Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the SYNLAB Q4 full year 2021 financial results call. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. If any participant has difficulties hearing the conference, please press the star key followed by the zero on your telephone for operator 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 over to Mathieu Floreani, who will lead you through this conference. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you and good morning, good afternoon to all, and welcome to our call. We'll present today our 2021 results together with Sami, as usual. Before we start talking about these results, I would like to say a few words about the ongoing war in Ukraine. Of course, this tragic situation there breaks our hearts and SYNLAB is supporting in all ways we can. Even before the invasion, our management teams have worked tirelessly to ensure immediate support for all Ukrainian SYNLAB employees and their families in case of a potential war. This included options for safe shelter and continued employment across our network, which we have done. We have no exposure to Russia, but do have a small activity in Belarus. Both countries combined are less than 0.5% of our revenues. Our current efforts also include help for refugees in neighboring countries like Hungary or Poland, and a donation by the group to UNHCR, which will be increased by matching individual donations of our employees. We continue, of course, to look for the best and most suitable way to support all of our colleagues, their families and of course, as well, the Ukrainian people in this terrible situation. Now, as we start looking at last year's results, I would like to summarize in numbers what it means to be the European leader in medical diagnostic services. 600 million tests performed in 2021. This is more than 1.6 million tests per day performed in our 500 labs, which are spanning across our 36-country network. Some of these tests were SARS-CoV-2 PCRs, and again, a leading position in Europe, with now more than 41 million tests, such tests, PCRs, done since the start of the pandemic. A PCR test is, of course, only one out of a total portfolio of more than 5,000 tests. Patients are using our services, usually for routine testing, but not only. They are also using us extensively for specialty testing. Specialty, which is typically molecular genetics or anatomical pathology, is today more than 20% of our base business, which is a EUR 500 million revenue activity for us roughly. Now let's dive onto the next page into our actual results presentation starting with the financial highlights, page six. When we compare with 2020, our revenue is up by 44%. Our adjusted EBITDA has multiplied by 1.8x, our unlevered free cash flow by 2.7x, and our leverage ratio is at 1.35x, which is a record low level at year-end 2021. This year was a record year on all key metrics, and a year after our IPO, I'm very happy to report that we have reached or exceeded all of our IPO targets. Moving to page seven and our traditional operational quadrant. This is our 4U transformation, and it shows very good progress. If I start on the top left with organic growth. That's the first pillar of our strategy. Of course, we had challenges created by many COVID different waves. Despite that, we were able to deliver 9.6% underlying organic growth this year. That is thanks to our initiatives. We open new BCPs, which is around 40 each quarter. We launched new solutions to better connect with prescribing doctors and also reinforced our overall leadership in specialty testing. Generally speaking, we estimate that initiatives bring one percentage point of extra growth to the secular growth of our market. This year, we also further enjoyed the ramp-up of the SEL contract, one of the largest ever, if not the largest ever hospital outsourcing contracts in Europe. The second pillar, operational excellence, also very good progress. SALIX delivering the expected EUR 20 million of savings. Our lean, which we call STS, roadmap is continuing to sink in deeper into the organization. We also in this whole pandemic situation were at the same time able to renew our core lab equipment, which is now 85% completed and puts us as the most modern lab across Europe. The third pillar, value creation through capital deployment, and we do that through M&A and CapEx. On M&A, we had a very strong activity last year with 18 acquisitions completed in six countries, and we spent around EUR 250 million enterprise value. These acquisitions all together represent EUR 143 million in revenue, which is 5.4% growth in 2021. In parallel, we also accelerated CapEx deployment with +EUR 50 million invested in our operations compared to what we had last year. This includes investments for future growth like BCPs or digitization tools for prescribers, as an example. Finally, on the fourth pillar of empowered and engaged employees, there are various initiatives listed here which ultimately all aim at making SYNLAB a better place to work. One that I take particularly seriously is our SYNLAB Dialogue, which is a group-wide survey, and we use that to measure every year employee engagement. We received the results for 2021 edition a week ago, and participation was high. Our engagement score is stable year-on-year, which is, despite the challenges created by an all-time high COVID-19 activity during the Christmas break. Maybe I should say for a lot of our employees, unfortunately, a lack of Christmas break, and the survey process. That's an easy transition to page eight, the usual page on COVID testing volumes. That illustrates the continuous efforts that have been deployed by our teams throughout the year that you see very well what I just mentioned was peaking in the very last weeks of 2021 and first months of 2022. A key highlight is that we would not have been able to cope with this huge surge in demand, you see the peak, without well-trained and numerous staff who we kept with us, also when the volumes were lower. This was a managerial decision, medically driven also, based on the conviction that we are dealing with a virus peaking and receding regularly, which we have not changed our mind about, and we'll discuss that later. That gives you indeed an indication of how we will go about it going forward. We look at the curves. We try to anticipate now based on two years experience and our virologist's opinion and always balance say our operational approach and with what our medical community is telling us. The outcome is EUR 1.6 billion revenue over 12 months, with December ending being our strongest month in 2021. This extra revenue and cash that we earned must be redeployed, and that's illustrated on the next two pages about our capital deployment. We start with organic deployment on slide nine with an accelerated CapEx spend in 2021. You see the number +EUR 60 million compared to 2020. We invested in projects such as network expansion, equipment renewal, and also IT digitalization. All of this will help deliver better service to a growing number, of course, of prescribers and locations. Another field where we are accelerating capital deployment is M&A, and that's on slide 10. We have a selection of recent acquisitions. Basically, just to, as a reminder, our acquisitions always pursue three strategies. They are either a consolidation of existing positions or an access to new markets or an investment in innovation, or specialties. 2021 was marked by two mid-sized acquisitions, which you see here, Gruppo Tronchet, which reinforced our leadership position in Italy, number-one position. LMP in Mexico, which is a strong platform, LMP, helping us to further expand in a very attractive market. As we start 2022, we already finalized 5 acquisitions. Two of them enhance our specialty testing services, and one of those is Sistemas Genómicos, which is particularly interesting, given its strong track record in genetics and bioinformatics. Just for the record, bioinformatics is the software-supported analysis of biological data in databases. These tools, of course, we will now expand and leverage in our entire network and genetics operations. The next page 11, is about our ESG roadmap. In 2021, we laid out the foundation for our ESG journey. We had put in place a proper governance, launched new programs, releasing our first ESG report. Now in 2022, we'll do more on all fronts, but as indicated last year, we always have a specific emphasis on the S part. For our people's business, we have 30,000 SYNLAB employees at year-end. Having this positive social impact is a number one priority. Our SYNLAB Foundation, which we officially launched a few weeks ago, will also play an active role in this respect of S. Finally, to conclude, this section on page 12, let me just summarize our key achievements for our first year as a listed company. Strong organic growth, M&A acceleration, and stronger than expected contribution of COVID-19 testing. I think this shows very clearly our strong execution and transformational capabilities, and that, again, puts us in a very good position for all our future developments. I'll hand over to Sami for the financial section of today's presentation. Thank you, Mathieu. Good afternoon, everyone. Good morning for those in Americas. I'm very pleased to walk you through the full year 2021 financial performance of the SYNLAB group. These are fully audited SYNLAB AG consolidated financials. Let's start with the revenue on page 14. The full year 2021 reported revenue stands at EUR 3,765 million, 44% revenue growth. EUR 3,860 million revenue on a pro forma basis, adding again the additional revenue as if 2021 acquisition had been consolidated on 1 January 2021. EUR 143 million annualized revenue from the 18 acquisitions completed in 2021, 5.4% revenue growth. We had nominal FX impact in 2021, and the rest of the growth is organic, EUR 1,094 million growth. 42% of organic growth with strong execution and contribution from all levels. COVID-19 obviously, but also SEL contract and FOR YOU growth initiatives. Going into more details on page 15. Again, 42% organic growth for the year. Slowdown of the growth in Q3 and Q4 with COVID testing ramp up in H2 2020, but still positive growth at 3% in Q4 overall, despite the negative growth from COVID-19. The underlying organic growth, excluding COVID-19 impact, is strong, 11.1% on the top right of the page here in Q4 and 9.6% for the year. Excluding COVID-19 and the South East London contract, the organic growth is at 3.3% for the year, with a slightly lower Q4 at 2.8%. I will come back to those figures in more details in the upcoming slides. Now, next page, detailing the Q4 organic growth on page 16. COVID-19 testing, still primary PCR testing. 8.9 million PCR tests in Q4, highest quarterly volume, with an average price around EUR 43 per test, compared to EUR 44 per test in Q3 2021. Slight decrease, but marginal. EUR 61 per test in Q4 2020. 2.1 million non-PCR tests, mostly antibody testing, with a 60% increase versus Q3 2021. The total COVID-19 testing revenue stands at EUR 408 million in Q4, versus EUR 312 million in Q3, an increase of 30%, but it's down compared to prior year from lower PCR prices. Now, excluding the COVID-19 testing, the organic growth in Q4 is at 5%. Q4 has been impacted by some attrition from Delta and Omicron variants waves in various countries. We have identified EUR 9 million of attrition. We have also seen a reduction of the growth in our underlying business, where the COVID testing was very strong. We have more and more difficulties in isolating the attrition from the rest in the normal business. The underlying organic growth, excluding COVID-19 testing and attrition, is strong, 11.1% above the yearly guidance of 10%. The underlying growth, which is split into two pieces to isolate the impact of the South East London contract that has started on April first from the rest of the business. Excluding SEL contract, we're at 2.8%, as mentioned earlier, slightly lower than in prior quarters. Mostly in France and Germany, where COVID testing were very, very strong and the attrition measurement difficult to assess precisely. The key takeaway on this page is strong underlying growth and strong COVID-19 volume, more than compensating COVID PCR price drop. Now, looking at the full year 2021 organic growth on page 17, we have the same four elements to explain the full year organic growth. The underlying growth, excluding SEL, stands at 3.3%, above the 3%. EUR 125 million revenue from SEL contract and excluding the COVID-19 revenue from SEL, which is reported in the COVID activity. COVID-19 attrition with a net positive effect of EUR 132 million, and this we don't necessarily talk about it. That means we have been able to recover from the attrition that we had in 2020. COVID-19 testing, EUR 1.57 billion in 2021, excluding the COVID-19 testing from the acquisition. Including the acquisition, it's at around EUR 1.6 billion. In total, 29.7 million PCR tests performed at an average price of EUR 49 per test versus EUR 65 in 2020, 25% price drop, and 5.6 million non-PCR tests, mostly again, antibody tests. Now looking at the growth by segment on next page 18. The split of the underlying growth by segment, excluding SEL at 3.3%. All segments are growing, and Mathieu will provide more color in the business review. The impact of the M&A growth is also indicative. Bolton acquisitions in France performed at the beginning of the year. The high focus on the south segment with higher organic growth profile and the start of the SEL contract in April 2021 contributed significant growth to our north and east segment and to the entire group. Just to re-emphasize the strength of the group with its unique characteristic being present in 36 countries. In half of the 36 countries, representing more than a third of the size of the business in revenue, the underlying growth is above 8%. Moving now to the profit on page 19. Strong EBITDA performance. The full year reported adjusted EBITDA stands at rounded EUR 1.21 billion. The EBITDA organic evolution explains the bulk of the growth, EUR 516 million. Excluding COVID-19 impact, we have EUR 13 million price drop, mostly from negative price in France. Inflation is so far contained, EUR -19 million, and is offset by the impact of our SALIX program, procurement savings from core lab project implementation, and productivity savings from initiatives executed across the network. The full year EBITDA margin of the group stands at 32.1%, up 6 points from 2020. Q4 margin is at 30.4%, down compared to Q4 2020, mostly from PCR price drop, 43 EUR versus 61 EUR per test. Again, 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 flows to the bottom line with a high flow-through. Let's move now to page 20 with the margin expansion drivers. I have explained in prior communication how difficult it was to allocate costs between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 activities and the impact of attrition. It is still the case. The bridge on this slide is trying to address the legitimate request to understand how the business will perform post-COVID-19 acute pandemic phase. The EBITDA bridge is between 2019 and 2021, with the attempt to normalize the performance of the underlying business while isolating specific drivers. Let me walk you through it. Normalized organic growth has delivered EUR 50 million EBITDA in two years. 2019, 2020 and 2021 acquisitions have delivered around EUR 30 million of EBITDA, including EUR 6 million of synergies already achieved. It doesn't yet account the additional synergies still to come. Considering the performance from COVID-19, the business has accelerated investment in 2021 to fuel future growth, mainly in retail expansion and in IT. The 2021 normalized pro forma EBITDA is estimated at around EUR 517 million, EUR 120 million increase from 2019 level, including the expected recurring COVID-19 activity of EUR 150 million, adding EUR 65 million of EBITDA. On the right, EUR 720 million one-off that include all non-recurring COVID impact, testing attrition, as well as some cost overrun in the base business. Looking at the margin bridge now at the bottom of the page, the normalized 2021 pro forma margin is stable at around 21%. The contribution of each element reflects our business dynamics. Underlying growth at 3.5% in 2020 and 3.3% in 2021 support 1 point of margin improvement more than offsetting price and inflation. This is a volume leverage. Acquisitions are non-dilutive even before full synergies. Two-point impact from investment negative and one positive point from COVID-19 accretive and recurring activity. Again, 21% normalized pro forma margin in 2021. This margin does not reflect the inflation pressure on energy and fuel that we will experience going forward and the ripple effect on the costs and material costs inflation that will also probably come. We will certainly manage, but it will be challenging to probably offset the whole impact. As of now, 32% margin overall in 2021, 11-point improvements in two years. It's called on the page one-offs, but it doesn't mean that it came naturally. It is a result of the unbelievable mobilization of 30,000 employees in 36 countries to fight the pandemic, demonstrating the intangible assets of SYNLAB. Its agility, its ability to adapt very quickly, as well as the evidence of our business model. Any incremental volume, even on a complex test like COVID PCR flow, has a strong contribution to EBITDA as majority of our cost structure, again, is fixed on the short term. That's our business model. Now, moving on page 21. For 2021, we had a record net profit. The bridge from EBITDA to net profit and from reported to adjusted financials. EBITDA first, we have EUR 30 million of adjustments with two items to highlight. EUR 21.3 million of IPO costs. This is a one-off for 2021. This is a portion of the costs related to the IPO, not recharged to our shareholders, as total cost has been a portion based on the IPO primary and secondary proceeds. EUR 8.6 million of net acquisition-related costs, including PMI post-merger integration cost. As previously reported, it includes around EUR 5 million of revaluation of the options to buy our minority shareholders in Nigeria. The transaction has been completed in Q3 2021. The adjusted operating profit is at EUR 996 million. It was EUR 5.4 million for the full year 2020. The strong reduction of the net finance cost, mostly from lower borrowings and lower borrowing costs. The tax line is increasing based on increased volume, but the effective tax rate at 25% is lower than the normalized 28% from activation of tax loss carry forward. The net profit reflects also the positive impact from residual sale of ANS business in January 2021. The full year adjusted net profit stands at EUR 676 million. The adjusted EPS is EUR 3.14, and the proposed dividend to the AGM is EUR 0.33 per share. Cash flow. The strong EBIT on page 22. The strong EBITDA translates into record cash flow generation, more than EUR 1 billion operating cash flow, more than half a billion EUR increase versus last year, with strong contribution from normalizing working capital, partially offset by tax payment increase. Nothing significant to highlight on the other items of the cash flow. CapEx is increasing year-over-year, as Mathieu mentioned. It includes EUR 9.5 million COVID-19 related CapEx. Total to date COVID-19 CapEx is EUR 33 million. EUR 743 million of unlevered free cash flow, around 60% conversion of EBITDA. Page 23, strong balance sheet. The balance sheet of the group expressed again with the capital employed and capital resources view. The change versus December last year is mainly driven by the additions from the 18 acquisitions completed in 2021 and the impact of the SEL contract. The net debt of the group, including EUR 600 million of lease, is now at EUR 1.6 billion, rounded number, down EUR 633 million versus December 2020. The group has a strong balance sheet with EUR 450 million cash on hand and EUR 500 million of undrawn RCF. The ROTC of the group at year-end 2021 is at 20%, a key metric also in comparison to our peers. We have seen a significant increase over the last couple of quarters and see ourselves ahead of peer group companies. The detailed calculation is in appendix, and it includes goodwill in the way we calculate it. Page 24, leverage. The adjusted net debt is EUR 1.067 billion at the end of December 2021. The last 12 months pro forma EBITDA stands above the EUR 1.2 billion mark. The leverage ratio debt to EBITDA stands at 1.35x, down nearly 2x compared to year-end 2020. SYNLAB on page 25 now. SYNLAB future capital allocation reflects the strategy of the group to accelerate the consolidation of this industry through organic growth by gaining market share and through acquisitions. The cash generated from over-performance from COVID-19 testing will be allocated to fulfill these objectives. For 2022, CapEx, including leases, is stable at EUR 270 million, with an increase of 2 percentage points of revenue, and M&A will be above EUR 200 million. It's difficult to give an exact figure, but our guidance on the debt to EBITDA ratio is below 3x. The proposed dividend at EUR 0.33 per share will represent a cash outflow of around EUR 70 million in 2022. The 2022 dividend will reflect our IPO guidance around 20% of adjusted DPS. We will maintain a sustained dividend policy. This concludes the financial section of the presentation, and I will now hand it back to Mathieu for the business review. Thank you, Sami. Indeed, let's start with page 27 to cover our main geographies. These are our four segments in different colors, and strong growth across the board on an organic basis, around the 25% mark is the summary. We have one outlier, which is North and East, at over 90% of organic growth, and that's boosted by the SEL contract in the U.K. Growth was still above 30% in that area, excluding SEL. I would say these are spectacular achievements from all of our teams. Now on page 28, starting with France. Plus 28% growth in 2021 and a strong record AOP margin, and that's driven by volume leverage. 0.7 in underlying growth. As usual for France, with solid volume growth offsetting a regulatory price decrease, which is as per the three years agreement with the French health authorities, and that was implemented in Q2 of last year. Q4 decline in revenue is mostly due to PCR test comps, but AOP margin held at a very high level, as you can see. To be noted, we have a small decrease in PCR prices starting February third of this year. Page 29, that's Germany. 25% growth in 2021. Strong AOP margin progression driven by volume leverage and by SALIX savings. Plus 1.7% underlying growth with a stronger H1, but an impact also on price decrease in genetics in the final quarter. Q4 revenue growth remained positive, and that's due to very strong PCR testing activity in the final weeks of the year. Q4 AOP margin contracted, and that was nevertheless against the strong and the record level, I would say, in Q4 of the year prior. In Germany, SYNLAB remains a key player on variant detection and on school testing. The next page on region South. That's a +32% growth in 2021, and a strong AOP margin progression. That's again driven by volume leverage. That is despite Switzerland and the dilutive impact of new BCPs ramp-ups. 4.9% underlying growth with broadly stable prices. There, Italy and LatAm are our key growth engines. Q4, we had a moderate revenue growth due to PCR test comps. An AOP reduction due to the drop in COVID-19 testing, and which is mainly price, and a BCP ramp-up phase. We also, in that region, had a strong M&A activity with 13 deals for a total annual value of EUR 120 million net revenue. also key for that region is our retail and specialty initiatives. The next page is our North and East region. I would say what illustrates here the region is a great capacity to execute on major contracts. We have COVID-19 government testing in North Europe and the South East London contract in the U.K. Already said, this translated into 95% growth in 2021 and a record AOP progression in terms of the margin percentage, and that's driven by volume leverage greatly offsetting the lower SEL contract margin. Plus underlying growth and plus 5.8% underlying growth excluding SEL, with all sub-markets recording above group performance. Q4, we had a strong revenue growth despite lower COVID testing. That is related to SEL and to four new initiatives, like prescribers in Austria or direct- to- consumer and many others. AOP reduction from peak levels last year, but that is remaining at very high levels. We can now move to our last part, which is the outlook on page 33. We presented that page in our Q3 results in November 2021. That is showing how we built our business assumptions around the pandemic. To read the chart, you start with the long-term view at the bottom, and that is with having COVID-19 as endemic, where the testing generated would be around EUR 150 million on an annual basis. You add any short-term use cases like track and trace, safe at workplace, immunity testing and so on, and that's in the above lighter blue box, and that represents an additional EUR 350 million revenue. Then you have the third box at the top, which materializes the upside that would come from new variants of concern, which potentially escape vaccine. If we think about where we are today, I would say we are more at on the high end of the EUR 150 million-EUR 500 million range, and that is higher than what we expected back in November 2021. On the next page, 34, we present our revised outlook and that's where we expect group revenues in 2022 to be around EUR 3 billion. That is based on strong sustained organic and M&A growth, with COVID testing expectations increased by EUR 100 million compared to our November outlook that we gave last November. Our 2022 EBITDA margin is expected to remain high at 23%-25%, and that is unchanged compared with what we indicated in November 2021. Keeping our margin range unchanged is our way to capture, number one, the view that we should maintain a certain COVID-19 capacity, also when the prevalence goes down. Of course, if COVID-19 volumes are durably lower, this could slightly impact our margins. Number two, the ramp-up effect of some growth initiatives and investments. Number three, the inflation on costs. On M&A, we expect to maintain a good pace with, again, more than EUR 200 million of spend in 2022. We have already closed five deals year to date, and that represents more than EUR 20 million in annualized revenue. To conclude today's presentation, a page on our investment case. Some people depict us as a COVID winner, and sometimes, it is viewed as a positive and sometimes as a negative, which creates volatility. Ironically, when our end market is all about resilience and secular growth trends. SYNLAB existed long before COVID-19 and will exist long after. This is thanks to its strong fundamentals, which I want to reiterate here, which is the potential for consistent double-digit growth, and that's organic and M&A. A margin expansion from our 2019 reference point. Strong cash flow generation with a balance sheet that is today very strong. Finally, just a quick update on the next events. Twelfth of May, we have our Q1 results presentation. On 21st of June, we have an investor day that will be held in one of our international reference laboratories in Barcelona, where we'll address selected strategic topics with also site visits. This concludes our presentation. Thank you, and we now open the floor to your questions. Thank you. 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 to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask the question. If you find your question is answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial zero two to cancel your question. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. One moment please for the first question. The first question comes from Hassan Al-Wakeel at Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Thank you for taking my questions. I have three, please. Firstly, can you talk about the headwind expected from wage and cost inflation in 2022, and where you see the overall rate of inflation and how that compares to 2021? Related to this, how much dilution are you embedding from M&A, if at all? To what extent are you able to mitigate some of these effects with pricing? Secondly, on margin, more medium term, how does inflation or the current rate of inflation factor into your thinking around next year's margins, and why margins should be meaningfully above 2019 levels, given your comment on slide 20 around the normalized 21% margin? What flex do you have in the cost base here, and is 23% still a reasonable expectation for 2023? Finally, if I can squeeze one in on the underlying performance in France and Germany, how is this shaping up in Q1, and how should we think about full year organic growth here, given the underlying decline in Q4? Thank you. Hassan, I think I will leave those to Sami. Okay. Good afternoon, Hassan, and good questions on the inflation here on wages and cost inflation in general. On wages, we historically have 2% inflation, which is rounded number to EUR 20 million. Here, we can assume that we can have one point more inflation in 2022, so it's around EUR 10 million of additional inflation. On the other costs here, there is obviously the fuel and energy costs that are hiking recently. Here, we can assume that we have around, I would say. It varies, so it's difficult to give a number. I will give you a couple of data points so that you can then triangulate or estimate what it would be depending on the inflation. I would say our inflation related to fuel and energy, our base cost is around, I would say EUR 75 million. So it varies, I mean, between EUR 50 million and EUR 100 million, as we have with the detailed information we have. So you can assume if you assume say 20% inflation here, you get a EUR 15 million impact, and that's the range or the amount that we will be looking at for 2022. Now, beyond these two numbers, and not necessarily for 2022, there will be a ripple effect of those inflation and general inflation on the rest of the cost structure, whether it is on CapEx, whether it is on material expense, consumable. At one point, things will evolve on one side. I don't think it will be material for us in 2022. It may happen more in 2023. The way we can mitigate these inflation elements, obviously we have a number of ways. It varies depending on the geographies. Some of our activity will not be able to update our prices, or we are not driving the prices. It's regulatory prices. We have seen it in the past. In some of our countries, prices are increased to reflect the increase of inflation to be able to serve our employees. There is a linkage between the price increase of our activity with the inflation of the employees and mostly in the hospitals. This will remain, and so that means that we have a portion of our activity which will be adjusted. Now, if we look at the overall scheme, today, it's very difficult to give an exact number, but I would say that at around 40% of our activity, prices will not change. At around 45% of our activity, prices may change, and it's from the regulator. On 15% of activity, we'll be able to increase prices. This is probably. I mean, we've done a quick analysis, and this is the best outcome we have so far. Now, dilution on M&A mitigation factor. I mean, we're reviewing M&A deals on an ongoing basis. We have good portfolio, but the numbers and the actuals will be reflected in our business cases. We will be more conservative on the inflation in our business cases. Now, on the margin for the midterm, what we have been able to demonstrate on our page 20, and this is our business models, that irrespective of the starting point, we're able to increase margin with organic and acquisition. That's the key take here. The inflation that we're seeing here is there's probably a one-off, but it's not yet confirmed how sustainable will be the inflation on the long term. This doesn't I've just demonstrated that we're able to recover some of the pricing on our activity to mitigate a portion of it. It's too early to conclude that there is a systemic or the long-term impact on our inflation and does it change our business model. We're still in a logic where we will continuously improve our margin, irrespective of the starting point. If I take the example, because there are other drivers that can impact the margin, if I take the example of the SEL contract, it's dilutive to the group. It is the right things to do, so it has an impact in our bridge to reduce the margin of the group, but it's the right things to do. Wherever the SEL contract is, we will improve the margin of SEL, and that's what we are looking at. Now for France, the performance in Q4 is very good. It's very, very strong, but it's coming from Omicron, and there is an impact on the base business. Excluding the base business, I mean, but this, we don't see any ripple effect for Q1 and for 2022 of the Q4 performance of France and Germany on the base business. Very long answers, but Hassan, I think you have asked very broad questions. Sami, that's super helpful. Thank you so much. Our next question comes from Veronika Dubajova, Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Hi, guys. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. I have three, please. My first one is just an apology, Sami, if I missed this in your prepared remarks, but what is your assumption for the COVID-19 prices in 2022? I saw the price reduction in France, but if you can just give us your expectations for the full year and then maybe you know, to the extent of any thoughts on the phasing there, that would be very helpful. My second question, which might be out there for the COVID skeptics, but just looking at the EUR 600 million guidance that you've given for the full year, I'm curious what your expectations are, how much of that you will earn in the first quarter. That might be a helpful way to think about it. My third question is just on M&A and what the pipeline looks like at the moment. In particular, when it comes to more mid-sized and larger transactions, are you seeing any activity? Do you see probability of another larger deal maybe this year? If I can just add at the end, thank you for the COVID-19 EBITDA margin bridge. It's incredibly helpful for all of us, so just wanted to thank you for providing that. Okay. On the COVID-19 prices for 2022, I mean, I've mentioned here the COVID-19 in Q4 was at EUR 43 per test, and it has been reducing gradually with the number of countries in which we operate. We have news from states from time to time, and you had the early January price drop in France. From a planning perspective, we have assumed that the prices in 2021 will be at EUR 45, and it ended up at EUR 49. Today we're assuming that the prices in 2022 will be around between EUR 33 and EUR 36 per test. But today we are still higher than that. The prices are fairly stable in our, you know, key markets at this point. The price drop in France was quite minimal compared to the absolute level. Yeah. Which is still, say, a reasonable one. From a volume or revenue perspective on the EUR 600 million, this is for the COVID. Today, we have not given a guidance on COVID. We've given a range, and Mathieu mentioned that we'll be on the top of the range. It's more, it's around EUR 500+ million, but we're not giving an exact number on COVID. As to how much in Q1, it's still a bit difficult to predict, but we have a very strong activity, as you have seen from our COVID curve. Then the question is always how does it continue, right? Yeah. It will be already quite strong in Q1. Yeah, in Q1, we should be around EUR 400 million. It's still depending on March, so we'll see. The M&A pipeline, Veronika, well, very strong, good perspectives. Transaction activity at this point is, I would say, normal. Possibility of a mid-sized deal, yeah, our story is about consolidating the market. We have, I think done any type of acquisition from EUR 200,000 revenue to EUR 800 million or EUR 700 million, when the group was built with the merger of two large companies. In every case, we, I think we managed to create value for our shareholders. We are not say looking specifically for a midsize or for a small size or whatever. We look at every opportunity that fits our strategy with always a disciplined approach. If it's a midsize that shows up and that is favorable, of course, we will consider it very seriously or execute it. Yeah. The last question on the COVID-19 margin, I think you have it on page 20. It wasn't a question, Sami. It was my thanks for providing the bridge on page 20. It's incredibly helpful. I didn't have a question. I simply wanted to thank you for giving that to us. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. Thanks, guys. That's all I had. Sami, you have tortured us so much that we had to try. No, it's very helpful, so I wanted to very much acknowledge that because I know I've been asking Mark for it. Thank you, guys. Thank you. The next question comes from Oliver Reinberg, Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is now open. Oh, yeah. Thanks very much. Oliver Reinberg from Kepler Cheuvreux. Thanks for the color on the personnel cost inflation, but I wanted to take a deeper dive, if possible. I mean, personnel cost is obviously 40% of your kind of revenues. The 1% extra inflation you talked about sounds quite small and digestible, I would say. Can you just provide more color? What share of your personnel cost base is actually fixed in nature and not to link the inflation, if there's any share of that? And can you provide any color what kind of share of your personnel cost is related to union agreements, and where do you have individual agreements? And also, when we think about next year, is there a kind of a risk, obviously, that the headwind from personnel cost inflation will accelerate into 2023? That would be question number one. Question number two. So far, you provided 23% margin guidance for midterm, which was so far 2025. Can you just clarify, is that still holding true, or is it simply depending on how inflation is going to develop going forward? The last question would just be on Switzerland. Can you just provide an update how the market is operating and whether you have seen any kind of change in competitive behavior since we have seen the change in ownership of Unilabs? Thanks so much. Yep. Okay. Let me, I'll take it, Mathieu. Yeah. On the tax, inflation, I gave the example of 1% inflation for 2022 representing EUR 10 million. We're already in March, so I don't think that we'll have the full year inflation because nothing has really changed so far. That's fair that we will know more about this in the course of the year, obviously, and understand the implications it can have on 2023 onwards. In terms of breakdown of union agreement, I mean, this is very specific by country, so we are very distributed by country. We have some union agreement in some countries, in some others we don't. I cannot give an overall answer here. Yeah, I'm not sure, Oliver, that this would be a determinant for us of a criteria to determine if it's going to be higher or lower inflation on our P&L. What is fairly sure is that for 2022 at this point the agreements are mostly, say, done. We know where we are going. Of course you never know what can happen if inflation would accelerate further very strongly. At the end of the day, union or no union, we have to remain competitive in the healthcare market and we will have effect if inflation is durable included on our personnel expenses. The 20- The 20- 3%. Oh, yeah. On the margin side for the midterm 2025, we mentioned that the EBITDA 23%, we are not changing anything here, but it's too early to evaluate exactly the impact that the inflation will have because we need to understand how is it a one-time event or is it in a sustained way? Until we have clarity on that, it will be difficult to conclude on anything related to the 23%. Twenty-three percent remains something achievable on the midterm, but we'll have to assess what the midterm is and before we can conclude. Now for 2023, the margin of 2023 will depend on the COVID level of activity we have at that time. This is also something a little bit premature to conclude. We will develop this more in the course of 2022. On your last question on Switzerland, we have been driving the change in behavior as you know. I would say that we see a change for sure, and that is not related to the change of ownership. I would say early on, the two other players in the market have joined us in the effort to drive this change. I would not say there is a link with the change of ownership. Okay. It looks like we have lost the participant already. Would you like to continue with the next participant? Sure. The next question comes from Jan Koch, Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. I have also three, please. Starting with the COVID test volumes in recent days. When I look at the incidence rates across Europe, it looks like the daily new cases have started to increase again in most European countries. Have you already witnessed that in your testing numbers or is it still too early to tell? Secondly, with regards to your two specialty testing acquisitions you executed since January. Can you elaborate a bit on the current margin profile of these acquisitions, and the future potential you see here? I imagine that the multiples you had to pay are a bit higher than what you paid historically. Any color here would be appreciated. Lastly, can you speak a bit about your expectations regarding your free cash flow in 2022? One clarification, if I may. The EUR 100 million guidance raise you mentioned, is that only driven by higher expected COVID revenue or are there any other factors as well? Okay. Thank you, Jan. On the COVID, indeed, we have seen, as you have probably seen it also in nine out of 11 European countries, it was up, and in eight of the nine it was up more than 20%. The incidence rate or the number of cases. We have seen it already from our numbers last week. They were up in the range of 15% compared to two weeks ago. We are, I would say, following, as we have observed in the past, also very tightly actually this development of the curves. On the specialty acquisitions, I don't have the margin handy, but they would be slightly. Well, it depends on which. One is probably higher than the group margin. One is a bit lower because the low one is still ramping up on investments and developing very fast. This is the genetics one. This market is, I would say, booming and hence you have to always step up your investments to make sure that you serve well the market and the potential. The multiples, I would say were not any significantly higher than usual on any of the two. That can happen, you're absolutely right, on some say high growth type of specialty activities. That's also the, I would say, the interest of being very well known for a very long time in the market, having very solid relationship, because it's not all about differentiating on price. It's also what type of future and environment you can offer to the people you acquire, and the trust you have built in this capability. I would say that plays a role in many acquisitions. The cash flow question, Sami, you want to take it? Year for 2022, we have not provided a specific guidance. I mean, it's back to the IPO guidance where we'll be at 45%-50% EBITDA conversion. The EUR 100 million indeed is that you mentioned on the revenue difference in the guidance is related to Omicron. Okay, very helpful. Thank you. You're welcome. The next question comes from Sezgi Ozener, HSBC. Please go ahead, your line is now open. Hi, thanks for the presentation. Just a few questions from my side. First of all, on the breakdown of business to business to consumer, business, how has it changed since the start, since the times of your IPO guidance? Can you shed some light on your D2C initiatives, how they are, and whether there is any meaningful portion of business coming from that? Second of all, on your M&A budgets in 2022, you've guided that it's gonna be above EUR 200 million, but you're also saying that leverage is going to be below three. Is there an upper limit, a maximum that we should expect in terms of potential M&A spend? Can you also remind us of the limit above which you would disclose the price paid for acquisitions? Okay. I can take the first one. Change of the ratio B2B, D2C, that is not changing at this point, of course, because direct to consumer is still a fraction of our activity and I would say of the market, right? It's below 5%, so this changes over time, over a period of time. What I think is interesting is to be able to capture this very fast growing segment because in two, three, four, five years from now, this will become more and more important, patients being also consumers at times. Our initiatives there are varied. It's a bit too early to speak about the main one we have. I would say in many countries we are seeing very good results of having upgraded our web shops and our digital approach to the consumer segment. We aim to accelerate this in the coming months. Of course it's a long journey that will be multi-year. On M&A, maybe you want to take that, Sami? Yeah. We don't disclose prices on M&A on specific deals. We don't put them in our press release and things like that. We’ve communicated already on the multiple we’ve done on the 18 acquisition, and we look at it at N+2. The multiple there, EV to EBITDA for two years down the road is at around 8x. It was slightly higher than the historical or the target we set ourselves to be 7x. We have acquired some growth platforms with the Tronchet and the Mexican. When we look at the N+3, we have a deleveraging also higher, so we're comfortable with that. If you want more information on M&A pricing itself, I mean we have published our annual report, and there is always interesting information in the annual report that you can conclude and derive from on prices. I will direct you to our annual report. As to the leverage you were asking, I don't think we put a strict say limit at 3.0 being the leverage. It's what I was mentioning also earlier. It's all about with M&A you have also to be to a degree opportunistic because some targets available are only available once. So if they fit very well your strategy and you have good knowledge about them, then it can be the right thing to do to go for it. Even if we would surface slightly this 3 times, that's more say an indication of where we want to be max on a say on a sustainable level. Right. Thanks very much for this. Just as a follow-up, since in blood collection points, the openings was ramped up substantially in 2021. Also looking at the segments, Germany has become smaller since the start of the IPO. Some markets have become larger. I was wondering if business to consumer is taking share from business to business. Yeah. That is, indeed, I'm laughing because it can be, you're right, it can be business to consumer, but it can also be just the country mix. Because it happens coincidentally that in the faster-growing countries, usually it's more B2C type of market. But I would say it's more the market itself than the segment that would drive that additional growth. Now it's like B2C is like retail. You are pretty sure that if you select the right place and you have the right say experience for your patients, you're pretty sure that you are going to increase your revenue. In many countries, we have really a very strong skill at selecting these two criteria properly. Hence, maybe there is still a bit more easiness to grow the business in B2C to a degree. But I think it's the majority is driven by the country or the market itself, right? Thanks a lot. The next question comes from James Vane-Tempest, Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my questions. First, the EMEA revenues were, I think, EUR 156 million last year, which is around 4% of group. Just wondering how many of those were Russia or Ukraine. My next question is just to unpack the 3.3% underlying growth. It's clearly the South and Northeast, which is very much driving that, with France and Germany, you know, around 0.7%-1.7%, and those two countries around 40% of your business. I guess the question is, how should we think about North and East growth overall if neighboring countries to Ukraine are potentially seeing some disruption? Are you able to give any color how many of those were the 18 out of the 36 which were growing more than 8%? How confident are you that the underlying business can grow more than 3% next year, excluding Southeast London? Thank you. Thanks, James, for the question. The first answer on Russia is 0%. We are not present. Ukraine and if I combine Ukraine and Belarus, it's 0.3% of our revenue, so I would say marginal. The growth indeed, and this is all the part also of the previous question of country mix, to exposing ourselves to higher growth markets. The neighboring countries to the conflict, we don't see those as slowing down because of the conflict. I would say to a degree it might turn out the contrary because of the massive refugee influx. These people will also need healthcare services. We are at the base of healthcare systems, meaning that we are an essential service. If there is a conflict or not in the next country, this will not change the need for people to get diagnosed and through the healthcare journey. We don't see an impact or a negative impact from that. Just to, I guess, answer the second part of the question then, do you feel confident the underlying business ex Southeast London can grow more than 3% next year? Yeah, I think basically, the answer is yes. What we see, nevertheless, and it was quite obvious, I think, in Q4 to a degree, we have seen it a bit in the first month, where, when you have a huge surge of COVID-19 cases, it slows down the hospital elective surgeries or procedures. And it slows down just the, say, the number of people willing to go to their routine, say, healthcare procedures. To that extent, this is always a bit difficult to predict, but I'd say the underlying fundamentals would not have any reasons not to provide for that. That's great. Thank you. Very clear. If you want more details on our revenue breakdown, you have it on page 129 of our annual report. You have the full breakdown by country. Thanks. We haven't received further questions at this point. I will hand back to the speakers. Well, I think actually to this question James was just asking, I take the opportunity also to stress the fact that indeed the resilience of our revenue is very strong because people don't go for diagnostics because they have nothing else to do, right? You can say with inflationary pressures, maybe some consumers would want to consume less. This is what we hear from some other activities. We are not subject to that, right? Because people just, if anything, after the pandemic, there is some catch up to be done on regular procedures. I think that's also to be had in mind when looking at our activity. We see no more questions on the dashboard here. Maybe I leave it for 15 more seconds for anyone to jump in. Okay. Well, it seems that we exhausted all your questions. Thank you very much for your participation. We reconvene on the twelfth of May for our Q1 results. Thank you, and have a good rest of the day. Bye-bye. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This conference has been concluded. You may disconnect.