Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Medmix half year results 2024 conference call and live webcast. I'm Francie, the conference 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 Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the relevant field. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to James Amoroso. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you. So my name is James Amoroso, Head of Investor Relations at Medmix. I'm joined by René Willi, our new CEO, and Jennifer Dean, our CFO. In the interest of brevity, we will assume that you have read the disclaimer on this slide regarding forward-looking statements. With that, I will now hand over to René. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased to talk to you for the first time as CEO of Medmix. Jenny and I will update you on Medmix progress in the first half of this year, as well as give you some insights into the second half. I will also share with you my initial impressions after my first 45 days as CEO. On slide 4, you can see the key figures for the first half. In terms of revenue growth, our two business areas came under pressure for different reasons that we shall discuss shortly. In terms of profitability, we are pleased to have slightly improved gross margins, but lower revenues weighed on our Adjusted EBITDA margin. By contrast, our key metric of adjusted operating net cash flow almost doubled to reach CHF 24 million. Our free cash flow also grew strongly. Although these results came in broadly as we had planned, they do not reflect what we are capable of, and they do not match our ambitions. Later in this presentation, I will touch on some factors that I believe will take Medmix into a new era of profitable growth. Let's move to slide number five. These are our highlights in the first half of the year. Dental segment revenues began to normalize, delivering strong year-on-year and sequential growth. Our other segments saw an anticipated organic revenue decline. We continued to invest in operational excellence with our new Valencia site, ramping up efficiency to fuel margin improvements, and our new ISO-certified Atlanta site, starting productions on schedule to increase customer proximity in the U.S. Our Qiaoyi acquisition continues to perform well on top and bottom line. Gross margin for business area improved, and all cash flow KPIs increased. Adjusted EBITDA margin remains restrained by lower volumes with higher reported EBITDA. Let's look more closely at our market segments revenues on slide 6. Firstly, in the healthcare business area, we are particularly pleased with our dental market segment, whose growth suggests that customer destocking has run its course, and we look forward to confirming these positive trends in the months ahead. The double-digit decrease more than offset this growth, taking the healthcare business area into a negative territory. The decline in the surgery market segment had only a limited impact due to its small size. In the consumer and industrial business area, the industry market segment was challenged by the strong growth generated in first half of 2023, but grew in double digits in the first six months compared to the second half of last year. The organic revenue decline in the beauty market segment was driven by a normalization of launch activity after last year's record levels. Let's discuss our healthcare market segment in more detail on slide seven. The dental market segment enjoyed strong organic revenue growth year on year and sequentially. This growth is reassuring given that the dental end markets were soft. We are cautiously, cautiously optimistic that our positive trend will continue into the second half. The drug delivery market segment was impacted by the long-anticipated shift of a portion of production volumes to a third-party manufacturer by one customer. In April, we announced, we announced an exclusive partnership with Nipro Corporation to promote and distribute the PiccoJect autoinjector in the Japanese market starting early next year. Our confidence that the segment can deliver on its long-term ambitions was confirmed this month by designing another new project for the PiccoJect platform. In the surgery market, we had an exceptionally strong year-end in 2023, and this weighed on our first half performance. On slide eight, you see our new ISO-certified healthcare plant in Atlanta, which started operations in June on schedule. In fact, we will ship our first surgery products tomorrow. This state-of-the-art facility will increase customer proximity in the U.S. across our entire healthcare portfolio, provide space for customer co-creation, and can support our customers where there is a request for dual-size. In this way, we aim to take our healthcare business to the next level. Let's move to the consumer and industrial business area on slide nine. The industrial segment made good progress despite a negative year-on-year revenue comparison. This chart shows a sequential revenue increase compared to the second half of last year. We are now feeling the benefit of having our full product range available, in particular, the environmentally friendly greenLine product range, despite continued softness in the end markets. The full portfolio of products is now available from our new Valencia plant, and we have turned our focus to increasing efficiency. The beauty market segment's first half revenues are compared to our exceptionally strong prior year period, with several customers launched after COVID. This year, customer launch activity is more evenly spread, which you see in our sequential organic growth of 4%. Our Chinese acquisition, Qiaoyi, contributes nicely with CHF 12 million of revenue. In the first half of the year, we maintained the pace of innovation at a very high level. On slide 10, you can see just a few examples from our dental, beauty, and industry market segments. On the left side, in the dental market segment, we launched the world's first sustainable mixing tip, using almost 70% biomass materials. By cutting CO2 emissions by more than half, it provides us with a significant competitive advantage. By not changing any aspect of our proven design, dentists are able to make an immediate switch. The beauty market segment lives from innovations, so we are proud to have created three truly innovative products. Firstly, the patented bridged- bristle mascara brush on the left is 3D printed, so requires no investment for tooling and is much faster to market. Its unique patented design delivers an unmatched mascara application performance. The Feather brush mascara applicator on the right is uniquely formed to perfectly fit the natural shape of the eyes, while its unique angled zigzag bristles gives a better grip and style for the lashes. And thirdly, in between the two mascara brushes, you see the Ballerina precision applicators, applicator for eyes and lips, an adjacent area beyond our core eyelash expertise that we have targeted for growth. In the shape of a Ballerina shoe, its slanted surface, beveled side, and pointed tip make for a perfect product load and easy line drawing. On the right side, in the industry market segment, we have rolled out two product extensions to our greenLine range. Following the launch of 15 products in the second half of last year, our customers are keen to reduce their virgin plastic usage and carbon footprint. So we have great expectations for the entire range going forward. And it's not just our products that are sustainable. We build sustainability into everything we do, as you can see on slide 11. CDP is a globally recognized organization that assesses companies' environmental impact and efforts and its supplier engagement rating, gauges companies' supply chain engagement on climate issues. CDP has awarded us an A-, the second highest score, which ranks us in the leadership band and places us among the top 15% globally of all firms implementing current best practices. We rank far higher than the average for our sector, and for all our sectors on a European and global basis. The CDP assessment helps us improve our performance, as well as support our suppliers and customers to address their own climate risk, and this makes us a better partner. I will come back at the end of the presentation to discuss our outlook, but for now, I will hand over to Jenny, who will take you deeper into the financials. ... Thanks, René. Our main KPIs can be seen on slide 13. While revenues declined year-over-year, they increased slightly on a sequential basis, with the dental and industry market segments and the Qiaoyi acquisition compensating for shortfalls in the other segments. Our gross margins at the business area and the group level both expanded slightly year-over-year. This was both due to an improved mix, thanks to higher dental revenues and the inclusion of Qiaoyi, both of which generate profitability above the group's average. Lower volumes suppressed our adjusted EBITDA margin. Our reported EBITDA, however, increased strongly in absolute terms and as a percentage of revenue, both year-over-year and sequentially. We saw a decrease in the one-off expenses incurred as we transition to our new Valencia plant. We are particularly pleased with our cash flow metrics. Adjusted operating net cash flow and free cash flow both made a strong recovery in the first half, thanks to improved working capital, a planned reduction in CapEx, as well as fewer costs relating to the temporary production in our industry market segment. On slide 14, you can see our half-yearly healthcare gross profit and margins over time. While we reported lower gross profit in absolute terms due to lower volumes, we were able to increase our gross margin year-on-year and sequentially, thanks to an overall improved product mix. This is due to the volume recovery that we have seen in our highest margin segment, the dental market segment. We look forward to confirmation of these positive trends in the dental segment in the next months, so in the context of soft end market demand. Drug delivery volumes will remain impacted in the short term by the implementation of a customer's second source production, and surgery revenues are expected to normalize in the second half. Moving now to our consumer and industrial business area on slide 15. We were able to maintain our overall gross profit at 2023 levels, supported by our accretive Qiaoyi acquisition. On a year-on-year basis, we increased our gross margin due to Qiaoyi in the mix. The half two 2023 result was driven by exceptional results in beauty, both in the newly acquired Qiaoyi business and GEKA, Brazil. On slide 16 now. Our first half adjusted EBITDA margin declined 100 basis points year-on-year due to lower volumes, partly mitigated by the impact of the sale of our dispenser site in the U.S. and the release of some provisions no longer required. Our reported EBITDA margin rose strongly, thanks to fewer extraordinary costs related to the high cost temporary production for the industry market segment, while transitioning to our new plant in Valencia. On slide 17, I'll take you through our adjusted EBITDA walk from first half 2023 to first half 2024. We have a negative impact on adjusted EBITDA from lower volumes in the industry and drug delivery market segments. The negative margin and mix effect shown here is driven by our new Valencia plant, which is in the process of ramping up its efficiency. The positive movement from operating expenses reflects the sale of our dispenser side in the U.S. and some unneeded provision releases. Our Chinese acquisition, Qiaoyi, contributed positively to adjusted EBITDA in the first half. We have a decrease from CHF 9.5 million to CHF 2.8 million in non-operating expenses year-on-year, spread across our cost of goods sold and operating expenses, as we have now transitioned to our new Valencia plant. Slide 18 shows the walk from Adjusted EBITDA to net income for first half 2024. Our depreciation and amortization have increased slightly year-on-year due to the activation of assets in our new Valencia and Atlanta plants. Non-operating expenses have decreased, as mentioned in the Adjusted EBITDA walk, due to the end of temporary production for the industry segment. I'll now take you through the walk from net income to free cash flow on slide 19. We made a small gain from the sale of our dispenser side in the U.S., and working capital has stayed relatively flat. We were able to deliver a significant increase in our operating cash flow versus CHF 15.3 million in 2023. We continued to invest in CapEx, two-thirds of which was focused on our two plants, Atlanta and Valencia, but at a much reduced level than in the prior years. Ultimately, we delivered a positive CHF 7.6 million free cash flow, compared to a negative CHF 4.9 million in the first half of last year. Slide 20 shows the walk from our adjusted operating net cash flow in the first half of 2023 to first half of 2024. As a reminder, operating net cash flow is a key element of our short-term management incentive scheme, along with organic revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA margin. Our strong operating cash flow performance was the main driver behind the 77% increase in our adjusted ONCF year-on-year. With that, I would invite René to come back and discuss our revised outlook. Thank you, Jenny. ...As you will have seen from our press release, we have revised down our full year guidance. When we set our original guidance, it was based heavily on a second half volume recovery in our industry and dental market segments. What we see currently is that the demand in these end markets remains very soft. I've had the opportunity of being with Medmix more than two years, first as a board member, and since June 1, as CEO. And in the last 45 days as CEO, I've had excellent discussions with our key global customers, and I've met many of our Medmix talented and passionate teams in all segments, geographies, and functions. I'm convinced that we have all the elements of a global leader in high precision delivery devices for the healthcare, consumer, and industrial end markets. The discussions with our customers, with our teams, have confirmed that Medmix has terrific growth platforms, particularly in the healthcare business area, and I remain optimistic, very optimistic about the future, and I'm excited about what we can create and the journey we have ahead of us. We have the right fundamentals in place to shape and drive a new wave of value creation as we accelerate our transformation into a healthcare company. This transformation will be also driven by new product pipeline, including disruptive innovation, positioned to address unmet customer needs. That being said, also incremental innovations and lifecycle supports remained a key focus for us in responding to user feedback and improving our globally recognized and category-leading products. Our first half results and new 2024 guidance match neither our abilities nor our ambitions, and we have need to make some changes. Specifically, we have identified three urgent priorities. We must and will execute flawlessly on our innovation pipeline, with a focus on securing co-development projects with our key customers. Secondly, we aim to create a customer-centric organization and culture that will deepen our long-standing, strong customer relationships. And thirdly, we want to drive operational excellence within our enlarged and upgraded manufacturing network. We are currently updating our strategic initiatives to sharpen our focus in line with Medmix unchanged vision, mission, and core values. Our five market segments reinforce each other by leveraging our technologies and key competencies. Our segments have excellent long-term perspectives and operate in highly attractive markets, which are supported by global trends such as growing middle class and aging population, increased urbanization, self-administered treatments, and sustainability. As such, I am very confident in our future. With that, Jenny and I will be pleased to take your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wants to ask a question may press star and one. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Webcast viewers may submit their question in writing via the relevant field. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question today comes from Patrick Rafaisz from UBS. Your question, please. Thank you, and good morning, everybody. A few questions from me, please. The first would be on drug delivery and the effects of the dual sourcing. Can you add more details on that? How big was the impact? What should we expect for the full year? And can you talk about offsetting factors such as the maybe related licensing income? Thank you. That's the first question. Thank you, Patrick. So, yes, the decrease is really driven by one customer's implementation of a second source, and this is, we have under license to Medmix. About how big and about licensee, we are not allowed to disclose such information because these are customer-specific information. But, I think this trying to continue also in 2025, but we will be still a major source for this product for our customer. What would that mean for your drug delivery outlook into 2025? So you're saying there will be an additional incremental effect from the dual source? Or is it then a clean base from where drug delivery can grow again? I think that's the information we are not yet disclosing. Yeah. We're not making any statements today about 2025, Patrick. Mm-hmm. That's basically the situation. Mm-hmm. Okay, good. Understood. Then, the second question is on dental. There's various information, right? On the one hand, you mentioned the soft wholesale Q1 reports, but you also expect a further normalization in H2. My question is really, how do you think about inventory levels at customers? And how quickly can we, let's say, realign your dental volumes with the end markets? It's difficult to say something about the inventory level of our customers. I can also not really say something about the end markets. Just as you know, I came from one of our biggest customers, and that's something you have to ask them directly. But what we will see is, I think, of course, always in the supply chain, some variation from one quarter to another, but the overall growth trends in dental remains very stable. And despite the softness we see in the end markets, dental is, in the long run, one of the most exciting markets. There's just the reality that every human has 32 teeth, and if you are 44, I think about two-thirds of the people have lost already one tooth, and there's treatment required. The dental market is one of the most stable and continuously growing market we've seen in the entire healthcare segment. Okay, super. And then the last question would be on the EBITDA bridge and the pricing, which was a small negative but looked like mostly flat. Can you talk about the pricing dynamics across the various segments? Is it a consistent picture or are there variations across these various business lines? Please let me transfer this question to Jenny. Hi, Patrick. Mm-hmm. I think there's no change for us. I mean, historically, in our five segments, of course, we have natural pressure between our customers and our suppliers and ourselves. That's normal, but we have not historically had a lot of put and take on pricing. During COVID, as you might remember, we had, for the first time, a succession of price increases we imposed on our customers due to the exceptional increases we saw. But that's stabilized now, and I think we've returned to the normal, where customers are asking for pricing, we're showing why this is not realistic, and it's quite normal. So I think I don't see any looming pressure, particularly in either direction there. I think we'll continue to stay pretty flat. Okay, super. Thanks, Jenny. Mm. Ladies and gentlemen, for any further questions, please press star and one. And from the webcast, please do it by writing. And the next question we have is from Daniel Jelovcan from ZKB. Please go ahead with your question. Jelovcan, your line is open. Maybe you're on mute? Yeah, sorry. Do you hear me? Yes. Yes. Sorry, I was on mute. Good morning, everybody, and René, congrats to the new role, and hopefully we continue to meet like in the last 20 years. Good to have you. Thank you. The same from my side. Thanks. Just on dental, because there you are the top expert. There's a lot of noise, I mean, over the last few years, about all these cannibalization of intraoral cameras for, you know, using less impression materials. I mean, I know it's just one indication in your application devices, but would be nice if you can share some insight about the future here for this segment. Mm-hmm. That's the question. Thanks. Thank you, Daniel. Thanks for this question, because I expected that because, you know, I was driving the digitalization for more than a decade. And it's clear this trend to digital dentistry is ongoing. Now, when you look about the different segments, you indicated rightly that the impact is mainly on the impression materials. And what we see actually on the impression materials, I think midterm, is that this market is flat, and everyone in the industry is expecting that there will be a long-term decline. As we both know, I think in the dental area, these changes are going not overnight. It takes time, and it's a process which is actually ongoing for more than 10 years, and it will continue. But the impression material is just one segment in our portfolio. Actually, we have the majority of our products are in other segments, like cementations, which are not impacted by the this digital dentistry. Actually, they are supported also by digital dentistry because it makes treatment access to more people. And we see, and we also expect in the future, we see very nice growth. And we have currently, in these segments, low single digits—no, high single digits, sorry, high single digits and low double digits growth. And this will continue, and this will also be supported by our future innovations. Overall, I see the total digitalization more an opportunity for differentiation and for innovations in the future. So that's something we see as an opportunity also from Medmix. Okay, thanks. And maybe also a follow-up, last one on dental. I mean, you hear a lot of mixed signals in this industry, especially in the U.S.. Some people say consumer confidence is declining and will have an impact on non-elective treatments in dentistry. Others say savings rate is still high and not as high as at the peak, but some say people save the money. It's you know, you—I guess you understand my direction of the question. Mm-hmm. - and your insight into the channels. I mean, I know you have these big wholesale customers, but without providing details, who it is, of course, your view... I mean, you said you are positive in the next few months, and I guess the visibility is not longer than that for you, but still, what is your view, on that? Thanks. So I think we have to differentiate between different dental treatments. I think you have sectors like the endo, where we are also in with our products, which are not affected really by the overall economic and consumer environment and consumer confidence. Because if you need an endo treatment, you go normally to the dentist. And then you have, as you mentioned correctly, you have some elective treatments. And these elective treatments, they, they are really also driven by consumer evidence. But these are, and that's what you hear also in the industry, these are, let's say, the more expensive elective treatments, like aligner treatments, like implant treatments, and particularly large implant treatments. This, in the U.S., of course, is also driven by consumer confidence, by interest rates, because often these treatments are also financed by, not directly, but by some credits. There you see a higher fluctuation. But if you look in our portfolio, then we are not really in this high investment treatments. Our exposure is much smaller in that respect. Okay, yeah. Thanks so much. Mm-hmm. Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Mr. Rafaisz. Please go ahead. Yes, thanks for taking my additional questions. I just wanted to understand a bit your margin guidance. The gross margin evolution has actually been encouraging, especially in healthcare. You are anticipating a normalization and maybe even sequential improvement on organics into H2. Efficiency improvements are continuing. So just wondering why the updated margin guidance looks so cautious for the second half? Thank you, Patrick. Jenny, would you like to take this question? Sure. You know, we had a lot of discussion and did a lot of scenario analysis on what we were seeing and where it could take us, and it all is about the top line. You're quite right. I'm really pleased with some of the trends we've seen, lower non-operating costs and so forth. But it's all about the volume. And so when we gave the guidance on the top line, the margin guidance is just following that. If we have a higher level of volume performance, we'll be at the top end of our range and vice versa. So we just didn't want to lock ourselves into really silly short-term actions, and wanted to really get back to focusing on developing our strategy, as René said, and be ready to come back to you in February with a really exciting future vision. Because I think we have a lot of momentum since René joined. We're all completely mobilized to his three priorities, and that's what I want to be focusing on now. Okay. Thanks, Jenny. And related to that, just a detail on the COGS, especially the other COGS line. Mm-hmm. Can you talk about the order of magnitude we should assume here for the year? What do you expect? Because it looked like we're tracking a bit ahead of the historical. ... levels, for the other COGS? You mean for the so in general or in the non-operating costs? In the other COGS below the segments- Yeah. -gross profit. Yeah. I think it's looking pretty good. I mean, I don't see a massive step change while the markets remain soft. I think this is still the challenge in that group is under absorption or underutilization in our plants, which has been our challenge, as you know, as well as the other COGS, which is warehousing, molds, global teams and so forth. So I think that'll stay pretty stable for now. I don't see some big changes. So sort of a CHF 50 million run rate makes sense then? That would be guiding. No, because I'm just wondering, because it used to be more like a CHF 40 million plus minus line, right? And then in 2023 it went up to almost CHF 60 for known reasons, and I'm just wondering- Yeah. how fast we can normalize or if there are structural reasons why that line should remain higher than pre-2023. Yeah. You know, in the second half of this year, we have some mobilization in our Atlanta plant, which will keep these additional non-operating costs elevated. So we'll still stay a little higher, and then we'll come back to you on the outlook for 2025 later. Okay. Okay, thanks, Jenny. We have another follow-up question. Mr. Jelovcan, please go ahead. Yeah, thanks. Just on the industry segment, and forgive me, I'm not the expert here, but you mentioned in the press release quite in detail why the year-over-year decline happened, Poland, et cetera. And you also mentioned some end markets who remain soft. Can you maybe describe what kind of end markets are soft? And also the impact of Valencia, forgive me, I don't know the timing of the opening. That was an impact as well, as you were not ready. Is that correct, or was that... Yeah, this kind of- Mm-hmm Status you think? Okay. Maybe I can start and let me start first about the whole industry organic growth, and then I will hand over to Jenny. I think what we have to be aware is that the year-on-year comparison can be a little bit misleading. Last year, first half was unusually high because we have had the possibility to release inventory from Poland, and only the second half of the year was weak due to the continued softness in the end markets. And there, I think we have some mixed feedback from the different industries. As you know, our industry is really varying among automotive or transportation, construction and electronics, and not all of these markets are in the same cycle. Jenny, you'd like to add something to that? Yeah. I think you're right. The beauty, that's a bit of a pun, but the beauty of our industry portfolio is that we participate both in the new and after market areas. So for example, in automotives, if based on interest rates or whatever macroeconomics, new cars are slowing down, then we still participate in aftermarket with car glass for windscreen repair and also aftermarket spraying for rust protection, you name it. So we do cover a lot of segments, so we are able usually to sort of balance out. I mean, aerospace at the moment is really strong. The EV market in transportation, also very strong, and so this sort of counteracts some. But overall, if you look at the sort of purchasing power and the consumer indices, it is still looking, I would say, more soft. We don't participate fully in the DIY market. We're more in the professional space, and this is where it's really suffering. Mm-hmm. We do see some geographical differences, too. Construction is looking better. Let's be cautious, but better in the U.S., but in other areas in Asia, China, it's still completely suppressed. So I think it is really mixed overall, but the markets we're strongest in with our global customers, but I think that's important to note, that we're really following these big global players around the world. This is still a soft end market, so we don't see a shift there. Mm-hmm. In terms of the Poland phenomena, just a quick catch-up there. I mean, as René rightly said, it was first half last year that the materials were released finally from Poland, but this is actually the story from the prior years when the sanctions happened. And so, you know, we can go back inside and try and reconstruct that, but we do still see a big impact on loss of momentum there. Right at the time that the markets were softening, we had many products that we could not fulfill there anymore. We have some dual sourcing within our network, but we had a lot of products that we couldn't deliver, especially on some of the newer products we were developing, like greenLine, our exciting portfolio. We do see the chance for that to recover now, and we're, you know, we're monitoring that closely, but Mm-hmm ... we will continue to see this impact of the loss of momentum while we were unable to deliver. Yeah. And about your question about Valencia, yeah, I think we are very pleased about our Valencia plant, which has been opened last November and now is fully operational, producing our full portfolio of products. Of course, this helps us a lot, that we can now produce the full portfolio of products. But what we are also now really started is, we have launched our operation excellence program, automatization. So we already see improvements, and this comes also with increased volumes. But this will help us also in the future, for our whole endeavor to increase our, or decrease our COGS. Yeah. Okay, great. Thanks a lot for this insight. Very helpful. Thanks. Okay, we've got a question on the webcast from Eugen Perger. Hi, Eugen. And he asks, "Could you please shed some light on regional developments within dental? Mm-hmm. So what we have to say, I think we have no direct regional information on dental, because often our customers are global OEMs. So you can name them, but it's a client from Dentsply. They are global customers, and we do not see then how the whole regional development is on dental. When we go to our other customer segments, which are our distributor partners, then I think we do, in this market, we do not have enough size that we can distinguish between the different segments. What we see there is mainly the U.S. market from our distributor partners. So that's something we cannot say, and I think it's better if you ask that question, then also I think directly in the large distributor calls. They have a much better transparency on this. Okay. I don't see any more questions at the moment. Operator, do you see any more questions? No, there are no further questions. Okay. Well, thanks a lot for participating in today's call. I also hope that we will see us in the near future, also, in person. Let me just conclude by saying that I'm very excited about our prospect going forward, and I look forward to sharing with you our strategic plans and our exciting vision about the future in February next year. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone.