Welcome to Biotage Q4 report for 2022. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing star five on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to CEO Tomas Blomquist and CFO Maja Nilsson. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call. I'm Tomas Blomquist, President and CEO of Biotage, and I'm here with Maja Nilsson, our CFO, Lars Backman, our Chief Legal Officer, and Olof Nordh, our Executive Vice President, Business Development. I will first give a short overview of the quarter and the year. Then I will share some exciting news with you. After Maja has gone through the Q4 and full year financial results, we will answer your questions. Let's start with our executive summary. We have reported very strong results with eight straight double-digit organic growth quarters and five record quarters in a row. We can now conclude that 2022 was a record year breaking with SEK 1.5 billion milestone achieved in net sales and more than SEK 300 million in EBIT. We are disappointed that we ended the year with our weakest quarter, which did not fulfill our expectations, both on top and bottom line. The -0.8% organic growth in the quarter was offset mainly by two reasons, the reduced COVID-19 vaccine business in our scaleup product area, and a slowdown at our biggest CRO customer in China. The profitability in the quarter was negatively impacted by the challenges in supply chain, energy crisis and inflation, but also to our planned transformational acquisition, which I will soon come back to. When looking at our regions, Americas again delivered another record quarter, we also saw good growth in APAC. From our product areas, we saw the highest growth in analytical testing, Water and Environmental Testing, and in Biologics and Advanced Therapeutics. I'm also pleased to say that we had a positive cash flow from operating activities and again, a healthy balance sheet development. Before Maja dives into the Q4 financial results, I would like to share some exciting news with you. We have today entered into an agreement to acquire Astrea Bioseparations, a high-growth chromatography solutions provider from Gamma Biosciences. This is a transformational deal that we've been working on for a long time and a combination that makes us a global chromatography platform company. It has taken us 25 years to be a world-class chromatography leader within small molecules. Now we are naturally moving into the large molecule chromatography area. The acquisition is a strong fit for both companies. It strengthens our customer workload solutions. It extends Biotage chromatography platforms into the higher growth and larger bioprocessing segment all the way to the commercial phase with the recurring consumable-based revenues. We will achieve higher quality with increased exposure to leading biologics and advanced therapeutic customers. We will also get complementary competence from Astrea, improved geographical spread, and increased manufacturing capacity. Thirdly, increased innovation. We will have a rich near-term pipeline of new product launches across chromatography resins, columns, and nanofiber-based membranes, as well as higher product margins. Some quick facts about Astrea Bio. Astrea's revenue in 2022 was 23.2 billion SEK, and of that, around 90% are coming from reagents and consumables. The revenue growth prior year is over 90%, and the new total addressable market is around $10 billion. The high barrier to enter process scale chromatography in the regulated pharmaceutical segment, combined with strong demand for downstream solutions, position us together with Astrea for long-term growth. The company has over 150 employees, a highly engaged and competent team with decades of experience with facilities located in Canada, U.S., and U.K. What we can say when looking at these numbers is that Astrea is an extremely attractive company that is well equipped for the major advancements taking place in the biopharmaceutical market. Here we get an overview of Astrea's differentiated best-in-class technologies. Astrea is a leading supplier of chromatography resins, absorbance, and columns, as well as novel nanofiber-based purification technologies to the life science industry. In fact, Astrea supplies chromatography resins for more than 21 FDA and EMA approved manufacturing processes. Astrea also has a strong R&D capability and high quality and disruptive technology platforms driving a robust product pipeline. Our long-term strategy has been to increase our revenue coming from the Biologics and Advanced Therapeutics business segment. With the acquisition, revenues coming from this segment are expected to grow from 3-27%. Also, the aftermarket split will be greatly improved. After the acquisition, the system sales are 36% and the aftermarket sales 64%. I will hand over to Maja to speak about Q4 and the full year 2022 figures. Maja. Thank you, Thomas. Okay, let's start with looking at our customer focus areas. In this quarter, we are seeing the highest reported growth ever from our RedTech area, where the successful recent launch of our Extrahera high volume workstation is contributing. Americas is the biggest market leading the way in RedTech, but we see strong development also in APAC and EMEA. In Blue- and GreenTech, growth is mainly coming from Americas with the environmental customers and the food, agriculture customers. Within WhiteTech, we could see the continued strong development from Biologics and Advanced Therapeutics offset by a negative development in our scaleup business as the COVID-19 vaccine development is reduced. Looking at our sales per product area, the impact from the reduced COVID-19 vaccine development is visible, impacting the sales development negatively within our product area scaleup. As the scaleup business is project-oriented, it tends to have ups and downs. Important to state that the underlying business, when excluding the COVID-19 impact in the previous year, is actually showing a steady growth. The strongest growth is yet again coming from our product area, Biologics and Advanced Therapeutics, where the success of the launch of our PhyPrep system for automated plasmid purification continues to drive growth. Our product area, Water and Environmental Testing, has the strongest reported sales ever in this quarter, with Americas being the strongest market. We're also very pleased to see the strong development of analytical testing in EMEA, delivering the strongest growth in this product area in Q4. Let's look at the aftermarket sales. The service business is growing nicely, mainly in EMEA, partly coming from the expansion of the recently acquired Oligo business. The successful recent product launches are supporting the healthy system sales development. Our automated plasmid purification system, PhyPrep, together with our Extrahera high volume workstation, are contributing. The strong growth of consumable sales that we have seen in this year was negatively impacted in Q4 by the slowdown of the scale of COVID-19 business. Once again, important to state that the underlying consumable sales, when excluding the COVID-19 impact in the previous year, is still growing. Let's look at our regional sales. We're pleased to see that Americas continue to show strong sales growth with yet another record sales quarter. As mentioned before, the reduced COVID-19 vaccine development is negatively impacting the EMEA region. In APAC, we are seeing the impact from the slowdown at our biggest CRO customer in China, whereas other markets in APAC had a strong development in the quarter, especially India. Q4 tends to be the weakest quarter historically for Biotage when it comes to profitability, and this quarter was no exception. In the Q4 our profitability was negatively impacted by the continued supply challenges, inflation, and also an unfavorable product mix as a result of the reduced COVID-19 related sales and scaleup, which has been a high margin segment for us. To offset the increased prices in our supply chain, we are implementing stepwise price increases for our customers. The sometimes dramatic price increases for purchase components have created a gap to our own price increases, which is short term impacting our profitability negatively. At the end of 2022, we rolled out our common ERP platform to our Chinese entity, improving internal visibility and standardization. We have revised our allocation of freight costs for our Chinese entity, resulting in a negative effect on gross margin in the quarter. We have continued to build on our winning team, mainly investing in further commercial capabilities. Still, the investments have been kept at a healthy level. OPEX is negatively impacted by currency impacts from the weak Swedish krona and the acquisition related expenses. Also in this quarter, for the first time this year, and opposite to Q4 last year, the currency impact in other operating income was negative, coming from the revaluation of receivables and liabilities. Measures are taken on investments and expenditure to mitigate the short-term profitability impact. In the quarter, there are transaction costs of SEK 15 million related to the acquisition of Astrea Bioseparations. That's included in OPEX. When adjusting for these costs, the adjusted EBITDA improves 4 percentage points in the quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA margin is still improving for the full year and quite significantly when excluding the one-time impact of SEK 15 million. On this slide, I would just like to briefly comment on our cash flow development this quarter. The cash flow from operating activities was somewhat lower in this quarter than previous year. The main reason for this is the lower operating margin. It is, however, offset by positive contribution from working capital, mainly reduced accounts receivables and a positive momentum on the inventory build-up. Most importantly, the cash flow is still positive and healthy, putting Biotage in a good position to take on 2023 and our future success. Back to you, Thomas. Thank you, Maja. Now we're ready to answer your questions. If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Mattias Häggblom from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Yep. Thank you so much. A few questions, please. I'm starting with the acquisition. I'm curious to better understand the bridge for sales and EBITDA from the base in 2022 to the projection for 2025. It implies a sales CAGR of close to 50% for the next three years. What kind of visibility do you have for that? Is it built on existing products and consumables linked to those growing rapidly in volume, or is it built on an assumption of a lot of new products coming up on stream, generating the growth in consumable sales? That's my first. I have a few follow-ups, please. Yeah. I can start on that one. I mean, we have had a very thorough due diligence process for this acquisition. We have been looking at the numbers and had substantial discussions with management and key individuals. We have had quite a good visibility into the forecast. However, it is a forecast. I want to stress that, of course. We do have confidence in that. We have confidence in the management team and their ability to make a turnaround of this business as they are doing. The performance that we have seen in 2022 is really supporting that. There is quite some confidence in that area. I wasn't... You know, thanks for that, color, but I'm not fully clear on if it's mainly existing products growing with existing customers or if it's built more on new customers coming online with launches that drives the volume. You know, I'm not expecting any numbers, but perhaps the proportions or at least some kind of qualitative comments. Yeah. I can tell you that. Well, they have been both expanding. I mean, they are looking at a geographic expansion that is also creating room for growth for the business. This management team has been able to attract new customers coming in. We also see a very impressive R&D pipeline and launches have been made. Also new products contributing there and a very exciting new technique with this nanofiber. I think that is there are quite a few factors behind this high growth. Good. I'm curious on the, to the extent there is overlap on the customer side with existing Biotage and Astrea Bios operations. If so, what proportion are from customers that you already have a relationship with or to what extent are they from new customers? Any color you can give on that? Well, overall, we're seeing strategic benefits from synergies between the two of us. We will obviously get some quality high-level new customers. We have started to enter the space within biomolecules through the acquisition of PhyNexus, and now we will get a rapid acceleration through the team of Astrea. It's gonna be highly complementary, both from competence as well as from geographical spread. Good. Then a final one before I drop back in the queue. A question on existing Biotage. I know you don't guide on the 2023 full year, but anything you can say to help us think about the next couple of quarters, any pulls or pushes or, you know, if the new base for scale-up in this quarter is the right way to think of the growth for that business going forward? Anything you can say to help us navigate the next couple of quarters would be helpful. I mean, of course, we don't provide guidance, and we are very cautious on that. I think what we're seeing, as I mentioned before, the scale-up business, that is project-oriented, so there are ups and downs. There are fluctuations always and has always been in that business. And once again, the underlying when you extract the COVID-19 related sales, is actually growing steadily. There are ups and downs and I think we should look at this as a short-term fluctuation. Yeah. That's very helpful. Yeah. We're very confident in our underlying business. Perfect. That's clear. Of course, and being cautious, I mean, we don't know for how long. I mean, it's a short-term fluctuation. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thanks for that. Yep. Thanks so much. Thanks, Matthias. The next question comes from Carl Norell from SEB. Please go ahead. Yes. Hello, Tomas and Maja. A couple of questions from my side as well. If we start on the acquisition, I mean, first one on, you can say anything about the pipeline of acquisitions in Astrea as of now, I guess they've recently done an acquisition. Do they have any more acquisitions in the pipeline that you expect to close during this year? Any comment on that would be helpful. Well, I mean, we're not commenting on these things, but obviously, I mean, you will see now two combined teams with great ambitions. You've heard us repeatedly also speak about our organic growth agenda as well as the inorganic growth agenda. Time will tell. We will at the end of Q2, we expect this to happen, the formalization of the two, then we will kick off on the exciting journey together. More news to come. Okay. I have a question regarding the transaction. Was the structure, the transaction structured auction, or were you know, doing this by yourself, or how was the transaction structured? Hi, this is Lars Bäckman talking, Chief Legal Officer at Biotage. This was not an auction. This was an exclusive negotiation. We had exclusivity over a time period. Okay, that's great. Thank you. I have a question on the Astrea's customer base. I mean, how much is within, let's say, drug discovery or research and then more, you know, production late stage commercial customers? Well, when we're looking... Of course, we will get to know more insights. We've had a thorough due diligence that, yeah, Maja referred to. What we can say is that there is a fairly balanced approach. What we're extremely happy with is that we build a world leading position within flash chromatography in the basic research drug discovery area. Now we will get the advantage finally to move more into the, yeah, phase I, II, III, and IV, and even into commercial phases, and this will be a breaking combination between the two of us. Okay, that's great. Then just some questions on the quarter. I mean, Q1 for quite some time where you report negative organic growth. I'm just curious a bit on how long do you see this continuing? I guess the comparable numbers are quite tough in my view, at least in the upcoming quarters as well. Any kind of color on that would be really helpful because I think there's quite some uncertainty out there, given that you don't really have been saying how much has been COVID revenues, et cetera. I mean, well, basically in 2022, of course, when you look at the scale of business, a significant part of that growth has been coming from the COVID-19 business. We don't know the outlook of that slow down exactly. I mean. It is, as we said before, there is the underlying business in scale-up is growing steadily. We've always had these ups and downs within scale-up. Not too worried about that. It's a short term aspect, I think. Okay. On ATDBio in the quarter here, seems like it's not really growing. What can you say regarding that business? I don't know, but in my view, it's not really been performing according to plan, maybe, or a bit lower than my expectations. I think your as well when you did acquisition. Can you just comment anything on the outlook of that business, would be helpful. If you see the reported numbers, you see diagnostics reporting, 17% on the quarter. We are happy with the development when it comes to building new customer pipelines. It's somewhat difficult also to reflect on this quarter because we also made the acquisition in the midst of the previous quarter. There can be a lot of, you know, shifts back and forth. I think it's more fair to judge us going forward from 2023. We're very happy with the robust buildup of new customers. Okay. Just one last one from my side. It's on the cost side here going forward. I mean, if you see a year now in 2023, we see a lot of your, let's say, competitors, but, you know, similar companies in the same sectors, et cetera, are guiding for lower growth. I mean, what can you do in terms of, you know, cost initiatives to keep the cost level on a tight level? Are you know, expecting to continue to invest a lot? What can you say? How much will you prioritize, you know, growth versus margin in a, in a, let's say, weaker market where organic growth is a bit lower than your target of 12%? Well, as always, Tomas and I have a very clear profitability focus, so that will continue. Of course, we shouldn't be too worried at a short term negative dip in sales. We are confident in our business coming back strongly in future. Of course, as I mentioned before, when we have these types of dips, we take measures and look at our cost, costume. We're doing that of course actively, and we will continue to invest for the future growth, but we will do so also with that profitability in mind as always. Yeah. Also, know that A lot of, yeah, money was also built into the exciting news, the transaction news that we had foreseen for today. We're a proactive company, and we're investing for the future. If there will be hiccups, we will take proactive actions. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. That was all for me. Thank you, Carl. The next question comes from Lars Hevreng from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Yes, thanks. In terms of the acquisition, how would you characterize the revenue visibility into that acquired chromatography business compared to the chromatography business you have? Does that differ from in any way, depending on client breadth or client portfolio? No, this will be a clear one. You will see when it happens, which we're excited and looking forward to, you will see it built into the Biologics Advanced Therapeutics. Now you probably kind of understand why we also proactively build a new structure around it, because here you will see that we're moving from a 3% company to a 27 balanced company in higher, faster-growing areas. The complete Astrea business will be reported within Biologics Advanced Therapeutics. Yeah, thanks. I was more thinking about the acquired business, their revenues. Do you have longer-term visibility into their contracting? I mean, their invoicing, so to say, than your existing business? Yeah. It's. Yes. Yeah, we have. I mean, as I mentioned, very thorough due diligence we have performed prior to the acquisition, we have looked into all of the customer contracts, existing contracts and any future renegotiation. We have a good visibility into that. We're also very pleased with seeing the new customers coming in and the way how they have addressed those sort of contracts going forward, which is also part of the huge success of the 90% growth that we've seen on the previous year performance. Okay. Thank you. With the kind of growth that you're projecting for from these new businesses, I guess, you're looking one year ahead. This is gonna be an organic growth, so to say. This, your growth target is almost gonna be met. Is that how we should see the contribution here? We never provide that guidance, Lars. I mean, you can look at that projection for 2025 and do some calculation backwards, we don't provide that guidance. Okay. Just on your comments again, also this quarter on the supply chain and the gross margin challenge. I mean, the inflationary environment, I guess that's, for many companies it's a pretty new thing, so to say. Mm-hmm. I guess should we see, when... How should we see about the timing here and things improving? Should we see some kind of structural effects, or should we only see as this more near-term effects, so to say? Yeah. When it comes to supply chain issues, I mean, that we have been living with those ever since the pandemic hit us and then intensified with the Ukraine war. I think what we can say about that is that it has been shifting and changing all the way in the past. In some areas, we're already starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel, so there are some improvements in some areas. As for other areas, it's hitting us again with new issues. I would say it has been a bit cumbersome to foresee the development in this area. Giving you some guidance here carefully, but I think that during this year, we will see some relief or relief in that area, but we haven't done so yet. All right. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Lars. The next question comes from Josefine Persson from Nordea. Please go ahead. Congratulations on the very nice acquisition that you're making. Thank you. First question is on the acquisition. It sounds like you're being quite confident regarding the sales growth for the business. Can you also please explain the main driver behind the steep margin expansion for the acquisition as well? Yeah. I mean, first of all, yeah, we feel confident. We have done a very thorough due diligence, as I mentioned now, sometimes. Of course, it is a projection and a forecast. Just to state that. On the margin development, well, of course, we are seeing that they have made some really nice investments previously into their first facilities and production capabilities that we will get the upside from in the coming years. There is also a lot of great discipline applied in the sales area with the customer contracts. Where we see some really nice ASP improvements. Then, of course, as you have read, Astrea acquired Delta, also, just before this signing. That is really something that will drive margin improvement as we are, consolidating a supplier, into. Those are maybe the key areas. All right. Thanks a lot. The second question is still on the acquisition. You expect to grow sales by around 50% CAGR. Can you please explain to us how you expect to grow faster than the market and gain market share from very big and established competitors such as Cytiva, which is also offering a complete workflow within bioprocessing? Yeah, thanks for the question. You see that we're shooting for higher numbers. That is part of the market intelligence. Again, confirming what we've tried to say in the intro and Maja's comments. I mean, this team has invested a lot in both infrastructure and personnel. Added a high caliber team in place, starting with management, adding great sales and R&D efforts. Huge plans to reach out in an untapped market, U.S. and also the APAC team where we are strong. We see this as a classical turnaround case where they have just started that journey. With the infrastructure and team of us, we will even realize additional strengths combined. We share the ambitious goals together with them. Based on the due diligence, we're gonna strive to achieve these numbers. Right. Thank you very much. Then a bit on the quarter. Getting back to scale-up again. In my view, I don't think COVID-19 can be the only explanation for scale-up getting back to 2018's levels in since you're also explaining that you're, you can use scale-up in other applications as well. Can we have any other explanations for this? If you go back, you had a big business some years ago related to your to the CBD area or extracting THC from CBD purification part. That would be a big thing. All right. Yes, I understand. Again, getting back to China, give us some color on how we're entering this year in China? Are we more optimistic, or do you still see the difficulties here, especially with the CRO that you that impacted your sales in China this quarter? Yeah. Yeah. It's probably twofold. Well, number one, and the exciting news for us and our great colleagues in China is that the world and the continent has opened up. We're very happy that we can now proceed with activities and actions that we used to do some years ago. That will open up doors. Yeah, reading the trend data that Maja was also touching upon, of course, we're mindful around the CRO trends within China, and we'll watch out these cautiously. We're very confident in the team and you've seen the performance over the years. Thank you. Thank you. My last question, should be that, from listening to the peers' Q4 reports, sales has been impacted by inventory build-up after COVID. Can you give us some color on what you see among your customers regarding inventory build-up that is that they are de-stocking now? Yeah. Yeah, we can. Yeah, we're mindful of giving this, of course, but yes, we can confirm that we see, yeah, trends, in the space that there is a slowdown. I mean, there is a continuous cash flow focus, for us as well as all the others. Yes, it's, it has been a clear trend, that we're also grasping. You could see that also on the numbers on the consumable part, which, I probably like to strike out. It's not only instrumentation, it's also, partly consumables. Then again, with that said, you see still the overall performance and the underlying business in many respects is, performing at very high levels. Okay. Thank you very much. That was all from me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Josephine. The next question comes from Mattias Häggblom from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thanks so much. A few follow-ups for me. You said the dialogue was exclusive. I'm curious to understand when the dialogue with the pre and the owners started. Yes. I can probably take that one. I mean, this has been a long process. It goes back even a couple of years. We started the dialogue. It was not with KKR, it was actually with the healthcare strategic growth business partner, where we're actually very happy to have Kugan to join our board, a high caliber. He's also gonna be joined by Kieran Murphy, that was the top executive and, yeah, leading the General Electric business and actually building the Cytiva business. To have that kind of caliber, you know, with us into the board, which is the expectation going forward, will be hugely good for Biotage, and management is very excited to get along. This has been a long-term journey where we eventually found our mutual platform building, that the combination between the two would be more powerful, combined. It's been a long process and of course, more intensified the last years. Also wish to stress the fact that we're also happy to get active ownership into us. It's something we've been lacking. We've also been very confident and happy in the dialogue the past two years, are also long-term thinking, they are. I think you can also read that on the press release, how they're building. Their skin in the game, you know, through the share deal and through the direct investment, and also build up of the earn out that is set up until 25. yeah, it started some year, and the twist got us to get the most attractive strategic fit that is fully complementary, that will drive our recurring revenue, that will fulfill a workflow gap that we've had moving into higher growth and foster markets. We're ticking all the boxes with a combination of the two. We cannot wait to get starting to work with Kieran, Kugan, and for sure, the exceptional management team and the Astrea Bio team. Thank you. That's clear. On the milestone payment of $45 million, is all of that paid out if you meet the targets outlined for revenues and EBITDA in 2025, or are those targets higher, or is it an all or nothing, or can it be a smaller milestone as well? Anything you can say there to help us understand? Okay. This is Lars Backman talking. We don't, we haven't disclosed that down to the details, but there is milestone payments over the years, and it's not a cliff milestone except for the last year. That's a cliff milestone. Other ones are on a scale, if you like. A final one from me. You mentioned that the gross margin for this business obviously is higher. Anything you can quantify to help us think about how this potentially will change the group mix on a gross margin level? Well Yeah. No, I don't think. We don't provide that guidance, Mattias. What I can tell you is that this is a business with fully focused on consumable sales, normally very high gross profit margin, which will contribute to the Cytiva overall margin development. Perfect. That's all for me. Thank you, Matthias. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Odysseas Manesiotis from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Hi, Tomas. Hi, Maja. Thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the acquisition. Looks like a great fit. Thank you. Firstly, sorry to press you on this. It's just getting quite hard to model for the next few quarters. On the COVID sales, talking about mRNA lipid purification, would it be fair to assume that this part of your business took about 5% of group sales in the first half of 2022? Is the margin here, let's say, quite above group, around 30-35% of the EBITDA level? Thank you. To give you some color at least, and not really responding to your question in full, but when it comes to that COVID-19 related business within scale-up, I think you can look at the 22 numbers and think that it was a substantial part of that growth, but it wasn't the biggest part of the whole scale-up. I mean, there are other elements in that business as well. What was the other question for Tomas? on the margin of, for the mRNA. Yeah ... purification costs. Yeah was that, is it fair to assume around 35% or at least higher than group? I mean, what we can say is that the COVID-19 related business in scale-up has had a very high profitability, and it's been the strongest profitability, I would say, in the profit areas. Perfect. Thank you very much, Maja. A quick one on Astrea. Is any particular modality within biologics, where the separation technology, let's say, is market leading or they have an edge compared to competition or the most established players? Or let's say a part of the biologics pipeline that you're more confident on getting a decent share on? Olof Nordh, EVP Business Development. Astrea Bio portfolio is quite broad when it comes to the different chemical modalities from a purification chromatography point of view. Of course, the cell and gene therapy space with viral vectors like lentiviruses and AAVs, adeno-associated viruses. There, Astrea is very well-positioned as relates both to the rest of the business, but of course also on the fiber technology, the membrane fiber technology that they have. All very clear. Thank you very much for the detailed answer. Thank you, Odysseus. Thank you. The next question comes from Carl Nolan from SEB. Please go ahead. Yes. Hello again. Just a question on the new owner in KKR that you have. I mean, how do you see them? I mean, you don't really have any, you know, maybe ownership that is, you know, they speak as KKR. You usually have or mostly have, you know, mutual funds, et cetera. How do you see this kind of company as an owner? Is it a long-term partner you think will own Biotage over time and work very closely with you? I mean, was it you that came up with the idea to not pay anything in cash, but rather through shares, or any comments on that would be interesting to hear your thoughts on? No. What we can say is that we've had, we got to know each other a few years ago when we came to this agreement. Of course, it's a mutual benefit for both. Again, I think they've put their skin in the game. We've also repeatedly said that it would be a good thing also for Biotage to have an active owner. You can see also in the quotes that both these great quality gentlemen, Kieran Murphy and Kugan, has mentioned their commitment and for the Biotage business going forward. We're confident based on the due diligence and the past years' discussions we've had that this will be a benefit for the shareholders, for Biotage and of course, for our new partners. Okay. That's clear. Then just the last one from my side on the acquisition here. Just model-wise, to make it easier maybe for us analysts to model it, is it possible to give any kind of... I know you don't give guidances, but how we should think on a growth in 2023, because I guess that will be quite important when we add the acquisition into the numbers? Do you expect, like, a gradual growth? I mean, to reach your target, you need to grow by around 45-50% per year. Is that what one should expect? Do you see it like an even growth? Yeah. You know, that we're not gonna touch upon it, of course you see an exceptional growth coming into 2022 versus 2021. I think the comment from Maja was a clear one of do the mathematics backward from the 25 figures that we have addressed, you will get to actually those numbers basically spot on what you were referring to. That's a logical way of assessing the growth going forward. Okay, that's great. Thank you, Carl. Thank you, Carl. The next question comes from Eric Castle from ABG. Please go ahead. Hello, Tomas and Maja. I just have one question. I want to understand some background. If I heard it correctly, you said that you've been in discussions since before KKR bought it. If I've done everything correctly, I mean, KKR bought Prometic, now known as Astrea, for $100 million in 2020. What has happened with that business since that's made it worth, you know, double the amount now? Yeah. The data that is revealed is what we can, state. You saw the 90% growth year-on-year. To my earlier comments, they of course also added the Delta position that was happening the 6th of January. You also had the Nanopareil business. They also acquired actually a snap company in Boston, Essential Life Solutions, I believe the name is. They've invested a lot. You see now with the strength and infrastructure and the strength and team, that they've just started to get some traction of that growth. Now the, yeah, a great partner like Biotage with our stronger geographical spread and infrastructure will take advantage to serve the biopharmaceuticals in an even better combined way together. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Erik. The next question comes from Mattias Häggblom from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Yeah, I'm really sorry. I'm coming back a last time. This is truly the last one. I'm getting some incoming here from people who. I guess I ask the question for them then. Question goes along the lines. The 90% growth in 2022 that is referenced in the press release, was all of that organic? It may sound that some of it was acquired. Tied to that, any comment you can give whether or not there was any COVID-related sales in that revenue number? Yeah. To respond to that, it was organic growth and non-COVID related TORCH business based on our due diligence assessment, and also confirmation from doing some special customer surveys in the process. That's very clear. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks, Mattias. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments. Thank you. To summarize our call, even though the Q4 was our weakest during 2022, we are very pleased with our performance and results in 2022 and how we achieved the greatest full year financial results in our 25-year history. The planned highly complementary acquisition of Astrea Bioseparations that we have announced today is a transformational deal that will strengthen our position as a global purification chromatography leader. To summarize, this acquisition will again extend Biotage franchise into the higher growth and larger bioprocessing segment all the way to scale up and manufacturing with higher gross margins and recurring consumable-based revenues. It will give us access to high quality Biologics and Advanced Therapeutics customers, as well as complementary competence from Astrea with improved geographical spread and increased manufacturing capacity. It will also give us higher product margins and a rich pipeline of new product launches across chromatography resins, columns, and nanofiber-based membranes. That is all we have to share today. We're looking forward to our next meeting in April 2023. Thank you for your interest. See you soon. This concludes the conference call.