Thank you for standing by, and Welcome to the presentation of Chr. Hansen's annual report and conference call 2020 to 2021. At this time all participants are in Iisten-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session, at which, if you'd like to ask a question, you'll need to press zero one on your telephone. WI must advise you that this conference is being recorded. OI would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Chr. Hansen CEO, Mauricio Graber. Please go ahead. Good morning. Before we begin, please take notice of the safe harbor statement on the next slide two. Thank you. Let's turn to slide three, please. 2020/2021 was a year of transition for Chr. Hansen with increased complexity for the combination of our recent portfolio changes and the global COVID-19 pandemic. In light of these extraordinary circumstances, I am pleased with the financial results that we delivered. Organic growth came in at 7% and at the upper end of our initial outlook. This was achieved despite the unsatisfactory result from Human Health in the second part of the year, where the business faced a drop in demand from customers servicing the traditional sales channel, combined with certain supply issues. Food Cultures & Enzymes, on the other hand, was able to offset part of that with a strong year-end finish and 8% volume growth in Q4. Our EBIT margin before special items ended at 27.7%, down from 33.7% the year before. The decrease was in line with our expectations and largely driven by the acquisitions and currency headwinds. We also saw a decline in the underlying business, and Lise will elaborate further on that. Free cash flow before acquisitions, special items, and divestments ended up at €196 million compared to €225 million last year and was higher than our outlook, mainly due to timing of payables. 2020/2021 also marked the first year of our 2025 strategy, and we have reached important milestones in our transition towards a dedicated bioscience company with focus on our microbial and fermentation technology platforms. Let me provide a few highlights on each of our strategic pillars in the next slide four, please. Organic growth remains our number one priority, and we continue to reinvest in our core platforms of Animal Health and Human Health. Our investments are focused on bringing new innovations to market faster, expanding our route to market, and strengthening our applications and marketing capabilities. In dairy, we have seen an all-time high launch activity in 2020, 2021. However, travel restrictions, lower trial activity at customers focusing more on their existing business and cost savings, made it more difficult to bring our new launches to customers and drive new business. This was particularly the case for fermented milk markets such as Latin America and China, where consumer price sensitivity is higher. In Animal Health, we further expand our route to market by strengthening our local sales partner network, regionalizing our marketing capabilities, and rolling out our product offering globally. Overall, we completed more than 50 new registrations globally and launched our first pet probiotic range. We also made good progress in China during the year, the return of the African swine fever hampered growth in the second half of the year. In Human Health, focus was very much on the integration of UAS Labs and HSO Health Care and addressing the challenges in the second half of the year. We also advanced our strain to solution strategy and scientific agenda by working globally on more than 30 clinical trials. Next to growing our core business, we continue to leverage our lighthouses. bioprotection and fermented plant-based today account for approximately 8% of food cultures and enzymes revenue. Both businesses delivered double-digit growth in 2020, 2021 and made strategically important launches. In Plant Health, we continue to increase penetration and reach of our bionematicides. Commodity prices were supported, COVID-19 has delayed the market entry into Canada, as well as the launch of our first biofungicide. On the positive side, we entered the Asian market with our new biostimulant, Accudo, in South Korea, and today we have announced a new partnership with UPL, which will further expand our commercial reach. Due to the typical long registration timelines, we expect meaningful revenue from this partnership by the end of the strategy period. Lastly, looking at Bacthera, we received the manufacturing licenses for our clinical trial production, and the team, which has grown to 70 people today, continue to mature commercial opportunities with leading players in the live biotherapeutic space. Extending our microbial platform via acquisitions and partnerships is our third strategic priority. Please turn to the next slide five. The integration of our three acquisitions, UAS Labs, HSO Health Care, and Jennewein, have largely been completed. The three businesses deliver EUR 105 million in revenue and EUR 17 million in EBITDA, below our initial expectations, in line with the corrected outlook. While we must recognize that the first year was not without challenges, especially related to HMO, all three acquisitions have delivered on our expectations in terms of strategic fit and potential for our 2025 strategic priorities. In Human Health during the second half of the year, we have seen that our dependency on large accounts and the traditional sales channel can be disadvantage for the business. With the acquisition of UAS Labs and HSO Health Care, we are addressing this imbalance and are building a more resilient business with a more diversified customer base and a larger presence in the e-commerce space, and a broader product offering, not least in the fast-growing women's health category. We believe that for Human Health, the future lies in what we call the strain to solution strategy, where we can support customers along the entire value chain, from strain selection to finished product manufacturing. This is why we have also completed the insourcing of additional packaging capabilities in Q4 to take full control of our supply chain. Coming to Jennewein and HMO, we have added one of the pioneers in the HMO space to our portfolio. HMOs and probiotics represent complementary and synergistic ways of modulating the microbiome, and as such, present an attractive synergy opportunity for Chr. Hansen. That said, it's still an industry in its infancy, and regulatory approval delays related to COVID-19, and generally longer customer project timelines have slowed the development of the market. We are, however, progressing well in our dialogues with key customers who will drive the penetration of HMO and infant formula in the years to come and are aligning our capacity expansion plans to the outcome of these discussions. Before I hand over to Lise for the financial deep dive, I would like to comment on our sustainability activities in the next page. At Chr. Hansen, more than 3,700 colleagues go to work every day to grow a better world naturally. 82% of our revenue today contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and across the organization, we work on embedding sustainability even further in our commercial strategies to drive more sustainable agriculture, better food production, and improved health. 2020, 2021 was also a year where we increased our focus on climate action. During the year, we mapped all of our Scope 3 emissions to set carbon emission reduction targets. The targets have been submitted to the Science Based Targets initiative for validation, and we expect to publish them in the coming weeks. We also made good progress on embedding the recommendations from the Task Force for Climate-related Disclosure in our enterprise risk management. We increased our use of renewable energy beyond Denmark through an agreement at our Nienburg site in Germany. With regards to our people targets, I am very pleased that we already this year reached our goal of having more than 30% women in key positions, and that we kept engagement high, our employees safe during the pandemic year. For the first time, we have also published the result of our gender pay gap analysis, reflecting our commitment to fairness and transparency in remuneration, with a clear goal to reduce the pay gap going forward. Lastly, I am also pleased that our board of directors is increasingly involved and has decided to formalize and strengthen its oversight of ESG topics on board and committee level in the coming years. With these remarks, I would like to hand over to Lise for the financial performance review. Thank you, Mauricio, and welcome also from my side. Let's look at slide seven. 2020/2021 was indeed an extraordinary year with the global pandemic. This is also what we can see in the regional performance of our business. The trends that we saw in the third quarter largely continued into Q4. To start with a positive development, growth in our largest region, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, accelerated in the fourth quarter and ended at 11% organic growth, largely driven by a step-up in food cultures and enzymes. Animal Health also delivered strong growth. Human Health, on the other hand, declined due to weaker demand. For the full year, this resulted in 6% organic growth for the region. Looking at North America, the region reported 4% organic growth in Q4, with similar dynamics as EMEA. food cultures and enzymes and Animal Health did well, while Human Health declined as customers with large exposure to the traditional sales channels reduced their orders to bring down elevated inventory levels. For the full year, North America reported 6% organic growth, driven by food cultures and enzymes and Animal Health. Moving on to Latin America, the region delivered 15% organic growth in Q4, with a lower contribution from euro-based pricing. Slower end markets impacted our food cultures and enzymes business, whilst health and nutrition delivered very strong growth. For the full year, growth was 26%, with euro-based pricing accounting for approximately half. Lastly, Asia Pacific delivered negative growth of 10% in Q4, leading to a decline of 3% for the full year. The decline in Q4 was driven by health and nutrition, which was impacted by a very tough comparable both in Animal Health and in Human Health. In addition to this, Human Health was also impacted by adjustment of inventory levels at key customers, including customers for infant formula. Food Cultures and Enzymes also saw reported negative growth, the relative performance has continued to improve during the last quarter, although it was still below our expectations and the Chinese yogurt market remained under pressure. Let's move to the next slide eight, for further explanations on the segments. Food Cultures and Enzymes grew 10% organically in Q4, largely driven by volumes, in part due to an easy comparable from last year. Growth was broadly anchored across the different product segments. Our cheese and meat business continued its strong growth trajectory that we have seen throughout the year, whilst in fermented milk and probiotics, we saw a step-up in Q4. Our Bioprotection lighthouse delivered strong growth driven by meat and cheese applications, while fermented plant-based grew solidly. For the full year, food cultures and enzymes delivered 8% organic growth, with 3% volume growth outgrowing the underlying markets. Cheese production volumes grew an estimated 1%-2% for the year, with higher growth in the second half, where we saw the reopening of food service channels whilst retail remained strong. Fermented milk markets, on the other side, declined slightly with an estimated -2% to -3%, largely driven by lower output in China and in Latin America. Turning to profitability, the Q4 EBIT margin before special items for FC&E decreased to 33.0% compared to 38.4% last year. The decrease is quite meaningful, and there are several explanations for it. First, last year's margin was positively impacted by a one-time gain from a VAT case in Brazil, which explains around 1.5 percentage points. Secondly, we've seen a ramp-up of activities following the COVID-19 lockdowns last year, which was the largest drag on the margin. Thirdly, we've had to book an impairment loss related to development projects, which explains around 1 percentage point. If we look at the gross margin, it was actually in line with last year, but our production efficiencies were offset by product mix and higher scrap due to a contamination at our Copenhagen plant. For the full year, the margin declined -2.3 percentage points from 34.3%- 32.0%, mainly due to product mix, higher freight costs, and negative currency impact that offset production efficiencies. We have also invested quite heavily into our R&D activities in FC&E in line with our strategy of reinvesting in the core. Moving to health and nutrition on the next slide nine. Organic growth in the fourth quarter and for the full year was heavily impacted by the weakness in Human Health. Organic growth was -4% in Q4, leading to 5% for the full year. There were two main drivers for the decline in Human Health in Q4, similar to last quarter. A high comparable from last year and customers reducing excess inventories due to lower demand in the traditional sales channels. Our acquisitions, UAS Labs and HSO Health Care, on the other hand, did very well. On the fourth quarter, we also saw a lower contribution due to limited access to raw materials that are needed for finished product manufacturing. If we look at Animal Health and Plant Health, both businesses did well in Q4 as well for the full year. In Animal Health, growth was particularly strong in silage. That exceeded our expectations for the year, but we also saw good momentum in poultry, particularly in Middle East and Southeast Asia, following the completion of the GalliPro Fit rollout. In Plant Health, growth continued to be driven by our bionematicides sales in Latin America. With regards to profitability, the underlying EBIT margin before special items in Q4 was 32.1% compared to 37.5% last year, largely driven by the cost normalization post-COVID-19 and the negative volume development. For the full year, the underlying EBIT margin was 30.0% compared to 31.9% last year, mainly due to negative currency impact of more than 1 percentage point. The reported margin was 21.6% in Q4 and 19.8% for the full year and remained impacted by the recent acquisitions. With this, let's turn to page 10 for the group financials. In sum, our continuing operations, the microbial platform, delivered 6% organic growth in Q4, leading to 7% for the full year. The benefit from euro-based pricing faded in the fourth quarter, leading to only 2 percentage points pricing, while for the full year, pricing contributed 4% to the organic growth. Acquisitions added 12% to absolute revenues in Q4, and adjusting for a negative currency effect of -3%, this led to a euro growth of 15% for the quarter. For the full year, the FX impact was -7% and the acquisitions contributed +11%, leading to 11% euro growth. Please turn to next page 11, for a review of our profitability drivers. Profitability came in largely in line with expectations for the full year, but our margin in the fourth quarter was impacted quite meaningfully by the normalization of cost levels for COVID-19 that I already mentioned in the segment review. EBIT margin before special items was 28.8% in Q4, compared to 38.4% last year, with a decline in the underlying business of - 5.4% and a dilution from the acquisitions of - 4.0%, while the negative impact from FX lessened to only - 0.2%. If we look at the decline in the underlying business in Q4, the increase in operating expenses compared to last year was by far the largest driver. We also have an impact of approximately 1 percentage point from the VAT dispute case that I earlier mentioned. The gross margin for the underlying business was on par with last year's Q4, as production efficiencies were offset by product mix and higher scrap in FC&E. For the full year, our EBIT margin before special items was 27.7%, compared to 33.7% last year, very well within our guidance range of 27%-28%, but the decline in the underlying margin was larger than the 1 percentage point that we had anticipated due to the impairment losses and higher scrap in FC&E that we didn't factor in. A few additional comments on the income statement items below EBIT, if we look to the right. Special items came in at €2 million, driven by the Jennewein acquisition and the carve-out of Natural Colors, and in line with expectations. Net financial items were above last year due to the temporary higher debt levels. This will come down again next year. Taxes were significantly below last year due to a non-recurring impact from the acquisitions. This will also revert next year. If we look at the cash flow then on the next slide 12, our free cash flow before acquisition, special items, and divestment decreased compared to last year, driven by higher CapEx and lower operating cash flow. Operational cash flow was below last year as the higher non-cash adjustments and the acquisition-related tax impact were offset by lower operating profit and higher interest paid. The free cash flow came in above the guided range of EUR 140 million-EUR 160 million, in part due to timing of payables. Our CapEx to sales ratio was 14.5% in FY 2021, elevated due to the acquisition of the Kalundborg site in Denmark for our new HMO production, and also investments into the microbial platform and in-sourcing of the packaging capacity for Human Health in North America. Excluding HMO, our CapEx to sales ratio would have been 11%. Following the receipt of the proceeds from the Natural Colors divestment, leverage came down to 2.3x EBITDA. In light of the performance of the financial year, the board of directors proposes a dividend of 6.54 DKK per share, which corresponds to a total of EUR 116 million. The proposed dividend is in line with the payout in May in euros, but represent an increase in payout ratio from 50%- 58% of net profit from continuing operations. With this, let's turn to page 13 for the outlook. Considering the high macroeconomic uncertainty and continued COVID-19-related disruptions, we expect organic growth for 2021, 2022 in the range of 5%-8%. FC&E is expected to deliver solid mid-single-digit organic growth throughout the year, despite an insignificant contribution from euro-based pricing, largely volume driven. Organic growth in health and nutrition is expected to be supported by the businesses acquired in 2020. That said, growth is expected to be volatile across the quarters, with Human Health impacted by the current challenges, including limited access to specific raw materials in first parts of the year. EBIT margin before special items is expected to be around at the same level as last year, between 27%-28%, as cost synergies from the probiotics acquisitions and production efficiencies will be offset by continued ramp-up of activities post-COVID-19, investments into the HMO business, and inflationary pressure on certain input costs. Inflationary pressure is normally covered by our regular price increases. However, as all others, we also face a much more volatile environment now with regards to energy costs, key raw materials, and transportation costs. We will work with customers to reflect higher costs through price adjustments or other optimizations, but there may be a timing delay. Moving on to our free cash flow guidance. Free cash flow before special items is expected to be around €140 million-€170 million, as improved operating profit is expected to be more than offset by a significant increase in taxes paid, as 2020, 2021 was positively impacted by the acquisitions. The free cash flow outlook assumes CapEx in line with FY 2021. Please move to slide 14. With the first year of our strategy cycle and the portfolio changes completed, we slightly adjust our long-term financial ambitions to reflect the divestment of Natural Colors and the acquisition of Jennewein, but confirming the original ambition of industry-leading organic growth, margin progression, and strong cash flow generation during the strategy period. Until the end of our financial year 2024, 2025, and taking 2020, 2021 as our new baseline, we aim to deliver mid- to high single-digit organic growth averaged over the period, an increase in our EBIT margin before special items over the period with production efficiencies, scalability benefits, and acquisition synergies that will be partly reinvested into the business. Average growth in free cash flow before special items, we expect to exceed average growth in EBIT before special items. Please note that the baseline for cash flow is adjusted for the acquisition-related tax impact of approximately EUR 45 million in 2020, 2021. Also note that we will face the HMO investments in line with the development of the business. Given the slower ramp-up of the markets, this means that the investments will come later than originally expected and more spread across the period. With this, I would like to hand back to Mauricio to wrap up our presentation for today. Thank you, Lise. I will keep the wrap-up very short. 2020, 2021 was a year of transition for Chr. Hansen as we executed on the portfolio changes and dealt with the prolonged impacts of COVID-19. In light of this, I am pleased with our financial performance and the progress we have made on our journey of becoming a dedicated bioscience company, with focus on our fermentation and microbial technology platforms. 2021, 2022 will be another year with high macroeconomic uncertainty and continued COVID-19-related disruptions. Commercial execution and creating value for our acquisitions will be key, while actively managing our cost base and advancing our 2025 strategic priorities to reach our goal for the next financial year and deliver on our long-term financial ambitions of industry-leading organic growth, improving profitability, and strong cash flow generations. Thank you for listening, pleased to open the line for Q&A. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question for the speakers, please press zero one now. Our first question comes from the line of Søren Samsøe from SEB. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. It's Søren from SEB. First a question regarding the gross margin for Lise. Maybe you already said it, I think you talked about an underlying gross margin development in Q4 that was flat. Maybe I heard you wrong, reported, of course, it's down almost 400 basis points. Could you just bridge that gap, please? Sorry, Søren. Yes, it's the acquisitions. The underlying gross margin was flat year-over-year. Okay. For Q4. Since you have quite strong volume growth, I was just wondering why is it not up? Is that the higher raw material cost, or why is the gross margin not up with, as I guess you have the usual scalability? We did in Q4 have an unanticipated scrap due to a contamination in our Copenhagen plant. Okay. Of course, also I have to say the product mix which is also impacting and offsetting some of the volume effect you should see, expect production efficiencies from. Okay. Just if you could say a little bit about, you have quite strong growth in food cultures and enzymes in Q4. How should we see the year develop in 2021, 2022 in terms of growth? Is it more front-end loaded, or do you see it as being more back-end loaded in terms of the growth? For food cultures and enzymes, we expect a pretty balanced view for our FY 2022. It would be in this mid-range, mid-single digits throughout the year. Is it fair to, given that you are now, of course, starting to meet clients, I guess you're not up to index 100 in terms of meeting activity and so on yet. Wouldn't it be fair to assume that it's more back-end loaded, or maybe not? It's not what we are expecting, Søren. We are expecting a pretty flat development by quarter, if we look at food cultures and enzymes. You are right that, of course, we will be able to visit customers to a larger extent throughout the year, and with a certain delay that is also supporting our business. We do expect also a tougher comparable, if you look into second half. Okay. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Charles Eden from UBS. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. My first one is just on the revised medium-term guidance, where you're now expecting expansion versus a 2020, 2021 base of 27.7%. Consensus for the end of the current strategy cycle for 2025 is obviously some way ahead of this at 31.6%. Is today's update an indication that you see those expectations by the sell side as a stretch? If I can just add a second question. The China decline in Q4, were you able to give a quantification of that within FC&E, and maybe comment on your growth assumptions for this market for 2022, which is baked into your 5%-8% organic growth guidance? Just very quick follow-up. You mentioned the scrap impact on the gross margin. Can you give us a value of that scrap impact? Thank you so much. Yes. Thank you. If you look at the margin expansion towards the end of our strategy period, it's very important to highlight that the HMO business will continue to be a drag beyond our strategy period. While we expect our acquired probiotics business, UAS Labs and HSO Health Care, to improve and become comparable to Chr. Hansen traditional level, HMO will drag beyond the period. The scrap in Q4 was, if you look at food cultures and enzymes specifically, around 1.5 percentage points impact and 1% for the group. I will take the one on China, Charles. I think when you look at China, you split a little bit the three businesses. As Lise mentioned in food cultures and enzymes, the development in Q4 was still negative, but we see continuous improvement momentum. I think fiscal year 2022, we expect a positive development for the Chinese market, although not back to the full growth that we have seen before, but it will turn positive after seeing a couple of years of decline in the Chinese fermented dairy market. In Q4, we had negative developments for Human Health, both in infant formula and dietary supplements, and we expect those to normalize over the year as you will see customers in China circling through their higher levels of inventory in dietary supplements and the infant formula business normalizing, where we have said that the penetration of probiotics into infant formula is our main growth, and we have always assumed a low single-digit growth for the infant formula volume. It's all about penetration of our probiotic solutions into infant formula. Thank you very much. The next question comes from the line of Alex Sloane from Barclays. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Morning, all. Two questions from me, please. Just firstly, just going back to the food cultures and enzymes volumes in quarter four, obviously an impressive performance given China was still a drag, albeit a lesser one. Can you maybe give some color on the drivers of the 8% growth in terms of end market growth, innovation upselling, and structural conversion, and perhaps your expectations on the relative contribution of those factors behind the guidance for FY 2022. Secondly, just contrasting the performance of UAS Labs and the sort of legacy Chr. Hansen probiotic supplements business in FY 2021, quite a marked difference despite obviously broadly the same end consumer demand. I'd just be interested in your view, is that just a divergence just temporary or is there something more structural going on? Is there a margin implication to this trend in terms of, I would assume you have higher prices and gross margins on your well-documented single strains versus the multi-strain offering. Thanks. Thank you, Alex Sloane. Let's talk first about FC&E volume. Extremely proud of the FC&E team and the resiliency of that business. I think what we saw is that as euro-based pricing declined, the volume strengthened, and it's something that we have mentioned several times. When you look at the drivers of that growth, it's a lot of the execution across the different elements of the quadrant. If you look at pricing and share gains, that is always quite sticky because the nature of the industry. We continue, I would say, to work very close with customers and our service levels and quality levels always guarantees us opportunities to continue to drive some level of share gains. Conversions, we did not see a high level of large conversion projects in 2021. We see some of those ahead as opportunity for us to continue to convert some of the remaining opportunities in food cultures and enzymes. In innovation and upselling, I think we had a record high level of product launches. As I mentioned in my comments, there's a time lag now because of the ability to visit customers to monetize those. We continue to see good progress on some of them. CHY-MAX Supreme continued to be a very good success. Early very good signs of our bioprotection new generation, as well as growth in our vegan line for plant-based. New areas, basically we saw a little bit of fewer launches in brewing fermented beverages that were affected by COVID restrictions. Overall, the volume growth in food cultures and enzymes, you can see that the execution of projects in the core business, in our core culture ranges, has been what is driving the growth. I'm particularly proud to see that despite the weakness in developing markets, you saw very strong growth in the core regions of Europe and North America. I hope that brings some color to the food cultures and enzymes, that by the way also had some lower comparables in the quarters where you saw higher growth. Now onto Human Health. Strain to solution and being able to have a wider portfolio of probiotics, I think diversification really helps. We are now more balanced in our channel, traditional channel versus the online channel. Really, if you see the acquisition of UAS Labs and HSO separately, they deliver double-digit growth rate. E-commerce continue to grow and to be area where more consumers look for their probiotic solutions. We expect a combination of those two to provide a more balanced growth picture for Human Health in 2022, even though we will see some lag of the inventory customer conditions into the beginning of the year. As far as product mix, it's true that the finished product have a slightly, let's say, lower margin than our bulk probiotics, but it also provides more customer stickiness and more customer loyalty because you're working with them through the end solution. I think the way I view that business is whether it's finished products or bulk probiotics, we are getting the full margin on the bulk business, and then you get incremental cash, incremental revenue on the consumer packs. As I mentioned, higher customer loyalty. Thanks. The next question comes from the line of Lars Topholm from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. A couple of questions on my side. If I look at your revenue and earnings contribution from acquisitions and to Jennewein, it would seem that combined UAS Labs and HSO Health Care has gone from a 40% margin in the first half of the year to a 24% margin in the second half of the year. I just wonder if you can put some words on why that is and how that looks going forward. A second question goes to your 2025 ambitions of lifting margins, and I would simply like to understand if PPA amortizations in the last year of the five-year period is assumed to be the same as it is now, i.e., around EUR 19 million a year, or if you get any sort of margin benefit from PPA amortizations coming down within the five-year period. A third question is just a household question. You mentioned the two lighthouses in food cultures and enzymes are 8% of sales. According to my math, that would imply plant-based is less than 1%. Is that a correct assumption? Thank you. Lars, I can't really recognize the numbers that you're talking to on the acquired businesses, so we will have to come back to you specifically on that. With regards to your question on PPA, that will only come down once we reach our FY30 level. Yes. I think that's also what we have shared until now. Then, I would say on fermented plant-based, it's probably not completely off, but maybe Mauricio, you can put more. Yes, Lars, I think on plant-based, that's what we have said. It's an emerging market. I think directionally that would be about 1%, we obviously grow very fast on that from a very small base into the fermented plant-based market. I have a slightly broader question, because you mentioned, Mauricio, in your presentation that your estimate is the global yogurt market declined with a couple of percent last year. I'd just like to know your views on why that is and what will make this change, and within what time horizon do you see it changing? Of course, I know it's probably difficult to answer, but you also have an insight into your product pipeline, and you have previously mentioned that COVID could mean less new product development activity for your customers. I wonder if it's something of that we are seeing now and how you see that changing going forward. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you, Lars. Obviously, you recognize the difficulty of providing some prediction on that, but I can share with you some of our thoughts. You're right, the fermented market contracted. When we look at FY 2022, we expect overall dairy to be about 1% growth, and this will be like 1%-1.5% in cheese and sort of a flattish development for fermented milk. What will make fermented milk come back to growth is really largely driven by China and Latin America, a little bit the Middle East, sort of developing markets that are high on fermented milk or the yogurt market. Obviously, we also see some of our large Western customers are focusing on renewed innovation for fermented milk, that is another source and opportunity for growth in that area. Thank you very much, Mauricio. Thanks for taking my questions. Please get back to me on the margin in UAS and HSO. Thank you. We will, Lars. The next question comes from the line of Heidi Vesterinen from Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Morning. One bright spot today was Animal Health, but we do increasingly hear that meat consumption is slowing or declining in places, and we've seen some stats on animal production being challenged in areas. Does this concern you at all for 2022 and onwards over the midterm? The second question, you talked about volatility in Human Health. Could you please help us with the phasing of this? Are you basically saying H1 will be down and H2 back to growth? Given that the raw material issue you talked about sounds Chr. Hansen specific, is there any risk that you lose customers due to this? Lastly, you had talked about cost-sensitive customers and consumers in the emerging markets. Is there any chance that you could reduce prices to drive volumes given your very high margins? Thank you. Thank you, Heidi. Good morning. Animal Health, we continue to drive with our probiotic solutions, the reviews of the replacement of antibiotics. For sure, when you look at the pressure on meat consumption, animal farming, sustainability, et cetera, there will be, in our world, new opportunities like plant-based. We view those as incremental opportunities because, Heidi, to be honest, the demand for animal protein in the key areas where we work, cattle, swine, and poultry will continue to remain strong as emerging economies demand access to some of those animal proteins. Definitely not an impact in fiscal year 2022. You can, as well as I, sort of project what will happen long term, but not a short-term concern. As it relates to volatility and Human Health, the only thing I would say is I would expect a gradual improvement in our Human Health business throughout the year. The key factor that you should consider is that as of the beginning of this financial year, our acquisitions of UAS Labs and HSO will be incorporated in organic growth, it will provide and bring that balance. I already stated that both of those acquisitions had a strong growth in FY 2021 that did not account into organic growth. The raw material situation is not specific to Chr. Hansen. There is a global shortage of some of those materials. I have mentioned that they did not impact the orders that we had committed, it impacted our ability to go after new business. We have worked very hard to normalize that situation as we get into the FY 2022. On your question of lowering prices to accelerate growth, we really do a value-based approach to the market. I don't think we gain new businesses by pricing. We gain new businesses by innovation and our customer intimacy, and that sort of remains our strong belief on access to market. Just to wrap up on Animal Health, I think our biggest opportunity is to continue to drive penetration and global rollout of our solutions, and that's what will continue to drive the growth. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Christian Ryom from Nordea Markets. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. Starting with the margin, if I try to factor out the higher scrap rates and the R&D impairment you had in the last year, your guidance for next year at the midpoint implies a 50 basis points contraction in the EBIT margin. Could you quantify how that lower margin guidance splits between, say, higher investments into your OpEx space then assumptions for general cost inflation? That's my first question. The second question is to Bacthera, whether you can provide us an update on your joint venture and more specifically, sort of rough indications for what to expect in terms of financial contribution for the coming year. Thank you. With regards to the margin question, it's very important to say that when we talk about scrap and impairment, it was a very Q4-related item. If you look at the full year, EBIT margin for Food Cultures & Enzymes, which was the one that was impacted, the margin difference from into this year was driven by investments into the business, into R&D. Of course, again, that we go back to more normalized cost levels, post-COVID-19. That's specific with regards to the scrap and the impairment. It was really mainly visible in Q4. Just to be clear. We will also when we. Sorry, my question was to the guidance for next year. Again, if you compare full year 2021 to full year 2022, the difference is caused by COVID-19, that we will normalize the cost level. It's explained by HMO continuing to be a drag to our margins, higher inflationary levels. That's why we go with a more cautious number of 27%-28%. To your question about Bacthera. The highlight on Bacthera was that we received the manufacturing licenses for clinical production. We continue to work with several customers in the different regions, the pipeline looks very good. We will find in FY 2022, a good moment to provide an update on Bacthera, where you see in our results, in FY 2021, the share of loss of the JV was about $7 million, that has been sort of the burn rate for Bacthera. We're excited to see the momentum on the clinical phase I, phase II trials, our engagement with customers. Maybe the other thing I would mention on Bacthera is we have seen acceleration of some of the phase III trials maybe FDA approval and commercial approval of the first live biotherapeutic products may come earlier than we had originally expected. Okay. Would that imply that we should see the burn rate coming down here over the next quarters? No, I would assume the same level of burn rate, at least for fiscal year 2022. Okay. Thank you very much. The next question comes from the line of Mirco Badocco from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the questions. I'd like to get back to infant formula. The market has been weak, especially in China. Can you give us a bit more color on current trends you are seeing in infant formula and for HMO specifically, and also your expectation for the infant formula market in 2022 in China and in other key markets? Do you expect the underlying market to improve at all, to be back into growth? Related to this, how should we think about HMOs in this context? The other question is on Human Health. You mentioned customer de-stocking, limited access to raw materials. Is it something that will continue in the coming quarters? Final one is on tax rate. You said you expect higher tax rate in 2022. Is it just going back to 2020 levels? That's how we should think about it. Thank you. Lise, you want to take the tax question first, and then I will take the other. Maybe I can just start with the tax question. Yes, we do expect to go back to normalized levels. We had a one-time, non-recurring impact of around EUR 45 million in FY 2021 that will not be repeated in the future. That's impacting both the P&L and cash, of course. Now onto your questions on infant formula HMO. The infant formula market, indeed, basically our projections had been for a flattish to 1% growth development of the infant formula market and around sort of 2% over the period. The key aspect for us is if you take probiotic in infant formula, we see a large opportunity to continue to drive penetration of probiotics, and that is the most important driver. Obviously, HMO provides a nascent opportunity to add a front-panel ingredient into the infant formula. The first HMO market launches will be in the U.S. We expect that infant formulas with our HMOs will hit the market at some point before the end of the calendar year, and that will continue to grow. I have said previously, and I can maintain that we expect HMOs to grow north of 20% next year, and HMO would be a front-panel ingredient on the proposition that it brings the missing ingredient from mother's milk into infant formula. On the question of Human Health de-stocking, what we saw is we saw some quarters of very high Human Health dietary supplements growth during the pandemic that drove customers to higher levels of inventories of finished products that normalized during the second half of the year. There may be some tail of that into the beginning of the year, but we see that the situation has, let's say, largely normalized, and operating into normal safety stocks as we go into the future. Thanks. Can I just clarify one thing, Mauricio, you said on infant formula in China? I guess you said you expect 1%, if I haven't misunderstood, over the period for the underlying market growth. Is it the same thing-? That was global. At global. Okay. I think more difficult to make any prediction around the Chinese infant formula market. You know that the Chinese infant formula market really was affected by several factors. One of them COVID lockdowns, more mothers at home. I think the expectations or the views from the market is that the infant formula in China will continue to have two things, a strong preference for premiumizations, and even though you have seen a low birth rate, there's questions on the softening of the Chinese regulations about one child and what the impact will be. Still, remember, I would say that whether infant formula is flat, slightly declining, slightly increasing, the penetration of HMOs and the penetration of probiotics will be what drives our growth in infant formula. Yeah, very last one. Related to that, when do you expect HMOs to hit the Chinese market? That's a good question. As we have said that the Chinese government has opened the registrations for HMO, it is still very early on what the process will be, but we expect that to take a couple of years for the HMOs to be approved in the market. Thank you very much. I think we have time for one more question before we wrap up the call. The last question comes from the line of Rune Majlund Dahl from DNB Markets. Please go ahead. Yeah, morning. Just a clarification question left for me. Could you just confirm that you still believe that HSO and UAS can reach 30% margin by 2025? Maybe also on the phasing cost on Jennewein investments, how we are to think about those now with the delay. Thank you. If I start with the margin question. Of course, we don't guide that specific on it, but it's not completely off. It is that HSO and UAS Labs will be at a comparable level, that's our ambition, by the end of our strategy period. That is correct. On the HMO investments, the benefit of a little bit of the delay in the pickup and the development of the market is that we can be very planned about how we build our Kalundborg site. We don't know at this point in time how it will, and when it will, which quarters will be hit by which CapEx amount. We're planning this very thoroughly and have now the benefit of tracking very well in parallel with the development of the market. Okay. Thank you. Just to be specific, Q4 last year, you said very specifically that you're going to reach 30% margin by 2025 in the acquired businesses. I was just wondering if that had changed. That was a no, right? That's the range we are targeting. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you very much for listening to Q&A. This concludes today's conference call and Q&A session. Thank you for joining, and we look forward to continuing our dialogue during the upcoming virtual roadshows. Thank you all. This concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.
Loading workspace