Diagnostyka S.A.

Diagnostyka S.A.

35.74
EUR
+0.22
(+0.62%)
1.84EPS
23.24P/E
1.38BMarket Cap
Nov 26Next Earn

Q3 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptNovember 20, 2025

Operator

Traditionally, the conference will be broken down into two parts. We will go through the slides and the presentation, and then we will invite you to participate in a 15-minute Q&A session.

You can ask your questions in writing via our chat. The floor is over to Jakub Śwadźba, CEO.

Jakub Śwadźba

Good morning. Welcome, everyone, to the next conference call of Diagnostyka Group.

We'll be able to present very solid results yet again. Before we move on, I would like to tell you about certain organizational changes in our finance department and introduce our new speaker, Bartosz Cieślicki.

As you all know Mr. Paweł Hitwa very well, who joined our team a long time ago, two years ago, and assumed the position of the CFO to make sure that our going public and listing at the Warsaw Stock Exchange proceeds smoothly, but the period of going public and stabilizing our situation has reached its end.

The employees and the workforce are very reliable and solid and efficient. The situation of the company in general is very stable.

As we had agreed prior to Paweł's employment, Paweł decided to join another international company and tap into those international opportunities, and he will leave our company at the end of the year. As I said, Diagnostyka is a very stable company.

Bartosz Cieślicki has been with us since the very beginning, actually. He's been working with us for 18 years, and since the very beginning, he was deputy of our former CFO, and he assumed the position of the deputy chief financial officer.

Then he took part in our going public. He has been working recently as deputy chief financial officer for Paweł Hitwa, and I can tell you that this is a person who can handle very efficiently all our financial affairs for the entire Diagnostyka Group, and he will be the next speaker during our upcoming conference next quarter.

I invited Paweł Hitwa for him to say goodbye to all of you, and say a couple of words, and introduce Bartosz Cieślicki as well. The floor is over to Paweł Hitwa first, and then to Bartosz Cieślicki, and then we will discuss the company's operations in the third quarter.

Paweł Hitwa

Thank you, Jakub, for this introduction. Welcome, everybody.

As you all know, yes, it is true, I resigned from the position of the CFO of the company and the vice president of the company effective as of the end of the year. I wanted to take up new professional challenges that are ahead of me.

It is not at all related to Diagnostyka as a company. I believe that Diagnostyka has a very, very stable situation and has many years of successes and stable liquidity, stable operations ahead.

I am leaving Diagnostyka as a very well organized company with a very, very robust financial situation and financial footing. This will be confirmed by the results that we are just about to present to all of you.

I will give over the financial management of the company to Bartosz Cieślicki, and I believe that this is a very good decision and well-grounded decision. Bartosz, the floor is over to you.

Bartosz Cieślicki

As Mr. Śwadźba has mentioned, since 2007, I've been involved with Diagnostyka, and I've been working with Diagnostyka as a member of the management board and deputy CFO.

I know all about our strategic operations. I took part in these operations and these developments.

Thanks to these experiences, I believe that I understand Diagnostyka's business very well and the specificity of our operations across the board and all the specialists operations, be it financial or non-financial, that allows us to function efficiently and develop and grow. I will follow the footsteps of Paweł in a very stable business environment.

Let us now move on to our financial and operational results. Over to Jakub.

Jakub Śwadźba

It is my pleasure to start with the highlights, the facts and figures for the third quarter of 2025 in a nutshell, because this discussion will be developed more by Paweł later on. Year-on-year changes: in terms of tests volume going up 10% year-on-year, the group's revenue went up by over 26% year-on-year.

As you can see, based on the percentage increases, the prices went up due to the inflation and tests prices, but the product mix has changed as well because we are adding diagnostic imaging tests, which are much more expensive than medical laboratory tests. In terms of profit, this change is even more considerable, going up by more than 50% year-on-year, and recurring EBITDA went up by over 22% year-on-year.

The specific amount, which is a key figure for our market cap and evaluation of our stock, for the third quarter of the year, we reported over PLN 150 million in recurring EBITDA. Due to our size of the operations of the company, our shares were upgraded to mWIG40 index, and in the Forbes index, we were listed as the 18th biggest privately owned company in Poland.

In the meantime, we opened a brand new, state-of-the-art laboratory in Rzeszów. As you all know, we are growing consistently both in terms of blood collection points—I did not even list this figure because it's more than or around 1,200 already—but we are adding brand new, state-of-the-art laboratory basically every month, be it a larger or smaller laboratory.

These are new locations, or those projects can include the upgrade of the existing locations according to the current trends, including automation. The My Health program, which was met a little bit skeptically—the previous program was quite successful; this program included medical laboratory tests, this program involved doctors, especially family physicians—but this program is actually fairing very well as well, as we have increased not only B2B figures, but also the volume of tests.

In terms of the cervical cancer prevention program, this program was a dream project actually for us. Diagnostyka is a key element of the medical services chain.

We have signed contracts with the National Health Fund, already 16 contracts. Our competitors signed maybe three or four contracts at the very maximum.

We are a leader here, and will cover about 25% of the market for National Health Fund and over 50% for private clients. We will increase our share of the market quite considerably for this very important program, also considering the social outreach of this program based on molecular diagnostics as well.

In addition to the organic growth, we also had acquisitions in quarter three: five acquisitions in Q3. As I said before, these acquisitions were not very sizable, but we had three acquisitions on laboratory diagnostics and two acquisitions in diagnostic imaging.

As I said, those companies were relatively smaller. In terms of IT developments, which are very important to us, we have advanced progress on the implementation of the ERP program and also the HR program.

We have started the first month for the implementation of the logistics program. We also had something very important: introduction of a super modern application.

It actually will be presented in the fourth quarter after the close of the year because it was at the turn of October and November. This slide does not present this particular development.

This was, in a nutshell, our situation and our facts and figures. The floor is over to Paweł Hitwa to discuss our finance.

Paweł Hitwa

Diagnostyka has been continuing the growth path which was first presented in the IPO process. It turns out that we reached our targets quicker than we thought.

During the IPO, we forecasted our progress. After nine months of this year, we see 24% in terms of revenue growth, including over 18% in laboratory diagnostics, a strong growth of B2B, 20% in MLT.

Last year, we did not have diagnostic imaging, the diagnostic imaging has contributed to this quarter because it was consolidated at beginning of the year. The high growth in B2B is related obviously to our great results in the 40 PLUS program, but not only that, because we can see that the subscription model has been growing rapidly.

Our private clients, institutional clients have been contributing a lot to our revenue. These are the main drivers of this stronger growth for B2B compared to B2C.

Since B2B has been working faster, as you can see in the pie charts, in the B2B group, we see more than 60% already. Last year, we saw 59%.

The drivers are both volumes and prices, 50/50, to speak: 9%, 19.9%. In terms of the average prices growth, diagnostic imaging has contributed a lot here, and the average contribution is 13%, and the growth is 13% year-on-year.

In terms of the volumes, we can see that MLT represents this growth because volumes are low in diagnostic imaging. The diagnostic imaging area is high prices and not really high volumes, we're talking about 9.4% versus around 7% for B2C.

After nine months, we see that operational expenses are growing faster than revenue. This is visible especially in the third quarter of the year because as of July practically, we have started paying more to certain specialists, and this obviously was reflected higher sales prices.

The dynamics of operating expenses after nine months is larger or faster than revenue growth. The largest group of our costs, that is employee benefits expense, including the payments to doctors, nurses, and so on, you can see in the table what the dynamic for its growth is.

Also, the costs of external services, or services in general, are also growing very highly. We're talking especially the costs of services such as diagnostic imaging services because of the consolidation of this particular area.

In terms of this growth, recurring EBITDA went down a little bit. We're talking about 24.9%.

The margin went down to 24.9%. However, we are still keeping 26% after nine months, which is comparable to 2024.

We are expecting that this level, maybe a little bit lower, will be maintained this year as well. As we said before, recurring EBITDA margin will be comparable to 2024, more or less.

Moving on to our net profit: a lot of interesting developments in the third quarter. After nine months, the net profit dynamics is even higher than the dynamic for both EBIT and EBITDA, because it is driven by certain costs items below EBITDA, that is depreciation and amortization, and it is also due to the consolidation of diagnostic imaging, because fixed assets, such as property, plant, and equipment are important in this area.

Last year, we had a positive impact of the valuation of measurement of derivative instruments. This year, we do not have that particular item recognized because interest rates have gone down.

Also, we had a positive impact of the sale of our subsidiary in Ukraine. These were one-off events; therefore, we do not recognize them in this quarter.

Our costs went up, our finance costs went up. However, in laboratory diagnostic, these costs did not go up considerably.

In terms of taxes, income tax especially, we see a downward trend in income tax expense after nine months by PLN 4 billion, despite the uptrends in EBITDA, for instance. We had an R&D tax relief for last year, we recognized this in quarter three, that is over PLN 13 million for the period 2019–2023.

We have recognized that R&D tax relief because we have many R&D projects. We are developing our own new system.

R&D covers these items as well. It will be launched next year.

Also, we launched a brand new mobile application, which Kuba has already discussed. These are very expensive projects, and therefore, we can tap into or use R&D tax relief.

It's over PLN 17 million for the nine months of the year, and PLN 13 million for this quarter only. This is an amount that is much larger than for the entire year of 2024.

Cash flow was very strong and very robust. As you can see on this slide, free cash flow conversion to EBITDA was very high after nine months, over 90%, which is more than in 2024, after nine months of 2024, especially due to the fact that we are recognizing the income tax based on a lump-sum recognition, not month after month.

Looking at quarter three alone, we see that free cash flow to EBITDA conversion is a little bit lower year-on-year because in Q3 2024, we had a higher figure, which was due to the fact that we saw a major increase in our accounts payable. However, this year, situation has reversed.

These are one-off events, seasonal developments, I would say. They are not signaling any trend, to speak.

Free cash flow to EBITDA conversion is still very strong. Moving on, our working capital: in terms of our profitability of working capital, we are keeping it under control at 25, 24 year-on-year.

Cash conversion cycle is very robust as well, going down to 47, mainly due to trade receivables. Our payables are going up due to our scale of our business, but all in all, all free cash flow to EBITDA is also reflected here.

In terms of our net debt, net debt went down a little bit. We're talking about 1.7 in terms of leverage.

Our finance debt went down a little bit. A major part of our debt is overdraft, we are not drawing any new debts.

This very strong cash flows allows us to finance our acquisitions, and we do not need to take out any new debt, any new borrowings. However, let me go back to our cash flow bridge.

Even though we have a very strong cash flow after nine months to finance our M&A and the payment of dividend at PLN 170 million based on leases as well, even though we recognized this as major outflows, still our credit limits are very, very high, over PLN 300 million. This is the safety margin that we have and will allow us to continue our negotiations with potential acquisition targets, acquirees.

This will be a capital that we will spend on further acquisitions and further growth of the company. A couple of words on our outlook until the end of the year.

We have increased our forecasts versus quarter two: revenue in terms of year-on-year growth, I believe that the growth will be low-mid 20s, the dynamics that we have seen after nine months of the year. This is, as I said, built on the average price, which is low-mid teens.

After nine months, we recognized a growth at around 14%, I believe that the 14% will be the growth we're talking about. In terms of diagnostic tests volume, I believe that a high single digit will be our target.

The EBITDA margin, which we have already discussed, will be close to 2024, around 26%. In terms of capex, excluding M&As, we have paid an advance payment for the new building which will house our new laboratory in Gdańsk, but we still have to pay the second part of this amount.

We also opened the laboratory in Rzeszów. Capex without M&As will be increasing, and I believe it will range around PLN 130–170 million, comparable to last years.

We expected 150, we are expecting that the figure actually will be a little bit more than PLN 150 million. In terms of M&A capex, I believe that we will keep the forecasts of between PLN 80 million to PLN 100 million.

In terms of net debt to EBITDA, it should be between 1.5 and 2, it's still under control. We are a very secured company in terms of our finances, and we intend to stay that way.

At the end of the presentation, I would like to extend my gratitude to all of you, all the analysts, all the investors, and representatives of the investors, for the fantastic, successful IPO process and the period following IPO. Thank you for this very positive dialogue and for your cooperation.

I believe that Diagnostyka is a fantastic company, and I would like to thank you very much for our cooperation. This is my last presentation of Diagnostyka's financial results, and I believe, as I said before, I am leaving this company in very capable hands.

Thank you very much, and I believe that we can now move on to a Q&A session.

Operator

First question concerns the cervical cancer prevention program, specifically which revenues are you expecting both this and next year. Can you quantify it?

Paweł Hitwa

We currently have recognized 5 million under this program. The program was launched in July.

As far as I remember, during the last presentation we talked about PLN 7 million in revenue this year, I believe this will be the level in the end: 7 to 8, or let's say between 5 and 10 for the entire year to be more general. I believe that this program, and I do hope that this program will keep developing.

I know that the budget for the entire year of the program is 60 million, that is the public data from the Ministry of Health, but I do hope that it will be growing in the year to come as well. The next question concerns the effective CIT tax rate in the coming periods.

We have a single corporate income tax rate at about 20%, we drove it down because as far as I remember, it was more than 22% for 2024. Thanks to the optimization projects and also the R&D tax relief, we managed to drive it down, reduce it.

We also had certain other optimized approaches to depreciation and amortization, obviously in accordance with the regulations. We changed our approach to amortization and depreciation, I would actually expect that the effective CIT tax rate will be even lower in the year to come.

Operator

The next question concerns DI segment. What could be the impact of the proposed changes in terms of the valuation in DI on your profits and profitability, and do you take any actions in order to improve the profitability of the DI segment?

Paweł Hitwa

Yes, the changes in prices, which are pretty likely, pretty probable, as proposed by the agency which is responsible for the assessment of medical technologies, we believe that we can talk about something between 6% and 10%. On average, we see a downward trend at about 8% in terms of price reduction.

We have just acquired those company. We have not recognized any synergy effects in these companies.

For most of those DI acquisitions, we believe we can increase profitability. We have smaller companies in hospitals, and the downward trend in terms of profitability will be seen, but it will not be considerable against our entire operations.

We are optimistic in terms of the growth in diagnostic imaging, and our target margins will be similar to MLT segment margins.

Operator

The next question: are budgetary problems for the National Health Funds a risk to you, and do you see any problems with increasing the prices for B2B clients financed by the National State Fund?

Jakub Śwadźba

As we do not have any direct contacts with B2B customers financed by the National Health Fund, I believe that segment anyway is not a large segment. We see no trends in terms of the bankruptcy of those clients or the failure to provide services to any of those clients.

We see some higher risks for next year that the debt of hospitals will increase, but it will not have a direct effect on our prices, excluding diagnostic imaging and the direct contract with the National Health Fund for services such as, for instance, CAT scans.

Operator

What are the trends in the fourth quarter in terms of volumes and prices, and what are your expectations for volumes and prices for the next year? In terms of revenue as well.

Jakub Śwadźba

I know that this has been discussed by Mr. Hitwa, but if you could quantify it or recapitulate it.

The scale of growth for especially revenue, which caught us a little bit by surprise, will flatten out this year. We will see increases, we will see growth figures, but it will be much lower than this year.

In terms of the volumes, we still forecast an increase in volumes, but not as considerable as this year. The

Operator

next question: could you specify your current priorities in terms of capital allocation, the balance between the reduction of debt and the payment of the dividend?

Paweł Hitwa

We would like to continue the policy which we announced during the IPO. Despite higher profit recognized by the company, we would not like to increase the percentage of dividend payout, we want to keep the recommendation until the Annual General Shareholders Meeting at around 50% for the dividend payout.

I believe this is the last question.

Operator

This was the last question. A question on acquisition policy or strategy: will you be looking for any foreign companies or acquirees, or are there still only Polish companies you're looking for?

Jakub Śwadźba

Yes, we are looking at Polish company only. This is the safest policy, and we do not plan any foreign acquisitions.

In terms of the acquisitions in Poland, we already presented you the numbers. They are similar, maybe a little bit higher for next year.

We are planning the acquisitions and increase in acquisitions in diagnostic imaging mainly. As I said, this is a stable strategy, no fireworks here.

Operator

I see no other questions in the chat. I believe this has brought us to an end of this conference call.

Jakub Śwadźba

Thank you very much for your attention. If you have any further questions, please contact our Investor Relations Department.

Thank you and goodbye.