated the impairment of the receivable of currently 30 million. We will, of course, at every balance sheet date going forward, continue reviewing the valuation of the receivable and decide, depending on all influencing factors, whether the current impairment is appropriate or whether we need additional impairment or whether we can release part of the historical impairment. I'm sorry that I can't give you any other answer, but this is forward-looking, and we are currently lacking the information to assess Q3 or Q4 or even later dates.

23:36 We generate approximately 100 and I would say 80, 90 million of free cash flow per year. And we reduce our debt based on the contracts that we have agreed by 60 million. We pay interest of 40 million plus per year, so 100 million or a little bit more than 50% of the free cash flow are covered by debt service cost and repayment of debt. In addition, as you know, we pay a dividend between, let's say, 40 and 50 million over the last years. And the remaining amount is or has historically been used for M&A being one of our three growth drivers. And this is something that we in general will continue to do.

24:45 Of course, if there is excess debt, we... will always aim at reducing our debt number, our net debt number, and thereby improving our leverage with historically very successful results in reducing our related interest cost. Regarding the BaFin investigation, maybe to round this up, I cannot say more as this is ongoing and I can only repeat what I said in my explanations before that we believe that there is no the valuation of the receivable as at the year ends 25 and earlier was correct and based on the information that we had at the time of drawing Thank you very much for this very helpful answer.

25:57 Then the next question comes from Fabian Piasta from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi Christof, hi Britta. Can you hear me all right? Yes. Okay, great. Just maybe two residual questions from my side. So in branded Would you be able to break growth down into organic and M&A, plus maybe some granularity on how the organic growth rate was for the domestic as well as for the international business? And the second question would concern IcoPharma. What gives you confidence into the second half? Is this more, finally, your measures coming through? Do you have any positive indications from, let's say, first month of the third quarter? Or has this something to do with the more economic situation? Maybe you can give us some granularities as well. Thank you.

27:02 Andreas, do you want to start with the aqua pharma question? Yes, I can do. I'm happy to. So thanks for your question. It's not the one or the other. I would say it's the sum of the parts. As I mentioned, with implementation of the strategy, some new launches we have in growing categories of the market where we perform quite nicely, for example, collagen or a slimming product. The trend is going on, favorable in our side, which, let's say, the consumers we get or the customers we get, they will not stop for the H2. With being more closer to the pharmacist, this was one piece of the strategy with specifically push to sell out, not sell in and consumer activation.

28:03 This trend is shown, backed up by, as I mentioned in the beginning, for example in France, which is the biggest market three months in a row, growing above the comparable markets, which are very helpful and give us confidence that the trend will continue, supported also by nice development, second biggest market Spain, as well as in Italy, and further launches to come in H2. So, I would say this is the sum of all of the parts which make us very confident on a further acceleration in the second half. Thank you. To Aquapharma. Thank you, Andreas. Regarding the organic growth, that was between 4 and 5 percent organically at net sales level in branded products. So, it looks like there are no further questions at this time.

29:06 So, in this case, I would like to turn the conference back over to Britta Hamberger for any closing remarks. I'm sorry, we got one follow-up question from Fabian Piaster from Jefferies. Please go ahead. When you were talking basically around price deterioration on the recreational cannabis, is this A kind of structural issue also affecting other parts of your business, or has this just been that kind of unwinding of contractual obligations?

30:01 Maybe you can give some color here. No, this is only, so this recreational cannabis is only an indirect impact that we are facing here because we have this receivable from the unwinding of the contract, and The entity where the cash eventually will most likely come from to settle this receivable is this grower. And hence, the cash flows are of course impacted by the underlying business of this entity, but this is only related to the financial receiver and the potential settlement.

30:53 We are not active in recreational cannabis, dealing with any sort of recreational cannabis, neither in Germany or any other jurisdictions. Okay, thanks for that clarification. Then we do have one more question from Miro Zusak from JMS Invest AG. Please go ahead. Yes, hello. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, thank you for taking my questions. I have a couple of them. The first one is on your guidance. So basically, the midpoint 1.2 billion and then also the decline that we see in the parallel import business still hints to a slowdown of growth in the branded pharmaceutical business. Now, I'm aware of the strong growth that you had in Q4 last year, right? So maybe the base there is a bit more difficult.

32:00 But in Q3, just given the strong growth that you've shown in Q1 and Q2, can you maybe give some color there? Do you expect a slowdown for some reasons? Or wasn't basically the growth now in Q2 just not strong enough to already at this point increase the guidance on the top line? So we base this guidance, of course, also on a bottom-up review of the businesses performed twice a year, ReFORcast 1 and 2, and the latest ReFORcast 2 points exactly at what we outlined in our guidance. So the individual entities is as always a mix of positive and partially negative impacts and we do not see that we at this point will exceed the guidance.

33:14 Okay, thank you. Then I have some kind of smaller questions. The one is on the Capitalized Own Work, Aktivierte Eigenleistungen was higher this year, markedly higher compared to last year. And I asked myself, was there any special effect or is it like a new run rate, which is a little bit higher due to, I don't know, more internal software development or whatnot? Yeah, if I look at the numbers, I think we're speaking of roughly 2 million here, 1.9 million, and this is rather phasing.

34:03 We've seen differences not to this extent also in the past, but if I look at other quarters, I also see notable differences between the amounts, so I would attribute this to phasing. Okay. And the last one on the Baffin Untersuchung. Is there some light that you can basically give regarding the timeline? Do you have any indication at what point in time this process will be over? I would be happy if I knew the answer. I think we are here dependent on BaFin. We are cooperating, we are answering in a very timely manner questions that are asked.

35:09 I would assume that BaFin will maybe now look at the June report. But whether this takes two weeks, two months, Harvey, I honestly cannot say. But we will do everything from our side to expedite the process. Okay. So you don't even have an indication on the year. So you don't know if it's going to be this year or next year or 2028 or so? Absolutely. These processes do not work this way. The BaFin outlines or gives itself a timeline.

36:04 I would hope that we will settle this within the next weeks. This is only my hope. BaFin is the driver and BaFin will end the process once they feel comfortable with the information. Okay, very clear. Thanks a lot. Pleasure. Ladies and gentlemen, this was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Britta Hamberger for any closing remarks. Thank you for joining us today.

36:49 If you have any questions left open, please feel free to give me a call afterwards. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over and you may disconnect. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.