Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the SYNLAB Q2 and H1 2021 Financial Results Call. In our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. If any participant has difficulties hearing the conference, please press the star key followed by zero on your telephone for operator's assistance. Today's call will be hosted by Mathieu Floreani, CEO of SYNLAB, and Sami Badarani, CFO of SYNLAB. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. May I now hand you over to Mathieu Floreani, who will lead you through this conference. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you. Good morning, good afternoon to all, and welcome to our call. We will present today our results for the second quarter of 2021 and for the first half, together with Sami. I will start with a few slides summarizing another very strong quarter. The highlights before starting for this quarter are once again that we were able, on one side, to continue rolling out our "FOR YOU" growth strategy. We made very good progress on each of the four pillars and amongst others, organic growth and M&A. On the other side, simultaneously, we fully leveraged our strengths on COVID-19 testing, I would say continuing to clearly lead our industry. All these achievements are the result of the relentless work of our 23,000 employees, and I can only have immense gratitude and pride for their commitment and their talent. Let's start with the financial highlights on page five. A key point is our financial results were again extremely strong. When we compare with the first half of 2020, we almost doubled our revenue, multiplied our adjusted EBITDA by 3.4x, and our unlevered free cash flow by 48x. Of course, as a consequence, we reduced very significantly our leverage ratio to 1.4x. Interesting is that by many metrics, we are already at end of June, in line or above the performance of the 12 months of 2020. Moving to page six on the operational highlights. Key point here is our "FOR YOU" transformation is progressing steadily. For those who are not yet familiar with our "FOR YOU" strategy, this is a transformation journey we have initiated in 2018 based on four pillars, which aims at leveraging both our operational and medical expertise to accelerate growth. Starting with growth, organic growth, the first pillar of our "FOR YOU" strategy. As you will see with Sami, we have achieved an underlying organic growth of 3.6%. This confirms the impact of our initiatives. We are, for example, opening new blood collection points. We are implementing better practices of sales force effectiveness. We also successfully started the South East London contract. As a reminder on this is a major hospital outsourcing contract, which we won in Q4 2020. Good progress also on our second pillar of operational excellence with SALIX delivering the targeted savings. Our Lean STS roadmap continuing to sink in deeper into the organization, and the major renewal of our core lab equipment, a major plan being on time and plan. M&A, our third pillar, resumed strongly since the beginning of the year with 12 acquisitions completed in five geographies for close to EUR 110 million EV. Last week, we reached an agreement for a significant acquisition in Mexico, but I'll come back to that on the next slide. Finally on this slide, the fourth pillar of our strategy of empowered and engaged employees. There, we accelerated our ESG journey with the onboarding of our new Head of ESG for the group and with the rollout of local initiatives. On to page seven. Summary, we are on track to exceed our EUR 200 million of M&A in 2021. Again, as just mentioned, 12 deals completed, various geographies and agreement signed for a mid-sized acquisition in Mexico. There we are acquiring actually a network of over 100 diagnostic service points located within and around Mexico City and Puebla, which achieved EUR 55 million revenues in 2020. With this strategic acquisition, we expect to close it in Q4 2021. We are building a platform to further expand our position in this key Central American market and further strengthen also our successful operations in Latin America. To be noted also, the continuous strengthening of our leadership position in Italy, with a mid-sized acquisition, in July, Gruppo Tronchetti in Bologna, which is adding EUR 22 million revenue and 17 healthcare centers to our Italian infrastructure. Moving to page eight. Key point, we continue to demonstrate our industry leadership on COVID-19. As we continue to perform millions of PCR tests, we also permanently optimize our production processes and infrastructure. The bottom line is that we are maintaining a good level of flexibility, be it in terms of equipment, inventory, or people, and at the same time lowering our costs. Our commercial leadership, well, this was exemplified by some highlights like renewing the UEFA exclusive contract and performing a flawless EURO 2020. We also innovated with our lollipop sampling method, which gained us numerous contracts with schools. Another example, we renewed a major contract in Finland and continued helping new clients on safe-at-work testing and protocols. We also just recently, to illustrate further, signed successfully a partnership with AXA Partners. I think, again, we demonstrate our customer centricity, our entrepreneurship, and our medical capabilities here. On to page nine. Key point, the recent trends confirm our assumptions that testing will remain critical as vaccines roll out. Starting with the left, this graph pictures our daily PCR volume since September 2020 and illustrates the very high number of tests still performed in Q2 and since then. This is a consequence of various vaccination levels across our portfolio. More recently, of course, the spread of variants. This confirms that the fight against the pandemic is unfortunately not over yet. If we look at countries that are ahead on the vaccination curve, such as the U.K., that's the graph on the right. That confirms that even, if you look at it carefully, even before the Delta variant surge, PCRs were still needed at a high level of four daily tests per 1,000 inhabitants in the case of this country. Still the most realistic scenario is testing declining but remaining substantial in coming semesters. Now I hand over to Sami for the financial part of this H1 2021. Thank you, Mathieu. Good afternoon, everyone on the call. I'm very pleased to walk you through the Q2 and H1 2021 financial performance of the SYNLAB group, and these are the non-audited SYNLAB AG financials. Let's start with the revenue on page 11. Q2 2021 reported revenue stands at EUR 984.8 million, with 96% revenue growth, nearly doubling revenue and similar growth than in Q1. The pro forma revenue, again, includes the additional revenue as if 2020 and 2021 acquisition had been consolidated on the January 1st of each year. The impact of acquisitions remain marginal in Q2, EUR 7.3 million additional contribution, but should increase with the recent deals closure and the upcoming ones in the rest of the year. The FX is overall negative EUR 3.4 million, primarily from Latin America, emerging markets, and the weakening of the Swiss franc. The bulk of the growth, EUR 476 million, comes from the organic growth at 94%. 94% organic growth. Again, for the third quarter in a row, one of the highest organic growths in the industry, if not the highest. Let's go into the detail on page 12 of the Q2 organic growth. Four elements of the build-up of the organic growth. The underlying organic growth, excluding COVID-19 testing and attrition, is strong, 11.7%, above the yearly guidance of 10% for 2021. The underlying growth is split into two to isolate the impact of the South East London contract that has started on April 1st, and to separate it from the rest of the business. The underlying organic growth, excluding the SEL contract, is also strong, 3.6%, and consistent with Q1 achievement at 3.7%, and with the 2020 estimated growth between 3.5%-4%. That makes it six quarter in a row where we are above the 3.5%. This is, as Mathieu mentioned, coming from the continuous delivery of FOR YOU growth initiatives that is estimated at around one point of growth. The underlying growth, excluding SEL, is still also affected by the Swiss business contraction at -3% in Q2 versus -10% in Q1. COVID-19 confinement, or what we call attrition here, effect is significant, with a positive effect from the reversal of Q2 2020 EUR -112 million impact. The good news in Q2 is that we have overall no negative impact from confinement, despite still some nominal negative effect in some countries, but offset by some positive catch-up also in others. This is the power of diversification. A very strong signal also, not having any more any impact from the negative impact from the COVID. The COVID-19 testing, still primarily PCR testing. 7.5 million PCR tests in Q2, above the Q1 volume, which was at 7.1 million, with an average price of EUR 51 per test, compared to the EUR 58 per test in Q1. We still have a slow increase also of antibody testing, and the total COVID-19 testing revenue stands at EUR 419 million in Q2, 43% of the total Q2 2021 revenue. When we exclude the COVID-19 testing, the organic growth of the group is at 44%. This is usually how the normal, I would say, companies communicate in their Q2 organic growth. This is a metric to compare with others. The key takeaway on this page is, again, a huge organic growth across the portfolio from our ability to respond to the COVID-19 testing demand while keeping the focus on developing the underlying business that is steadily growing whatever way we look at it, with, without confinement, with, without SEL. In all way, shape, or form, we are growing above 3.5%. Moving now to the H1 revenue performance on page 13. The H1 revenue stands at EUR 1.9 billion, similar level than the 2019 full year level. We have the same trends than in Q2 that I will not detail again on organic, FX, and M&A. I will pass to articulate again the H1 organic growth driver on page 14. Same four elements to explain the organic growth. The underlying organic growth, excluding SEL, stand at 3.6%. Same EUR contribution, obviously, from SEL contract that started early in Q2, and the COVID-19 confinement or attrition effect. The reversal of prior year EUR 158 million, which is the bulk of last year confinement effect. You may remember that we highlighted a range of EUR 160 million-EUR 185 million at the IPO time. In H1, the nominal EUR 24 million revenue from attrition is coming from Q1. Last, the COVID-19 testing, EUR 850 million revenue in H1 2021, more than the EUR 805 million reported in full year last year. The EUR 1 billion mark will likely be overpassed, I would say in Q3, if not by the end of this month or as we speak. The 14.5 million PCR tests in H1 2021 achieved with an average price of EUR 55 per test on average in H1. June average price is more at EUR 50. 2.2 million non-PCR tests achieved in H1. Excluding the COVID-19 testing, the organic growth in H1 is at 25%. Again, a huge H1 2021 revenue performance on all fronts, better than planned, and well-positioning the group for further growth from organic and acquisitions. Let's move now to the EBITDA on page 15. The H1 2021 reported adjusted EBITDA stands at EUR 662.7 million. The EBITDA organic evolution explains the bulk of the growth for EUR 68 million, and more details on the drivers of the organic performance will come on the next page. The H1 2021 EBITDA margin of the group stands at 34.5%, similar to Q1 and compared to 26% for full year 2020. Another evidence of our financial model. Strong organic growth drives margin improvement. The EBITDA drivers on page 16. We had a nominal negative price, excluding COVID-19 PCR test drop, mostly from negative price in France. We have, at the same time, a 30 basis point gross margin improvement. The personal cost and the other operating expenses are growing at 41% and 54% versus the 96% revenue growth. This is a volume leverage effect. In addition, inflation is contained and is more than offset by the impact of our SALIX program. Again, procurement, savings from core lab project implementation, and productivity initiative and savings from initiatives executed across the network and the countries. It's in line to deliver the yearly EUR 20 million SALIX cost savings. The volume line at EUR 469 million includes, by definition, all the rest, the underlying volume, the acquisition synergies, and the impact of the COVID-19 testing and attrition. Again, H1 2021 performance helps us demonstrate that the key profitability driver in our industry is volume leverage, as our cost structure is mostly fixed on the short term. Any incremental revenue drop to the bottom line with a high flow-through. 50% on volume for H1 2021. More detail on our financial performance on page 17, the P&L, the bridge from EBITDA to net profit and between reported and adjusted financials. On the EBITDA first, EUR 29 million of adjustment. Three items to highlight here. EUR 19.5 million of IPO cost. This is a portion of cost not recharged to shareholders, as the total cost of the IPO has been apportioned between the IPO primary and the secondary proceeds. EUR 6.4 million of net acquisitions related cost, including PMI cost. It already included in Q1 around EUR 5 million of revaluation of the option to buy our minority shareholders in Nigeria that you saw on Mathieu's page. That was completed also in July or early August, completed last week. Minimal EUR 3.1 million of other non-recurring costs. The operating profit lines, the EUR 54 million adjustment between reported and adjusted are related to the customer list depreciation. The adjusted operating profit is at EUR 569 million. It was EUR 504 million for the full year 2020. A strong reduction of H1 net finance cost, mostly from lower borrowings and lower borrowing costs. Taxes are increasing based on increased volume, the effective tax rate at 25% is lower than the normalized 28% from activation of tax loss carried forward. The net profit reflects also the positive impact from the residual sale of an A&S business in January 2021, where we concluded the closing of the last entity in Germany with SGS. The H1 2021 adjusted net profit stands at around EUR 372 million. This is for the P&L. Moving on page 18 on cash flow, with a record cash flow generation. The H1 2021 operating cash flow of the group is at around EUR 523 million, EUR 430 million growth versus last year from EBITDA growth with a nominal contribution from working capital. The receivable balance is increasing again in Q2 from revenue growth, the DSO has reduced from its peak at 77 days in December 2020 and is now at 61 days. It's even better now than in June 2019 before COVID, where it was at 63 days. Nothing significant to highlight on the other items of the cash flow. CapEx is increasing year-over-year with EUR 5.1 million of COVID-19 related CapEx in H1. Total to date, I mean, since the beginning of the pandemic, we've spent around EUR 28 million of CapEx. There will still be some, I would say, CapEx catch-up effect to come in H2. Nothing major. Rounded EUR 428 million of unlevered free cash flow, 65% conversion of EBITDA. The H1 2021 unlevered free cash flow performance is already above the full year 2021 IPO guidance of EUR 300 million-350 million, and that's one of the key reasons why we have increased also our guidance to above EUR 500 million for the year. Page 19, strong balance sheet. The standard balance sheet view expressed with the capital employed and capital resources state. The change versus December is mainly driven by the additions from the 10 acquisitions completed in H1 2021, and the impact of the COVID-19 testing on net working capital, and on the income tax liability. The net debt of the group includes EUR 529 million of lease, and is now at EUR 1,619,000,000, down EUR 616 million versus December 2020, and including EUR 390 million net IPO primary proceeds. The group has a very strong balance sheet. Leverage on page 20. The adjusted net debt for leverage calculation is at EUR 1.6 billion rounded number at the end of June 2021. The last 12 months pro forma adjusted EBITDA stands at EUR 1.2 billion, rounded also at the end of H1, above the EUR 1 billion mark. The leverage ratio stands at 1.4, down 1.9 point compared to year-end 2020. Page 21, active debt management in H1. We have managed a lot of the debt. It was in Q2, and I think I already mentioned this in our Q1 reported number. At the end of June, we had EUR 1,740,000,000 gross borrowing, with an expected cost of borrowings of around 2% in H2 2021. The group had also EUR 659 million cash in hand, and the RCF was undrawn. The group had performed an yearly repayment of EUR 75 million last week of its term loan, and despite the fact that no debt repayment is due before 2026 because of the strength of the cash on our balance sheet. This concludes the financial section, and we leave it open for further debt repayment in the future. This conclude the financial section of the presentation, and I will now hand it back to Mathieu for the business review. Thank you, Sami. Yeah, indeed. Let's cover now our main geographies for the first half. The summary is that each of the four segments fired again on all cylinders with amazing, I would say, levels of performance. Starting page 23 with France. Revenues continued on the Q1 trend at roughly 80% growth in Q2, with an AOP multiplied by more than 2x. There, the COVID-19 volumes remained very strong with a price decrease of the PCR test. That was as expected. We won significant contracts with schools or corporations, like for example, at Best Western. The underlying organic growth was a bit slower than in Q1, and that with the effect of volumes growing 1.4% and of the contracted price adjustment. This is as per our three years agreement with the French health authorities, reducing prices by 2.8%. It is also to be noted; we excluded from our organic growth some routine volumes in April as we considered them a rebound related to COVID-19. For the rest, we continue rolling out our FOR YOU activities around our blood collection point network. Page 24, Germany. We maintained in Q2 55% of revenue growth in line with Q1 and multiplied our AOP by 3.5x. COVID-19 volumes are also strong in line with Q1, and also thanks to significant contracts with schools and to also our sequencing leadership position in Germany. The underlying growth relied on strong volumes. We also had a catch-up effect on Q1 and stable prices. FOR YOU initiatives there focus on specialty tests, prescribers, and hospitals, of course. Page 25, our South region. Again, similar picture on the AOP, multiplying by 3.5x. Revenue growing 71% in Q2, which is slightly below that of Q1. COVID-19, well, that was dynamic across all geographies, with contract renewals like Amazon or plenty of new ones with schools. The underlying organic growth remained strong, about 5%. That was driven by Italy, Spain, and LATAM mostly. Switzerland still had negative effects from the rollover of the 2020 lost customers and the price reduction of earlier this year. Since the beginning of the year, we closed four add-ons in Italy, one in Colombia, two in Spain, for EUR 6 million revenue. In addition to the mid-size acquisition, I already mentioned in Italy of EUR 22 million revenues in 2020. Page 26, our North and East region. Well, this is again the good extreme picture of our commercial and operational capabilities in Q2. With an AOP multiplied by 13.5 on the back of a revenue multiplied by three. This was driven by our large COVID-19 contracts and also a strong underlying organic growth. Of course, the start of the SEL contract pushed this growth to the 45% level, but the rest of the activity still also accelerated its organic growth to 8.8%. FOR YOU is in sales delivering consistently in all markets with maybe a special mention for Austria, Belgium, and the U.K. Now to conclude on page 28 for our outlook. As I said many times already, quarter after quarter, providing a view again for 2021 remains obviously challenging with the situation that is still fast evolving. We nevertheless revised our guidance upwards on July 8th with EUR 3.2 billion-EUR 3.3 billion on revenue, more than EUR 925 million EBITDA, and more than EUR 500 million on free cash flow. Our guidance was based on our anticipation for the second half of the year of a reduction of the COVID-19 testing activity from its first half peak using conservative assumptions. However, should recent trends continue driven by the impact of variants, well, we will be likely to exceed the revenue and total growth target ranges. We are monitoring this very closely, of course, and we'll proactively communicate if we see material deviations from our assumptions. We will continue to keep our strong focus on executing our organic growth initiatives and our M&A activity. In conclusion, well, I will never express enough my gratitude and admiration for the whole SYNLAB team. We are now one and a 1/2 years in the pandemic. The resilience and entrepreneurship of our teams is just unbelievable. We are consistently able to continue our transformation and at the same time deliver an outstanding performance against this pandemic. Makes me very confident in our capabilities to continue delivering our purpose and our guidance. This concludes our presentation. Thank you. We will now open the floor for questions, of course. We will now begin our question-and-answer session, if you have a question for our speakers, please dial zero, one on your telephone keypad. Now turn to the queue. Once your name has been announced you can ask a question. If you find your question is answered before your turn to speak you can dial zero, two to cancel your question. If you're using speaker equipment today, please left a hand first before making your selection. A moment please for the first question. Our first question comes from Patrick Wood at Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Thank you very much. Two questions, please. The first one on the guide, I get that there's a big greater than sign in front of the EUR 925 million. At that EUR 925 million rate, it would imply a second half that is down year-on-year very, very considerably. It seems like the COVID testing, while it's come back a little bit through the Q2, still seems to a point pretty robust. I guess, is there something that you're seeing there that might indicate a softer or more very rapid deceleration on the COVID testing side? Should we really focus on that greater than sign in front of the EUR 925? That's the first question. Second question. I'm just curious on the base business, obviously good growth on that side. Just curious what kind of mix you're seeing on the test side between specialty and routine. Is there a weighting? Is it heavily towards endocrine or infectious diseases? I'm just curious as to the type of demand you're seeing in that base business recovery. Thanks. Sami, do you want to take the first one? Yeah. I think, Patrick, thank you for the questions. You get it right. The sign above 925 is very, very important beyond the number 925. That means that we'll certainly end up the year above 925, and that's the answer. Calculating to go at the 925 level makes it H2 a little bit skewed and unrealistic in terms of level of growth and profitability. I would not over-focus on this number and look more on the sign above. To your point, there is nothing that would point to a softer deceleration as you were qualifying it at this point. Maybe I can take the second question, mix specialty versus routine. Well, we are by far the leaders of specialty testing in Europe and of course also of routine. We are also very strong in, we're number one in anatomic pathology and in genetics in Europe, as you know. I would say we're quite a good beacon to know what's going on and there is no massive shift at this point. What we have seen, of course, is anatomic pathology and genetics had slowed down during the first confinement mainly. Had come back between the two confinements, if I qualify the first one in Q1, Q2 of last year and the second one starting October of last year. To a much lower negative impact. I would say in Q1, Q2, there was nothing really significant that would point towards a big distortion between specialty and routine. Of course, the hospital business is now facing quite a lot of backlogs. This will push, I think, genetic testing in the future and also anatomic pathology related to oncology. Probably not to a level that will show any major, say, deviation in our numbers. Thanks so much. Appreciate the detail. Thank you. Our next question comes from Falko Friedrichs at Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Thanks very much. Good afternoon, everyone. Three questions, please. The first one is, coming back to your COVID revenue guidance that you provided for next year. Can you let us know your confidence level in that guidance at this point in time, and how good is your visibility now approaching the end of this year? How much of it do you see in orders, et cetera? That would be interesting. Secondly, on M&A, do you notice that multiples are getting a little more expensive currently? If yes, is that something that you believe could be a structurally higher level going forward? Thirdly, we've noticed that COVID-19 PCR testing is increasingly moving to larger centralized labs. Is it the case that you keep winning a lot of market share in PCR testing here? Is that potentially one of the reasons why your PCR tests actually went up from Q2 to Q1? That's the third question. Okay. I will leave the guidance for 2022 COVID-19 to Sami and maybe complete, and I can take two and three. Okay. Do you want me to start? Okay. For the guidance 2022, we have purposely not commented on it in our guidance in H1 here as you have seen, and it's on purpose. Things are developing very quickly, so it's very early and premature for us to comment too much on 2022. As per the IPO guidance, we have communicated that will be around EUR 500 million. We communicated 80% of full year 2020 number, which is around EUR 500 million for 2022. I just mentioned earlier that we'll be delivering more than EUR 1 billion, and I think it should be as we speak now or by the end of August. That's where we stand. We will certainly update you in the coming months when things would have evolved, and it will continue to evolve, and so we need to be very reactive. That's for the guidance 2022. At the end of the day, with what we will achieve in 2021, it's much higher than whatever we had in our plan, in the business plan for the IPO in 2021. One way we can always look at it is combining 2021 and 2022, for those who are skeptical on the EUR 500 million for 2022. Probably the sum of the two will be higher than what we had in our plan. I know that I have not answered specifically on 2022, but this is too early again, and we will confirm this later in the year. Now on your question on M&A multiples. Well, we are in 36 markets, and so what you see on one or the other asset, where maybe there is a bit of inflation, is not the reality of what we see everywhere. I think it also shows you how the industry looks at, say, the future of COVID testing revenues, right. That is probably also something that is interesting. But we don't think there is anything structural in some of these multiples because that's not also what we see in every market, right. It's, I would say, isolated to a few markets and probably isolated to a few more larger targets. Don't think it's structural. Of course, the revenues, the cash flow from COVID maybe incentivizes some people to pay a bit higher prices. All of that meaning that I don't think there is anything structural that will be a problem for us. Now on your third question, COVID-19 moving to larger centralized labs. Well, we have been very early on this movement setting up the largest labs in Europe to do this, and this definitely has paid off. I don't think what is at play is not what you have as an impression. Meaning it's not because we have big central labs or large labs that we would win a market share because it's also a business of service. We have combined in our network some of these large labs together with plenty of smaller PCR labs that allow you to give you a turnaround time that is between six and 12 hours, and that's also critically important. I would rather say our Q2 performance is on one side related to some of these large contracts and commercial dynamism on B2B contracts also with corporations. It's also because testing has remained very high in most of the countries in which we are. Back to the first point, one point that you can look at, which I think is quite interesting, is the number of tests performed per 1,000 inhabitants in various countries. Statistics are available. That shows you that Q2 was still at numbers that were very high in countries that were with high vaccination rates or not high vaccination rates, didn't really make a difference. If you look at our guidance in 2022 with this angle that can give you maybe some pointers [crosstalk]-- Perfect. Thank you. --on how conservative or not it is. Okay. Thank you. Our next question comes from Veronika Dubajova at Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Hi, guys. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I have three, please. They're going to be a little bit all over the place. I hope that's okay. The first one is kind of a bigger picture M&A question. Obviously, you've had some success with larger deals in the last couple of months. Would love to see what else is in the pipeline as you look through the remainder of the year. Is it more bolt-on? Is it more maybe some of these midsize acquisitions that you have that might create some more opportunities for us to see further accretion from M&A as we move into the second half in 2022? That's my question one. My question number two, a little bit pedantic, and I apologize for that. Looking at the French underlying growth, obviously clearly turning negative in the second quarter, given the pricing changes. Can you just remind us, is this an expectation that we should have for the remainder of the year and as you annualize that pricing cut into Q1 2022, or do you see some opportunities for the French underlying growth to improve in the second half and into 2022? My third question is just if you have seen any further pricing reimbursement revisions to COVID-19 testing, and related to that, any thoughts on that French change that was announced by President Macron of certain tests no longer being reimbursed. Thank y ou, guys. Thank you, Veronika. Sami, maybe I take quickly one and you can complete. I'll leave you two and three maybe. Well, on M&A, we have always a very balanced pipeline. We cannot look at it, as you know, it's difficult to be a stop-and-go or whatever. It's really a continuum. What we can expect is a continuous, say, mix of bolt-ons and mid-size. We are always thriving on bolt-ons, as you know. Mid-size depend also on what comes to market. That's always a bit bigger elements, statistically, it really depends on what comes. We are very confident on our M&A pipeline for the remainder of this year and for next year also. On point two, I'm leaving it to Sami, and I complete it. Yeah. Point two, performance of France has not to be overread here. There is always timing points on a quarterly basis for countries like that. When we look at their forecast for the years that they have submitted to us yearly, September, we have a very nice underlying growth excluding C-19 in France for the year, which is in line with the midterm guidance that we have provided. 1%-2%, which we're confident in this. There is no issue here. [crosstalk] Yeah. We were maybe a bit conservative on the April treatment of what we consider the bounce back. Yeah. It's also an element because the volumes in France are never below 3%-4%. On the prices on PCR tests overall, there has been announcement in France with prices now being at EUR 27 per test on the pure test. When you add the service attached to it, you get a revenue contribution of around EUR 45, which is above our pricing assumptions overall for the business. We have no issue on a pricing point here. The recent announcement on the non-reimbursement of the test is only for the non-prescribed tests. Everything which is prescribed by doctors will still remain reimbursed, obviously, and at those level. For us, we'll have to see the impact on the volume overall, but it shouldn't change drastically the picture. The other countries, we have also a price drop in Germany that has been announced, that we have communicated, the prices now in Germany are also in the same range, EUR 30-EUR 40. These are the two key announcement. There is continuous price evolution in the PCR environment, but it's in line with our underlying assumptions. Today, if you recall, we have made an assumption of EUR 45 per test for the full year and EUR 35, EUR 37 for next year. We are still above those numbers with all the announcements made so far. Excellent. Can I just follow up on the French non-prescribed test? Do you have any sense, if you look at your volumes in the first half of this year, what proportion of the testing that you've done might have been non-prescribed, even kind of a rough ballpark? No, I don't have the numbers, but I don't think it will mean anything because obviously you didn't need the prescriptions to do a test, so there is no need to go to the doctor to get a prescription. Now that it will be required, there will be more prescription tests, obviously. Yeah. We don't have the exact impact on the overall volume, that's for sure. We'll see it in a couple of months. Okay. Excellent. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it. Our next question comes from Greg MacDonald at JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I just have one remaining. I understand that yesterday, the German state announced plans to end free COVID testing from the October 11th. How much of your COVID testing is in Germany, and what impact do you expect this change in policy to have? Does it impact your expectations for COVID testing in 2022 and beyond? Thanks. Sami, do you want to take it or you want me to take it? You can. On the COVID, the specific questions on the portion of Germany, I'm looking at it that I have here. It's about 20%-25% [crosstalk] depending on the week's long-term trend of our total testing, and so a bit less because the prices are a bit lower than on average. Will it change something? We can expect that in many countries to happen, but then it's exactly what Sami was mentioning. People who are sick, who have symptoms that are alike to COVID will go to the doctors and check. We have also now very good visibility on the reinfection rate of people vaccinated twice and so on and so forth. I think there will be no certainty from at least the medical community, but I think even more so from the general public as to when they have whatever symptoms. I think what will happen is that they will go to the doctor and then we will run a so-called multiplex test to check for several viruses. Again, we always planned on having reduced a number over time of COVID testing. Will that majorly change the assumptions this year? I don't think so, and probably not next year either. It's a bit early as this thing changes all the time, but that would be my answer. Excellent. Thank you. Our next question comes from Ms. Ozener at HSBC. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Hi. Thanks for the presentation and taking my questions. My question relates to the non-PCR COVID tests. You've mentioned during the presentation that there was a pickup in antibody testing as well as sequence testing. My back of the envelope calculation shows me that non-PCR tests should be high single digits portion of total COVID revenues. Are antibody tests revenues higher, sequencing higher? What are your expectations for the remainder of the year, considering that variants are still high on the agenda? Sami, do you want to take the proportion? Maybe just to kick it off. We have seen antibodies cranking up regularly, but not spectacularly, I would say. What I think has happened now on all the, say significant in terms of statistical significance, studies coming out or information evidence coming out with reinfection rates from vaccinated people. I think people will probably want either governments before giving a third jab will want to check, or people just themselves will not be that feeling safe after six or nine months of their second injection. Probably this will go up. To which magnitude, very difficult to predict. Sequencing, I think, will continue probably more or less in the level as it is now, because this is needed for surveillance of mutations. This goes slightly up when a new variant comes around, but should not be, I would say, spectacularly different. That would be my view. Sami can probably provide more numbers to what I just said. Yeah. Out of the EUR 850 million PCR activity testing we had this year, very rounded number, around EUR 800 is PCR and the rest is non-PCR, around EUR 15 million. Now we're seeing something around EUR 14 million, EUR 15 million per month of non-PCR when it was in the around EUR 5 million beginning of the year. Okay. Thanks a lot. Second of all, just if you can mention, give some more info about the travel test announced, the deal with IATA. How do you expect that to play out? That will be my final question. Thanks. Well, I can take that. With IATA, this has been something in the works where we have worked in each of our countries to make it as simple as possible for travelers to move around. This is not new. I think what we expect with IATA is that it puts it together for people traveling from one country to the next one where they're not maybe so sure that we are present. It makes it even easier for them to find us. It will probably, I would say, more provide value to people leveraging on our highest internationalization level in Europe of any other lab. It will not, I think, change our numbers dramatically. It will help but not change dramatically. I think it's more a benefit to the travelers. That's clear. Thanks a lot. Our next question comes from Hugo Solvet at Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. I have two. First on the SEL contract. Maybe if you can share with us the COVID and non-COVID revenue split. I guess I think you mentioned 7 million tests in Q2. What impact COVID might have had on the profitability ramp-up of this contract. Second, on the visibility on revenue recognition, you are from the COVID safe-at-work contract, which you are close to 11,000 now. Just curious how they work. Is that mandatory testing, probably for some of them? If it is or not a big moving part in the 2022 COVID revenue guidance of EUR 500 million. Thank you. Thank you, Hugo. Maybe I leave both to Sami. Yeah. I was looking at the PCR test for SEL. I don't have the exact number here. Yes, the number of PCR tests for SEL obviously is reported in the EUR 850 million and excluded for the 41. I prefer not to say a wrong number, but it is around EUR 3 million-EUR 6 million. If somebody on the call can confirm it. I think it's around 1,000 per day, more or less. Yeah. That was for SEL. The second question again? It's on the visibility on revenue recognition you have from the safe-at-work contracts. Sure. How they work and is it or not a big moving part for your 2022 COVID revenue guidance. Thank you. It depends. It varies a lot because in this safe-at-work contract, we have a variety of contracts, so there is no unique pattern here. I can give you the UEFA contract has been a significant activity now in July. It will last for a number of. It was strong because of the event. It's very driven contract by contract and by activity. A big portion of the, on number of contract, not just size, is occupational health. There will be some continuing activity in the future. Difficult to quantify on an overall basis. It's definitely an element of activity for the future on an ongoing basis, whether it is only on the COVID or on the remaining activity with this whole continuous development of the occupational health. As this pandemic shows also new streams all the time, right? We have pushed to help schools with these sampling methods of lollipop and so on. This has been huge activity for us, and it didn't exist six months ago, right? safe-at-work to answer also your question on the. We track the revenue recognition. Let's say what the origin of this is less mandatory than companies having understood that vaccinated or not vaccinated, you still have a risk of carrying the virus and spreading it. The cost, of course, in terms of closing down your factory or your elements supersedes by quite a lot the cost of regularly testing. I think that's the driver of this activity. Thank you. More caution and say employer branding, right? Because I think employees appreciate very much when the employer takes good care of their health. Is your question answered, sir? Sure. Thanks. The next question comes from [Miles Teckwich] at Marathon Asset Management. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thanks for the presentation. Three questions. First one, I was wondering, as the average prices for COVID testing are decreasing, how has the profitability changed, versus Q1 or at least the last two months? Has that stayed the same or has there been an increase in profitability? That's the first question. Second question I was wondering is, in the areas where the vaccination penetration is high, how has the testing volume, has it changed? Is it correlated and is it reduced or has the, nonetheless, despite the higher vaccination penetration, has still the COVID testing perhaps stayed the same? Lastly, I was wondering, given your free cash flow and deleveraging that you have been achieving recently, are you targeting, let's say, almost like an investment-grade rating? Is that kind of the trajectory? I understand obviously the ownership is not typical for an IG type or investment-grade type company. I was wondering if that may be on the horizon in the medium to longer term. Thank you. Maybe I leave one and three to Sami and take two. Yeah. The average pricing has reduced, as you mentioned. The impact on profitability, we don't report specifically the profitability of COVID because we know how difficult it is to allocate the fixed cost with the size of this business line now. It's a little bit maybe misleading. When we compare how it has evolved over time, it has improved. It has improved because at the end of the day, we have done a huge effort in, Mathieu mentioned, we talked earlier about this manufacturing plant on COVID, the large lab. The point per test for those labs is much lower than the smaller equipment. This is one element, and there has been a significant price reduction on the equipment and the reagents. We've been able to manage ahead of the curve of the price for the profitability. Going forward, that's true that the continuous price decrease that we will see on the COVID will put pressure on the COVID margin contribution, but it will still remain accretive to the margin of the group. That's one way to look at it, which comfort us in the fact that there is no issue here. Any COVID-19 test will help the margin of the group. Yeah, take the short one, and I finish with the second. Okay. For the free cash flow deleveraging, yeah, that's true that we have higher cash than what we expected. Obviously, our strategy is growth, is M&A. We mentioned already that we'll be spending more than EUR 200 million this year. Our IPO guidance on the financial profile is that we want to maintain the leverage ratio at below 3x. At 1.4x, it's much lower. There is no change in our guidance here. This is a quarterly data point, but we will obviously continuously reassess the use of cash. We will focus a lot on acquisition. That's probably something we can say. Now on your second question around vaccination. The short summary is there is no real correlation. I can give you examples of, let's say, the two most vaccinated countries in Europe, the U.K. and Israel. Israel has hovered from March to May, around four tests per thousand people. Decreased to between, let's say, two and three, and is now at six. End of June, we don't have the latest data. If you look at Germany, has been around two tests per thousand people per day, with that similar time, 60% vaccination rate. France is more at four. The U.K. was at four and increased to close to 5.5. Italy was at five, decreased to three in between, let's say, March and end of June, with vaccination rates picking up from, let's say, on a similar period from 20% to 60% first injection. That tells you that it's more related to what you need to keep the pandemic under control, what health authorities need, and what people also, to a degree, need, than the vaccination rate per se. I don't know if that answers your question? Yep. Very clear. Thank you. Our next question comes from Nicolas Tabor at Stifel. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking my question. The first one would be just a follow-up on the M&A. You said you would be higher than the original target this year. Can you give us a broad range? Could it be EUR 400 million spending or EUR 300 million? Can we have just an idea of the range you overall target? Obviously, depends on what comes up in the second half. What does that mean for the next year? Can we already extrapolate higher spending over the next years, or for now, we should stick to your guidance? Secondly, on the free cash flow. There again, following up on the EBITDA question, it seems that your guidance seems quite conservative considering the very strong results in H1. Is there any headwind we have to take into account? Should we be factoring below 50% cash conversion in H2 because of, let's say, net working capital or CapEx investment? Is there something to keep in mind, or should it be at least 50% in H2 as well, like it was 65% in H1? Then maybe a final question would be, can you give us a broad idea of the tax rate you should target for the second half and the financial results as they were moving forward in Q2 this year? Thank you very much. Thanks, Nicolas. That's a strike for Sami. Yeah. Tax rate. Yeah. The M&A spent, we don't give guidance on the M&A spend for so specific in H2 year. We gave above EUR 200 million. The timing of M&A is we don't want to rush an M&A closure. We better do it when it happens. The fruit is ready to be picked versus trying to get it not ready. We know already that we'll be above the EUR 200 million, but I would not give a more precise guidance there. We have a good pipeline of deals. They will be executed on their own pace. No, the impact that we have this year in terms of M&A would not impact next year. Next year, we will continue driving a minimum of EUR 200 million EV for next year, if not m ore. With the strength of our cash flow, it will all depend on the ability to close the deals timely. That's all. We have, again, if you recall, we have a huge market to consolidate here. Our playground was, if I recall the IPO page, EUR 17 billion. It's not that we are probably in some countries, it's hot and competing with others, but there is a lot of space to continue growing on M&A and with accretive M&A for the group. This is for the M&A. There was a question on tax. The tax rate, per IFRS, the way we calculate tax at the end of H1 is the tax rate is a yearly tax that we apply for H1. That means that there should be no significant change in the tax rate for the full year. The third question was around. Free cash flow conversion. Yeah. Is it conservative? The free cash flow conversion, we will maintain a 45%-50% free cash flow as per our guidance overall. H1 was very strong. For the H2, you should assume from a modeling perspective, the midterm guidance of 45%-50%. Thank you very much. Again, if you compute, you will tell us that the H2 is low, and so the guidance of EUR 500 million could be higher. Again, like for the EBITDA, you have a sign above in front of the EUR 500 so that there is no confusion. Very clear. Thank you very much. I think we have a last question in the line [crosstalk] This concludes our Q&A session. I will hand back to Mathieu Floreani for the conclusion. All right. Thank you very much for your attendance in the middle of August and for your many questions. We will reconvene for Q3, the Q3 result numbers, and the same session, the November 10th. Thanks very much and have a good rest of your day and week. Bye-bye. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This conference has been concluded. You may disconnect.