Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the BioGaia audiocast with teleconference Q4 2021. Today I am pleased to present CEO Isabelle Ducellier and CFO Alexander Kotsinas. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. Speakers, please begin. Thank you, and good morning, everybody. Thank you for attending BioGaia's interim statement Q4 2021. Next page, please. If we start with our executive summary. I mean, we had a strong Q1, a weak Q2, a very strong Q3, and we are very happy to present a very good Q4 as well. Therefore, we have a pretty good year. If we consider excluding the currency effect, our sales increased by 12%. We keep saying that we are our objective to go back to double-digit growth. It's done, and I'm really happy for that. We've been through, I mean, two years of pandemic with a lot of uncertainty. I'm simply very happy to present this Q4. If we look per region, we have some discrepancy as usual. The good news is that in the last quarter, we could see at least the light at the end of the tunnel in EMEA, and I will come back to that a bit more in detail afterwards. It's still doing super strongly in APAC. America has decreased, but that's mainly because of Brazil and the North America is doing super well. Thanks to that, we have a strong increase of our EBIT for the quarter at +17%, and we've been able to generate a very strong EBIT on the yearly basis of 2021. We've increased with 11%. Next page, please. What has happened during this Q4, I mean, mainly the news, the big news, is that we've been acquiring our distributor in the U.S., Everidis. That officially today changed name to BioGaia USA. I will come back to that on the next slide. Then, you've probably noticed as well that the Board of Directors proposed ordinary dividend of SEK 3.63 and an extra dividend of SEK 11.29. This SEK 11.29 is basically an extra dividend for this year, but as well because the Board is suggesting to compensate for the year 2019 and 2020. If you remember well, we were very cautious, so we didn't know what's going to happen with the COVID, and therefore we didn't distribute any extra dividend. As of now, we have a strong year, we have the capacity to do it. That will be decided at the general assembly in May 6. At least that's a very nice proposal from the Board of Directors. Next page, please. Of course, I mean, Everidis, our U.S. distributor. That key information of the Q4, we acquired 80% already from the company, Nutraceutics, which is the parent company of our distributor, Everidis. We've been working with Everidis since 2007, so it's an old partnership. We know exactly what we are doing. We know the team, which is a very strong team. They have been able to implement the omnichannel strategy we want to implement in every market very successfully. We are very strong on marketplaces such as Amazon and Target. Now we start to increase as well offline. The team has a good marketing team, both in terms of medical and consumer. That's basically now the new benchmark for BioGaia Group, and I'm really, really happy to welcome the 23 employees into the BioGaia constellation. Next page, please. Q4, we had a couple of launches as usual, despite the fact that most of them have been still digital. You will probably notice that we have five launches, which is related to the immune boost. It has been very strong in Q3 as well. Consumer wants to prevent them to be sick, and we had a lot of campaigns with back to school, back to work, and they understood that, okay, 80% of my immune system is driven by my gut. I want to stimulate my immune system, and therefore our offer with BioGaia Protectis and Reuteri Protectis with vitamin D has been really successful during this quarter. If we go to the next page and look at the sales per segment, both pediatrics and adult are growing, both at quarter level and year-to-date level. Here again, I'm very happy to see that both for the quarter and for the year, the adult segment is growing faster because it's exactly in line with our strategy. We want to be able to address all unmet consumer, some consumer needs through life. We are very strong in pediatric. We have a unique positioning there, but we want to penetrate the adult portfolio, the adult population. Now we do see really a strong tendency quarter after quarter that this is happening. Next page, please. Now looking by region. Yes, at least increase in Italy and Spain in the quarter. We've been waiting for that six quarters in a row. We've been speaking a lot with our distributor, and now we have a new strategy in place. They call it hybrid, I call it omnichannel, whatever. They were very strong in pharmacy, but now we are as well online. So you can find our products on Amazon in Italy and a lot of online pharmacies. They have been very active with social media campaign to reach consumers to promote the back to school, especially for the children say, "Okay, now the society is opening up, your children are going back to school. They are going to be, of course, in contact with other small little diseases perhaps. So please work on your prevention for you and for your kids." It is starting to pay back. We are very happy. Obviously, we didn't compensate the whole year for Italy, but we have a very strong quarter for Italy and Spain in the quarter. Regarding APAC, I mean, now you get used to very strong increase and, but plus 35% for the quarter, that's a kind of a record for APAC, and there are a lot of good explanations for that. I mean, in China, growing super strong online still. But what we did is that we had the BioGaia Academy in Chinese, and that's the first time we do it. BioGaia Academy is a program for healthcare professionals in different areas. We have one for pediatric, we have one for oral health. But this time because sometimes when we have this, I mean, training program in English, it might be a bit complicated for our Chinese friends. We've done that for China, mainly in Chinese and with key opinion leader, Chinese key opinion leader, because we want to be stronger as well in the medical sphere in China to work on BioGaia brand awareness and credibility. That's worth mentioning. For Indonesia, it's both a demographic impact. I mean, it's still a very big population with a pretty young population, and our distributor has been really working hard online. Here as well, we see a lot of increase in sales. In Japan, here, I mean, they have been struggling because they are still under a strict lockdown despite very few cases of COVID, but that's another discussion. The fact is that it's still and people are working from home, the society is, I mean, mainly paralyzed. Having said that, our BioGaia Japan own distribution company has been able to activate their sales of oral probiotics on their own e-com solution and as well to work with dental clinics. In Hong Kong, it's back to growth, but we have to admit after two very, very difficult years. Here as well, a very strict condition in terms of COVID and then as well some political issue. Hong Kong is starting again, but that will take some time to compensate on a yearly basis. The last region, Americas. Brazil has been a bit weak. It's mainly, to be honest, order timing and phasing. I guess we will have a better Q1 2022. For the U.S., Everidis has, you know, done a fantastic job. We have fantastic figures. For the first time in our history, we have one market doing more than SEK 100 million in turnover, and that's the USA. You understand why we were so eager to get closer to the relationship we have today with Everidis by acquiring them. At the end of the quarter, plus 10%, for the total region, plus 5%, but plus 12% if you exclude the, I mean, the currency impact. If you go to the next page on gross margin, I mean, nothing significant to notice except that we've increased once again our margin, mainly thanks to increased productivity at BioGaia Production here in Sweden. If we go to the next page, I will ask Alexander, our CFO, to present the financials. Yes. Hello. Thank you, Isabelle. If you move on to the slide called OpEx. If you look at our costs, we had OpEx increase of 12%. Total OpEx of about SEK 106 million in the quarter versus SEK 95 million one year ago. However, that increase in cost is mainly driven by some restructuring costs and the cost for acquisitions that we have mentioned here previously. Those costs were about SEK 13 million. If you exclude those costs, we have an OpEx of about SEK 94 million versus SEK 95 million a year ago. It actually a decrease of 1%, total cost. If we then look at the composition of the OpEx, the different lines, we see that, regarding sales, we have costs of SEK 67 million versus SEK 50 million one year ago. The increase there is mainly driven by partly the restructuring cost of SEK 6.5 million and an increased activity level, which then drives increasing cost in sales. If you look at our admin, we have admin costs of SEK 12 million versus SEK 7 million one year ago. Here the increase is due to the acquisition of Everidis. It's about SEK 6.7 million. That's basically the whole increase in admin costs. If you look at R&D, R&D is increasing from SEK 21 million to SEK 24 million, an increase of 13%. If you exclude MetaboGen and BioGaia Pharma, you will see that we have an even higher increase, and that increase is due to increased cost for basically clinical studies and other projects within R&D as we move back to a more normalized situation after COVID-19. Last, we have another cost line called other costs, which is positive currency effects of SEK 3.3 million versus a negative effect of -SEK 8 million last year. All in all, our OpEx increased with 12%. Next slide, please. If you look at the P&L, our total sales, as Isabelle explained, increased with 11%. Our OpEx increased with 12%, and this leads to an operating profit of 17% increase and a margin of 26%. However, as I previously mentioned, we have these one-off costs. If you adjust for those, we have an EBIT of SEK 65 million versus SEK 45 million one year ago, an increase of 45%. We have an adjusted EBIT margin of 32% versus 24% one year ago. Just to summarize for the full year then, we have a sales increase of 5%, we have an EBIT increase of 11%, and we have an adjusted EBIT increase of 21%. The adjusted EBIT margin is 35% for the full year, which is then obviously above our financial target slightly. If we move on to the next slide, cash flow. Our cash flow from operating activities increased with 3% to SEK 56 million, versus SEK 55 million one year ago. Cash flow from investing activities was -SEK 90 million, versus -SEK 2 million one year ago. The main explanation is then the acquisition of Everidis or Nutraceutics, which was about SEK 87 million of those SEK 90 million. Cash flow from financing activities was -SEK 10 million versus +SEK 1.125 billion last year. That was the equity increase we did. That leads then all in all to a total cash flow for the period of -SEK 43 million versus SEK 1.17 billion in the same period last year. That leaves us with cash at the end of the period of SEK 1.48 billion. As Isabelle explained, it is proposed that we pay out the dividends of SEK 14.92 per share, which then equals about SEK 300 million that we will then pay out in dividends. With that, I hand over to Isabelle for the concluding remarks. Thank you, Alex. As a conclusion, I can just repeat that we have a healthy Q4. We are happy to see that EMEA is recovering. We are extremely satisfied with our results in APAC and in U.S. We've been accelerating our B2C journey with the launch of BioGaia UK in November. If you look at the year, we took over BioGaia brand in Sweden for the adult portfolio in January. We opened BioGaia Finland in March. Now we've launched BioGaia UK in November, where you can already find our I mean, the old portfolio both on Amazon and on our own website. Now we are looking at wholesaler for pharmacy and the acquisition of Everidis. I mean, of course, we have to remain I mean, cautious. We don't know what is the next Omicron or variant coming for next year. Based on our new organization, based on the strong consumer demand and our BioGaia brand getting stronger and more and more global, I mean, I remain very confident about the future. I have to say that I'm particularly pleased with this year. As you remember, I started as CEO of BioGaia in November 2018, and that very quickly I saw that the future of BioGaia was really depending on, one, building a global brand. Two, be at every consumer touch point, or in other words, this omnichannel strategy. We started to implement it in the U.S. and, based on the success of that, we started to implement it a bit everywhere. Now we're back to double-digit growth. We have to always remain cautious, but at least I can enjoy my day by coming with this report, and I will be happy to answer to your questions. We have a first question from Kristofer Liljeberg from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Yeah, thank you. I have a few questions if that's okay. First, could you maybe explain a little bit more what's going on in Brazil? If I remember correctly, Americas were a bit weak in the third quarter as well. I think back then you also said U.S. was strong. If you could confirm this is only related to phasing effects or does it reflect weakness in the Brazilian market? Then I wonder a little bit about the strategy of selling direct in the U.S. Is that a strategy you think would make sense in more markets than where you do it today, so that we should expect you to take over from more distributors or collaborate closer with distributors? Based on this strategy, I guess it also is more attractive for you to look at product acquisition. Is that something you have set up activities around now rather than having acquired the U.S.? That's my question. Thank you, Kristofer. To answer to your first question, I mean, basically, the LatAm region works, I mean, pretty well if you consider their situation and the way they address the pandemic. On one end, we are working with Abbott in at least 10 countries now. I visited them in December. Very committed team, very strong result in Mexico, very strong result in Colombia, in Ecuador, in Panama. I mean, I'm not worried. We have been pursuing our investment in LatAm, where we actually saw some of our competitor and in Latin America, it's mainly Sanofi with their brand Enterogermina. I mean, they stopped investing. I mean, the situation was so bad that they say, "Okay, let's not invest anything." We've continued, and we've taken market share. I'm not worried. Regarding Brazil more specifically, it's always a problem with phasing order. On the long run, I don't see a super strong double-digit increase in Brazil, no. I see a sound single-digit growth continuing in Brazil. We have not announced it, but we are going to launch a new product with them, a mini pack. They are working on the launch. I was supposed to go there to support the launch in two weeks' time, but there are so many cases of COVID that they send everybody back home, so I'm canceling my trip. We have some launch plan for the mini pack that we really believe in. That's for your first question. Second question- Could I ask you about? Yeah. Follow-up on Brazil. What's the reason you don't think that market will grow double digits anymore? I mean, not in 2022. I think they have really to recover. Okay. Okay Okay ... from the pandemic. It's a huge market. Okay Today, I mean, the name of the game will be for us to launch adult portfolio, because demography is perhaps not as dynamic as it was before. We have to be able to propose a product for adults in Brazil. Today, we are only dependent on the pediatric range. That would be there. When we find the solution, I mean, then we started to have a lot of contacts with the gastroenterology for adult community. You know, our Chief CSO is from Uruguay, so yeah, there are a lot of connections in Latin America. That would be the way to move forward in Brazil. Your next question about selling direct to the U.S., and if you're supposed to wait for new or forward integration the same way. I mean, we are very pragmatic. We don't want like to take over the world when it's not necessary. I was thinking about Abbott in Latin America. I mean, we will never. I mean, we are far away from being able to do such a good job that they are providing in the field. When we have strong distributor that know their market with big sales force capacity to visit healthcare professional as opposed to being online, there is absolutely no reason why we should change it. in the case of markets where perhaps we are not satisfied with our current distributor or when we don't have any distributor or where the distributor say, "You know what? If we would be together, really, we will be stronger. let's get married," then that might happen. Yeah, that might happen. obviously, it will be for, strategic reason on important market, where we see a strong potential for probiotics in the future. then your last question regarding product acquisition, I can tell you it's still on. We are looking at, I mean, so many different companies contacting us, with, lots of good ideas. normally, we are all the time very excited until we sign an NDA, and then we ask for their clinical results and then we... We are all the time a bit disappointed, or perhaps our standard are a bit too high, I don't know. For the moment, we have not find it. We don't give up. There are a lot of very interesting research program ongoing. We are not giving up, but it's difficult, very tricky to find the right suitable product at the same clinical standard level that we want for BioGaia brand. You're not ready to buy a strong consumer brand if it's not backed up by a strong scientific evidence? If it has to be called BioGaia, never. Because that will totally damage the brand. The 32 years of efforts we've been doing to create our brand reputation will be spoiled in one day. It takes a lot of time to build a brand. It takes two minutes to destroy it. We'll be very careful. Yeah, makes sense. Could I ask one more question? Sorry. How should we think about operating costs in 2022 now when activity is picking up? I mean, as you noticed, Kristofer, we've really tried to monitor our costs. When the time was complicated, we really tried to, I mean, save. Now under Q4, we see that, okay, we have a lot of opportunity to have a new marketing campaign, and we've been increasing our operating costs. That's basically my answer. We really try to be aligned with our turnover. When we see opportunity, when you invest one and you get two, obviously we do it. But we remain cautious. I mean, like in the U.K., it's a new activity for us, so you over-invest in the beginning because the name of the game is really to create traffic on Amazon. To generate traffic, you have to pay. I mean, to activate your campaigns. We have a lot of campaigns to attract consumers. The good thing we've noticed, especially on our e-com solution, is that we've generated traffic. They came to the site. They stay very long on the site. They come back. They repurchase. A lot of them are subscribing on a year basis, which is fantastic for us. The idea was to say, "Okay, you don't have to order every month if you need your Osfortis every month. Just subscribe. You get it every month directly sent to you at home. You don't have to do anything." We've seen a very high result for this subscribing campaign. The upfront investment is a bit higher, and we do hope that the return on investment after six months will be more interesting. That's my answer for the operating cost. Thank you. We have another question from Mattias Vadsten from SEB. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Some of them already asked here, but 3 from me, I guess. Firstly, it would be interesting to follow the development in Finland. I mean, given you established your own presence there early in 2021, I guess starting Q3, you will have sort of an uptake in that country going forward. Can you share with us if you're satisfied with the initial progress and when we can expect sort of Finland to again reach the sales level recognized there in the past? That's my first one. Okay. Finland, when we took the decision to stop working with Verman and start our own distribution company, the only reason why was that we wanted to have the BioGaia brand present in Finland. Verman had other strategic choice in that respect. They wanted more to capitalize on their own brand. That's why we decided to stop working with Verman. Having said that, it's a very bold decision. The RELA brand has more than 30% market share. I don't see us being able to come up to that level in the near future. That will be totally naive to believe that with so well-established brand, we can come up with a new, totally unknown brand, BioGaia, in Finland and take, I mean, a 30% market share in six months. Having said that, Finland is a really pharmacy-driven probiotic market. The Finnish consumer knows a lot about probiotic. It's part of their day-to-day life. They have a box of probiotic on the breakfast table for the whole family. They are very knowledgeable, and they go to the pharmacy, they ask for recommendation, and the pharmacies are very knowledgeable as well. Now they've seen that, "Oh, but in RELA, that's not the same strain anymore. What's that? Where are the clinical data behind that?" They start to say, "Okay, that's not what we want to recommend. We want to recommend the Reuteri strain that we know from before with the meta-analysis behind. We are listed everywhere. I mean, the BioGaia Finland is two people, so I can tell you there are. I mean, we don't have 10 people on the road. It's only two. But as soon as they open the door of a pharmacy, they say, "Well, that's us. We are the Reuteri strain. Our product." They get listed. The pharmacist is really now starting to recommend BioGaia instead to say, "That's a real strain with clinical data, so please go on." Having said that, it will take time to go back to the same level we had with RELA. Makes sense. Thanks for the flavor there. My second question relates to the gross margin, which were very strong. The improvement is alluded to product mix, which makes sense, and the efficiency improvement at the production unit that you talked about. Can you give some flavor here to what extent these are structural improvements that will carry on going forward rather than timing effect? I mean, we are working on the productivity all the time. We bought a new robot to automate the line. We are always trying to improve the productivity, which is already very high. That's a constant effort that the team is doing there. I think it's really a structural effort that are going to remain. It's not a phasing or one specific aspect. That's something which we work on very well. We might even look at perhaps manufacturing more by ourselves because we see that we are able to generate higher margin when we do that by our own. We don't want to end up neither in a situation where we will have to invest massively in CapEx just to have it in-house. Sometimes it's more clever to do that to outsource. That's a question we ask ourselves. We have a new head of operation. I don't know if you noticed it. That started in August, [Jens Vehling]. He's a very senior person in the probiotic world and in the pharma world. He's Danish. He's been in charge of all industrial sites at Chr. Hansen. He's been working for Ferring. He's a really senior guy in operation. That gives us as well a new eyes on how we do operate and how we could be better. That's great. Also in terms of your long-term EBIT margin target, you know, that remains at 34% here. Given the incremental margin from the acquired sales in the recent acquisition is 26%, and I would guess that the recent acquisition requires some investments. Going B2C in Finland, for example, now also in the U.K., how confident are you in that target over the long term or in the medium term at least to reach that? I mean, in the long term, I'm totally confident. In the short term, I don't think we should stick to it by the book. I don't think that's the way to handle opportunities. I see a lot of growth possible if we are ready to invest when it's necessary, not being focused only on the 34%. I would say that perhaps short term, we will not be sticking to the 34% by the book, but on the medium and long term, I don't see any problem at all. Thank you very much for all the answer. You're welcome. We have another question from Mattias Häggblom from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Thank you so much. In terms of the objective of getting back to double-digit growth, which you said is now achieved- Mattias, I'm sorry. I have just one problem with my dog. Sorry. I'm very sorry for that. That's the problem of being home. Yeah, sorry. I'm listening to you, Mattias. Yes. Good. In terms of the objective of getting back to double-digit growth, which you said is now achieved in your prepared remarks, at the same time, I'm thinking about, you know, some of your key markets which have still been affected by the pandemic and lockdowns have yet to fully recover. In terms of thinking ahead, is it fair to say that you've now turned a corner and outlook for double-digit growth is promising? Or were there elements in 2021 that were sort of extraordinary and hence could mean that the 2021 growth is misleading? Then I have a follow-up. I mean, opening of the society will help us a lot in all our traditional, more conservative pharmacy-driven markets. What's going to happen in the future, I think like now all the restrictions are gone in Europe, but not in Hong Kong and not in China. So that's a bit too early to say. But if the countries are opening up, I don't see any reason why we should not stay with this double-digit growth. And I only see I mean, basically, we are in a lot of markets mainly with one SKU. Now we've learned in a lot of different markets to launch the adult portfolio. So if the math are correct, I don't see any reason why we should not continue to grow for the year to come. Good. My second question is related to the earn-out for the remaining 20% in Everidis, the $22 million you referred to in the release. I'm trying to work out what growth needs to happen in order for that earn-out to materialize, and you referred to a sales multiple in the report. If I do the math, it seems as if Everidis, when we go U.S., needs to grow 40%-50% per year for the next 6-7 years for that to materialize. I know you spoke about 100% growth in U.S. in Q1, and I think 70% in Q2. Is that kind of compounded annual growth rate for the period the right way to think about it? Or what am I missing? I mean, when we discussed with our friend from Everidis about the acquisition, obviously we asked them to do a five-year plan that we've challenged a lot. We have a very ambitious distributor there. They are very confident about the evolution of the domestic market. Here as well, we have to keep in mind that it's still 80% driven by drops. Now we've launched the all Prodentis range, so both for adults, for kids, and soon for baby. We've launched a totally new range, the Immune Boost in the Q3 2021. We add up so many different SKUs that we support heavily. Here we are with heavy investment in the market, but it's paying back. Return on investment, even if sometimes it's a big fight, it's okay. You're really sure you need to invest that amount of money on Amazon? They say, yes. You see that if you invest one, you'll get much more out of it. They're right. It's a very bullish plan. But I believe them. I think we're going to see just a lot of positive news happening from the U.S. I know that Amazon globally is looking at offset in the U.S. with very interesting eyes. Yes, I'm very strong on U.S., I would say. Good. I had one final question, more of a clarification maybe. Is it possible to help us understand where you are in terms of sales in Spain and Italy using pre-pandemic levels as index 100? Is 60 or 70 the right way to think about it? Or where are we? You know, how deep, how steep were the drop and where are we in terms of the recovery? That's a tricky question. When I look at Italy, mainly I look at the 2019 figures as a benchmark. That's basically the target is not to I mean to increase versus last year and the year before, yes. I mean, that's obvious. We cannot do worse. The plan is really to go back to pre-pandemic time. That's the way we look at Italy and Spain. You're not willing to quantify, you know, using 2019 figures. No. You know, how deep down are we? No, we don't disclose it for market normally. It's just a matter of time. If I tell you that we are looking at 2019 as a benchmark for this market, then you can understand. Good. Thanks so much for taking my questions. You're welcome. We have no further questions. Okay. Thank you, everybody, for attending this call and looking forward to meet you after Q1 2022 then. Thank you. Bye-bye. This now concludes our presentation.