Thank you for joining the Eurofins H1 2026 conference call. Please note that this call is being recorded and will later be available for replay on the Eurofins Investor Relations website.

Throughout today's presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session.

If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touch-tone telephone to register for questions, and for operator assistance, please press the star key followed by zero. During this call, Eurofins management may make forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements with respect to outlook and the related assumptions.

Management will also discuss alternative performance measures, such as organic growth and EBITDA, which are defined in the footnotes of our press releases. Actual results may differ materially from objectives discussed.

Risks and uncertainties that may affect Eurofins' future results include, but are not limited to, those described in the Risk Factors section of the most recent Eurofins annual and half-year reports. Please also read the disclaimer on page two of this presentation, subject to which this call and Q&A session are made.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Dr. Gilles Martin, Eurofins CEO.

Please go ahead.

Hello, everybody, and thank you for joining our half-year results call. We have a small presentation.

I guess some of you could download it. We've had a strong H1 2026 with very strong improvement of results, 29% EPS growth.

That's a continuation of progress we've seen on margins and profit in the last year. If we go to the summary that we have on page four, page five, we can highlight some numbers.

The growth is still not at our mid-term objectives, but it has been improving between Q2 and Q1. In our Life sector, especially in Environment, we've seen the growth accelerating to, as we recovered some of the weather effect that we saw in Q1.

We had not flagged particular catch-up in BioPharma in the second quarter. We think the later part of the year, especially Q4, will be we should see much more effect from the positive comparable and potentially some restart or start of some important programs in our Clinical business, and also the end of some of the constructions of some areas in Agroscience, for example, where we have rationalized also the capacity.

No big surprise on the top line. On the margin, on the other hand, we are above our objectives, we are above what we were expecting in what is traditionally the lower margin part of the year.

We have achieved 23.7% of adjusted margin, EBITDA margin, which is quite good and it shows what our business can deliver. Overall, we continue to reduce our separately disclosed item, as we finish the integration of all the companies we acquired, we are moving forward in the building of a hub-and-spoke model, and we start to see the benefits.

We're not there yet. We still have enormous expenses in IT, enormous disruptions to our business in deploying our new IT solutions in our Food and Environmental testing businesses in Europe, but all of that is progressing.

We are positive that by the end of 2027, we will complete those programs, and we'll have a very efficient, completely digital network with the latest technologies, and start to deploy some AI tools for being even faster and more efficient in some areas. Those programs are going well, and we start to see the [benefits?]

faster than we thought. That's on the and we also of our investments are done, we have to invest a little bit less.

The other thing continue to focus our business. We've already discussed that we agreed to divest our electrical and electronic testing business.

It's a good business that we built over the last 15 years, but it's not necessarily core to our Testing for Life business. UL will be a better owner, we were able to divest it.

We were able we announced that on Monday to acquire a business of similar size in North America, which is an area that is actually growing better than Europe, focused on in the core of our business, mainly BioPharma product testing, but also environmental and some food testing. This is example of two transactions that are in line with the goal to focus.

Of course, the more we focus in one area of activity, the more efficient we are, the better we can deploy our IT solutions. We hadn't started developing a whole suite of IT solutions for the electrical and electronic testing business, which is slightly different than our other businesses.

In that business we acquire, we have all the tools that we can deploy almost from day one and make it more efficient. That's an example of how we intend to continue to allocate capital going forward.

On page six, you see some of the reasons for the margin improvement. If I summarize it, as I just said, it's basically we are starting to see the benefits of all the efforts we did.

We also have the end of some of the costs for duplicate sites and etc., the exceptional costs are also going down because we are still doing some new sites, moving to new sites. In the Netherlands, we're moving to a new environmental testing site where we will be moving also BioPharma testing site to bring together four different sites.

All of that is of course costing still a lot of money, but a lot of those programs are behind us and we see the benefits. On page seven, you see the various evolutions and on organic growth.

Our Life business is still slightly below where it should be, but it's doing well overall, close to in mid-single digits, close to 5%. BioPharma is a bit soft.

Even BioPharma Product Testing in Europe has been softer than in previous periods. We've had a couple of large contracts that ended.

We are working on replacing them and some parts will be replaced, but it had an impact, especially in Q2. Diagnostic business was doing well in Europe.

In North America, we still have the impacts of some regulatory changes. One affected our transplant business.

We've already covered that several times, but we still have the base effect in the first half of 2025 in the change of reimbursement of the transplant rejection test that we have. We also have a change of the mix of tests required for donor product testing, which impact our growth.

We had negative growth in Diagnostics in North America, which affect the overall growth. Here again, as soon as the time passes, the comparable will ease and that should improve.

Consumer has been doing well. We have a bigger exposure to Asia in Consumer than to Europe and North America.

Asia is doing well. Also, we have in our material testing business, we have some nice developments with AI and semiconductors.

That business is progressing very positively. On page eight, we give a bit more color on the component of our BioPharma sector.

Where you as you can see, we still have, unfortunately, some areas which have negative growth. Discovery is still slightly negative.

That's early phase of BioPharma. We see some green shoots.

The funding of biotech is improving. We have requests for quotes, but we haven't seen a big impact on the actual numbers yet, although that should materialize at some point.

Agroscience and Genomics are still challenged on the top line. We are rationalizing sites, we are rationalizing capacity, and we also do believe that this will hit bottom over the next few quarters.

The opportunity there is the impact of those areas that are negative is getting smaller and smaller every quarter, and at some point we get to the core that will not decrease anymore. Of course, that leads to rationalization in the market.

There are fewer and fewer players in Agroscience, and a lot of companies are closing or rationalizing also. That's the outlook on BioPharma.

[Product Testing?] continued to do very well, double-digit in North America, and in Europe for the reason [unclear] had a soft Laurent will now give you some more details on and more color on the financial numbers.

Thank you, Gilles. Good afternoon.

It's my pleasure to walk you through our half-year results. On slide 10, despite a moderate revenue growth, we delivered a strong improvement of margins and earning per share.

Our reported EBITDA recorded 190 bps improvement year on year, reaching 23.3%, including a 50 bps exceptional gain from legal settlements. Our adjusted EBITDA increased by 130 bps year on year, reaching 23.7% with reduced SDI, which are now weighting only 0.4% of revenues.

Overall, we saw a very strong increase of our earning per share at +29% year on year, reaching the level of €1.55. On slide 11, as you can see, our moderate revenue growth was the result of mostly two factors: an organic growth of 2.7%, but also a very strong FX headwind of 2.9%.

The M&A contribution in H1 was very limited. On slide 12, if we look at the breakdown of our H1 results by region, we see a very strong growth of revenues in the rest of the world, +9% organically and +5% in reported figures.

We see a very good improvement of margins across all regions, with Europe recording a +210 bps improvement, North America a +230 bps improvement. If we exclude the one-time gain from settlements, it's still 90 bps improvement and a +130 bps improvement in the rest of the world.

On slide 13, if we look at another breakdown of our H1 results between mature and non-mature scopes, we see a mature business which is reaching 25.3% margin, well ahead of our group objectives, and we see also non-mature headwind decreasing year after year, with SDI at only 0.4% of revenues. On slide 14, in line with this strong margin improvement, we also had a very strong cash flow improvement.

We saw our free cash flow to the firm increase by 46% year on year and reaching €403 million. We also had a record cash conversion of 47%, which resulted in a very stable leverage versus December of 2.2.

All this enabled us to increase our share buybacks by another €200 million in the first half. On slide 15, if we zoom at the levers behind this strong improvement of cash generation, of course it's due to the improved margins, +500 bps in the last three years, but also to reduce capex, 240 bps less in the last three years, and a much decreased net working capital intensity, which decreased by 190 bps in the last three years.

All in all, it's notable to see that we were able to multiply by five our free cash flow to the firm in the last three years. Now I will give back the mic to Gilles.

A bit more color on this focus on our core business. On slide 17, we talk again about the divestment of our electrical and electronic product testing.

It was a transaction that was also generated, as you can see from the numbers, at a much, much higher multiple than the overall multiple at which Eurofins shares are trading, almost double. This business doesn't have higher margin, and it's not growing faster than the rest of Eurofins.

It's just a small indication of the value that is within Eurofins, and that actually can be realized by those transactions, or at least shown. It generate some cash, and with this cash we can reinvest in our core business, which we did.

You have some details on page 18. We have the agreement to acquire Element Materials Technology's Life Science Testing Services.

Element is a business that was formed by private equity by a number of acquisitions over the years. It was sold to Temasek.

Like many, many TIC players, when markets become more advanced, and the companies like Eurofins that are very specialized become more competitive, it becomes harder for conglomerates that are serving a large number of verticals to be very good in all verticals and to invest in the digitalization, in the robotics, in the AI tools that are bespoke for each type of activity. It does really make sense for Element to dispose of an activity where they will never have had a global or local leadership in North America.

Like UL is a better owner for the electrical and product testing that Eurofins used to own, Eurofins is a much better owner for the life science testing that belongs to Element. It's win-win deals for both parties in both cases.

Over time, we think we can create significant value of that business. We have a very clear integration plans.

We know what tools we can develop we can deploy, our IT solutions for BPT, our world-class, and this business is growing well for us in North America, where those businesses are present. We have a large food testing, a large environmental testing business in North America, we can easily add the few labs that Element had in those areas, and they can fall under our leadership team and our IT solutions.

Those are this is a very good fit acquisition for us. I think you will see over the next few years that the most successful TIC businesses will be the very focused TIC businesses, as it's difficult to be the best in all areas.

That applies to TIC like it applies to any other industry. On the side of those large acquisitions, we continue with our M&A, which where we have a target to add about €250 million revenue per year from a number of bolt-on acquisitions.

We continue to do that in the first half of this year, which with several transactions, including some that will close that we are working on and that will close over the next few months. On page 20, we give a couple of examples of the new sites that we have been building.

Building new sites to create hubs and to consolidate smaller labs that were acquired over the years is not something that is done overnight. The lab in the Netherlands is a project we started three years ago.

We needed to buy land, to obtain planning permission, to get it built, and now we're getting it qualified. Over one year, all our businesses that are in the Netherlands into that building, we need to qualify the businesses after the move.

All those moves are very costly, disruptive. They dilute our margins and, of course, they dilute our return on capital employed while we do them.

Once we are done, once they are done, they provide significant scale advantages for a decade or more, or actually much more because on those sites we have extra land, if we need to grow, we don't need to move the site, we don't need to add disjointed buildings, we can just add a wing to the buildings we have built. We still have a few to to do.

The last one will be an extension of our Lancaster campus in North America that will complete in 2028. With that, we will be by the end of next year, with that exception, pretty much complete to integrate all our network into the right footprint, with a very large hubs, with scale effects, automation, robotics, etc., and spokes to do the time-critical assays closer to our customers, but only when it's required.

On technology, we don't talk very much about that because it's more in the trade journals that we talk about it, and for the clients that are interested in each area, but our labs continue to invest a lot in R&D, developing new solutions that are in the testing world usually quite advanced compared to the rest of the industry. We can talk a few we presented a few on page 21.

We are proud to have some of the most innovative labs in our sector. If we look at how we see the future, well, we are not changing our outlook.

It is obvious that to hit mid-single-digit organic growth for this year, we need to have a significant pickup in H2. We believe we will have a pickup in H2.

How big the pickup will be, we will see, but we still think mid-single-digit is achievable. Whether we'll achieve it or not will depend on a number of factors, but we have decided to keep that objective.

Our margins, we think the margins we keep our objectives. Basically, we haven't changed anything.

Our margins will improve this year, and we also confirm our objectives for next year. It's If you look at the numbers for the first half of this year, it probably makes very credible our objectives for next year.

We confirm also our objectives for next year. We do think the softness in BioPharma is temporary.

It is shown in our numbers as bigger than it is for the core of our BioPharma, which is BPT. Clearly, at some point, all those ancillary activities in BioPharma will stabilize, will start growing, or we will shrink them to a point where they don't matter.

We maintain our objective to grow a bit above mid-single-digit on the on a secular level. Another factor is once we are done with restructuring our network around our hub-and-spoke network, deploying our IT solutions, deploying AI and robotics, our operational performance will also significantly improve.

At the moment, we lose clients because we are changing LIMS, because when you change IT systems, your performance decreases, you have issues, and at some point, this is done. Then the opposite happens.

We will be much faster, much better, much more reliable in our delivery times than pretty much anyone in the market, which should also provide the opportunity for gaining significant share. Also, we'll be much more efficient.

We are really looking forward in all of our market to being done with those programs. We are right in the middle of it in Europe at the moment, in Food and Environmental testing.

It is a drag. The progress is good, and we are confident that we'll come out of 2027 with the best network possible in terms of footprint and in terms of IT solutions, service delivery, speed, and quality of interaction with clients.

We're optimistic for the mid-term growth once we are done with that. In the meantime, we continue to improve our margins.

We continue to generate more cash flow. Our capex is kept within the objectives that we have set for our capex of €400 million per year.

That can go down when we are done with this program of building the hub-and-spoke network and the digital investment program. Beyond 2027, we might be able to do with less than that.

We will also be done with spending to own our own sites. Beyond 2027, we see the cash flow that we generate to continue to increase, and we can use it to either grow organically or to return to shareholders.

Even now, when we are not done with building our network, we return a lot of money to our shareholders through dividends and through share buybacks. As we continue to improve our margin and cash flow, we can increase those returns to shareholder and continue to take advantage of a very depressed share price to create long-term value for those shareholders who believe in the long term of Eurofins.

Overall, we repeat our objective, we confirm our objectives. If I move to the conclusion slide on page 24, I think we've had a very good first half.

Things are moving as we expect, actually better than we expect. Our network is coming together very well.

We still have a number of loss-making units that either are startups and that are working that are growing to profitability, or are in the middle of a reorganization. The Synlab network in Spain, the integration is going well, but it's still very dilutive to our profits.

We still need a couple years to get to our target profitability there. We've ended a lot of loss-making contracts there that also impact our organic growth, of course, when we do that.

Then we focus on business that is profitable long term and clients that are prepared to pay to so their providers make an acceptable profit. We are, as I said, optimistic that organic growth will pick up going forward.

The time The exact is difficult to say, but we're will go back to what we're used to be, mid the mid- or high-mid-single digits. We will continue to deploy capital carefully to focus on our core business.

Overall, we are convinced we will finalize our program, our five years program by the end of next year, achieving our financial objectives, and that will give us a very good platform for growth of top line and profits. That is for my for our introduction, and we can now take questions.

Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions.

A couple from me, please. I think at the 1Q results you had indicated that growth was coming back to normal by the end of the quarter, and therefore the expectation was for 2Q to deliver, reasonable mid-single-digit growth.

Just trying to understand what changed, please, and specifically in BioPharma when you talked about the contracts that ended, was it a competitive loss or was that something else? The second one on capex, actually, it feels a little bit light, especially on the real estate spend in 1H.

Is that a timing issue, or should we expect maybe slightly less spend on real estate for the rest of the year? Thank you.

Thank you, Suhasini. What we were talking about, if I remember well, was mostly the Environment and the businesses that were affected by weather that were coming back, and they are back at mid-single digit.

BioPharma, we have different components in BioPharma. The Genomics and Agroscience, the outlook then was not good, and is still not good.

We don't expect a pickup in those areas, a significant pickup short term. Then we have Discovery.

Discovery is close to zero, slightly negative in the first half. Here again, we believe it will pick up, but there's no we haven't flagged, we hadn't flagged and we still can't flag a significant pickup or timing of a pickup.

On BPT, the US continued mid-single digit. Europe was flat in the first half of the year.

It depends on the countries. We have countries growing very well, double-digit actually, and we have countries that are a bit more challenged, France and Germany among others.

There is the impact of some large contracts that it's not that we lost it to a competitor, but sometimes Pharma has certain programs, they develop a new product or they build a new site that they need to validate, it makes it a little bit lumpy. Usually we win more contracts and it's not shown, but maybe in an environment that's a bit less dynamic for BioPharma, it shows more when one of those contracts end.

Capex, yes, especially real estate capex is not linear. It's a bit bulky.

It depends when we complete a building. We're still guiding for more or less €200 million on our own sites.

Maybe some will shift to 2028 because I don't think we can complete Lancaster by the end of 2027. The overall other capex, which includes growth and maintenance capex, maintenance capex is 2% or 3% and the rest is growth capex, we spend as we need.

Indeed, some of our businesses that are more challenged on growth, they spend less than and so that may be why we're a bit below. Other businesses that are growing fast are in the normal spend of capex that we have planned.

Of course, we're frugal. We don't spend when we don't need to spend.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon. Coming back on BioPharma, is it fair to understand from your comments that improvement will come mainly from easier comps?

I had in mind that you were also expecting new contracts to come. Are these contracts already signed?

Are we talking about a smaller number of contracts or a broad number of smaller contracts? I have a second question if I may.

Do you today consider Eurofins to be a conglomerate, or already sufficiently focused? Thank you.

BPT, well, we have BioPharma, we have many things. We have a business which is a small Clinical business where we have large contracts compared to the size of that business.

That affects our central lab, bioanalysis, and also our CDMO to some extent, where it can a contract can make a difference. In BPT, it's much less so, but we do have €5 [million?]

or €10 million a year contracts with some clients that are linked to certain projects. BPT is mostly a lot of small contracts compared to the size of the business.

They might be big in in absolute terms. The clinical contract clinical business like central lab would be larger contracts compared to the size of that business.

We have some that are signed, but we don't we're not exactly sure when they will start being implemented, pick up, when the patient recruitment will will show some significant momentum. We cannot give precise timing.

We do think to we'll see an impact in the back end of this year of those contracts starting. Of course, as you mentioned, we'll have the comps.

How do I define focused? I would say focused is if you are three or four times bigger than your next competitor and you are the market leader, you benefit from the scale.

You benefit from being focused. You can have one or two verticals.

The question is, in each vertical, how much bigger are you? Are you the market leader in each vertical, and and potentially in each market, in each geography?

If you're market leader, how much how many times bigger than the next one are you? That gives you scale and that gives you a benefit of your focus.

That's how I would look at focus. When when I look at other companies that are more conglomerate, they have they sprinkle their market shares.

They have a bit of this in one country, a bit of that in another country, but they are not leaders in in many places, if any, and they are not able to build the efficiency, the scale, the digital, the dedicated digital tools that that will make and that makes people winners. If you look on the traded companies, it's difficult to see because you don't get the detailed numbers of each of the verticals.

You have some focused companies. If you look at UL, for example, which is much more focused on on electrical products and and this type of certification activity, they do have significantly higher margin, trade at higher multiples, just to give one example.

Most of the other examples, you only see when you look at private companies that are sold in private transactions. The the numbers are not public.

In in my experience, from what I've seen in the last few years, in the last actually decades, focus is is is of high benefit.

Thank you. Do you think that today Eurofins is already focused enough?

Well,

70% of our business in those activities. The other 30%, we can be number one in a geography.

Then the question is, in that in those businesses, we are number one in Spain, for example, we're number one in Ireland. Is it necessary to be number one worldwide in that sector?

That would be the question. I think we like what we have.

We have businesses, for example, in Consumer Product Testing, if I take our material science business, we are number one in the world in that niche. It is a niche, it is a global niche, we are number one in the world, and we have a great business.

We have a fantastic business working for some of the most advanced companies in the world where they need very specific advanced microscopy testing that we're among the very few companies in the world that we can offer. We put it, we classify it as Consumer Product Testing, but it is an extremely focused and extremely successful business that is global market leader and actually two or three times bigger than the next one.

Thank you very much.

Hi, good afternoon, Gilles. A couple from me, please.

First, I just wanted to follow up on Suhasini's question earlier, but with the focus maybe on visibility. I don't think any of us thought that Pharma was necessarily going to get significantly better in Q2, but I think most people probably didn't expect it to get sequentially worse.

Could you maybe just comment a little bit about the increase or decrease in visibility that you maybe have across the business with a particular focus on Pharma? I guess that I would have expected that you would have known that some of those contracts were ending in Q2 and that there may be nothing lined up to replace them.

Just trying to understand that. Then linked to that, is there any comment you can make on kind of June, July exit rates for the business as a whole?

That's my first couple of questions. Then secondly, just on BioPharma, growth obviously weakened if I then add in the prior-year comp that eased as well.

That's almost a 500 basis point underlying deterioration between Q1 and Q2. If I go through the building blocks, yes, ancillary is obviously weaker, but it does feel like a lot of that is in the product testing side.

The text commentary in the release first thing talked about Europe being stable and the US staying solid. How do I reconcile between the text and the numbers?

Maybe you can quantify some of the building blocks within the product testing business. How much was the contract exits of that almost 500 basis points underlying versus whatever else was in there that was moving against you, just so we can understand the moving parts.

Thank you.

Thanks, Allen, for your question. On visibility, we don't we're not in the business of making what do you say, rolling forecast or things like that.

We don't we only look at the results at the end of the quarter. Frankly, there are so many contracts we can win or we can lose, that can start, where clients can send sample wherever they want, that it would be actually very hard to do that.

Also, we think the impact is immaterial on the long-term prospect and the long-term value of the company because we know what we're doing. We know what we're doing and you see it on the profitability, and whether we are 1% or 2% above in a quarter doesn't change anything on the mid-term outlook in our opinion.

We could put a lot of effort in very fine planning of all of those things, which would be extremely difficult to do. I don't know if we could actually do it.

We don't do it. I'm not sure I follow the 500 basis point that you mentioned, but it's 500 basis point between what and what, for what period, what activity?

Maybe this is again focusing on quarterly movements more than anything else, but I was just looking at growth was -1.1% in Q2 from +1.1%, but then the prior-year comp got almost 240 basis points easier as well. In BioPharma.

What Oh, BioPharma. The whole of BioPharma?

The whole of BioPharma, you say. You you say there is 220 basis point difference in the total of BioPharma.

That's what you're saying,

from the Yeah, and the prior-year comp got easier as well. I'm just trying to work out like sequentially the growth eased, but the prior-year comp got easier, you should have got a got a benefit.

Again, I think it probably comes back to your point if you're not managing quarterly by quarterly, that's not something that you're going to comment on. Yeah, 20

2025, we were at 0.3% organic growth in Q1 and 1.5% in Q2. This year, we are a bit higher in Q1, 1.1%, and Q2, -1.1%.

In in that thing in Q2, just to give you an idea, we have at -16% in our Phase 1 clinics in in Europe and 20% in our European CDMO because some contracts ended in CDMO. In North America, those negatives can have a big impact.

We are our BioPharma and bioanalysis is -20% compared to the comp of the quarter of the same quarter last year, and that has a big impact. Now, that can revert also to +40% once your contracts start in those in those activities.

The the bigger impact between Q1 and Q2 are basically is that our BPT Europe was at zero, which is a substantial business in the first half of the year, while the US was was mid-single-digit growth. We don't think this is a long-term trend for Europe, but indeed we had impact of a couple of contracts and we have a bit of a softer activity, for example, in France.

That's a lot of a lot of numbers, lots of small activities that go in different directions. The bigger impact is mostly the European BPT this half year and and some of those ancillary activities having very significant negative.

At some point, they they bottom bottom up and and they grow again. Our Agroscience was 20% down in Europe in the in the second quarter, just in North America in the second quarter.

Not big numbers, but still it's an impact.

Thank you. Could I just have one quick, maybe bigger-picture follow-up coming back on the capex side?

Capex was obviously down 15%, I think year on year. At the same time, obviously growth is coming down.

Can you just maybe just comment on how confident you are that this level of capex is sufficient to support growth acceleration within the business as we move through this year into 2027?

I think less capex should give more growth because a lot of that capex is just building the basics in those new sites we have been building. It's not the capex we have now should sustain much more growth than we have at the moment in some areas.

Some areas were growing at 10%, 15%. It's if you look at the of a lot of components that are moving in different directions.

Thank you.

Overall, if you look at our business, we split it between SDI and core business, but there is a slide that gives you a bit of a breakdown. I think Laurent mentioned on page 10.

If you look at adjusted results, we have our mature business, 462 million in the first half, it's a €7 billion business, which is turning 25.3% EBITDA margin on mature revenues, reported 23.7, and reported EBITAS margin of 17.5%. We have a very strong, very good business that is well-invested, that doesn't need so much more capex, and that will grow for years to come.

Of course, BioPharma at some point will pick up, and the businesses that are still being integrated, including Synlab, which is a big chunk of the 240 million of the SDI, at some point they will get there and this part of SDI will become immaterial. Overall, that explains why I'm quite happy about the results and I'm not too concerned about one quarter being a bit down or a bit up in one component or the other.

The things, what we've also done, we have a number of businesses which are indeed hurting our growth and we are closing some. We closed some or we sold some of those clinical businesses we had in the Netherlands that have been dragging on our growth and profitability for basically since COVID.

We have no hesitation to sell or close the businesses where we don't see the potential to have long-term good growth and good profitability. Of course, it takes time.

Nothing changes so much from one quarter to the next, but we're confident we will execute and we'll get a very, very strong business, which is, for the most part, already quite strong now. Because if you look at if you compare those performance of our mature business with many other companies in the sector, they are extremely good.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Gilles, I'm going to push you a little bit.

That most of your investor base is focusing into the top line and the mid-term guidance, 6.5%. We are very much far away from that, and so a lot of question coming out of why you're not giving up on this guidance.

Second question will be more broadly about the picture. You never had, and you're talking about this mature revenue, you never been in such a comfortable position when you look at the cash flow, the free cash flow, operating cash flow, the pure accretion that the business is giving up now in terms of mature business.

Why don't you accelerate massively the clean-up of the portfolio and be very active when it comes either to spin off, or sell, or acquisition? What about that?

What is lacking currently in your comex not to be more active?

I think we're quite active, but you don't run a company like you run a portfolio. A portfolio, it's easy to go to the market and sell shares and buy shares if you have liquidity.

When you have a large business, to buy a business, well, first you have to have sellers, and we buy a number of businesses every year that fit very well with what we want to own long term. If we want to dispose of a business, it's a one-year process.

We prepare or at least six months, and until it closes, it's at least a year with all the regulatory clearances. We are doing that.

Building a network of hub-and-spoke labs is, unfortunately, very long. I mentioned the lab in the Netherlands we built for BioPharma.

We haven't yet moved in and we started three years ago that program. Everything in a highly regulated business like Eurofins take a long time.

The good thing is it's highly regulated, it's hard to build the BioPharma product testing. It's hard to get all the validation and certification and clients approval.

Once you have it, clients don't change. They don't change because somebody comes and offers a 10% lower price.

They have their studies there, they have the history of their studies there, and they stay. It's a very recurring business, very stable business, and it takes time to change.

Why don't we give up the 6.5%, our mid to high? I think this is what our business can give historically.

It's of course a secular objective, and if you take the average over many, many years, that's where we have been, I think that's where we should be. Now, it will depend on the mix.

Maybe clinical diagnostic is a bit lower. In the end, I don't think any of that matters because the business is valued now at such a low multiple compared to the components that all of that is basically irrelevant.

Investors decide, they put a number in their plans, and basically they decide what the business is worth. We buy a lot of shares, as much as we can.

If we look at our leverage, we want to stay within our leverage obligations, we want to have headroom to do acquisitions if we need to, but on the long term, the market will decide and the market will see, and we'll see what growth we achieve. We think this is there's no reason to change that at the moment.

All right. Okay.

If I may, a follow-up regarding a possibly more pragmatic on the Consumer and Technology product. You had a positive base effect last year, but you also deliver an a very strong performance driven by the semiconductor.

As you do mention this stickiness of the clients when it come to some of the testing, do you think that you open a new, in a way, a new door or a new window for the semiconductor industry to go probably more actively with Eurofins when it comes to testing, or is it really a quarter effect related?

No, it's a mix. We also do very well in our softline and hardline testing.

We have more exposure in Consumer to Asia, which as you see rest of world is growing faster than Europe and North America overall, considering the mix we have. I think that if that, yeah, our it's not it's also medical device, it's also aerospace, it's also military.

Anything with advanced material, we are the leader in the world in this type of testing. It's not exactly Testing for Life, but it's a very good business that is doing very well within Eurofins and where we could invest more indeed.

All right. Thanks.

Thank you very much for taking my questions. First question was just on how you've done so well on the margins.

Obviously, with organic growth coming in a bit foggy, I guess, we just wondered how you've done that. Have you reduced headcount?

How many people have you taken out? Has it been through redundancies and sort of whereabouts regionally has that happened?

Second question I had was, are you able to just highlight the contribution to the EBITDA margin or the adjusted EBITDA margin progression from ending weak profitability contracts? Also, could you just tell us how the abandonment of those contracts has impacted organic growth in both Q2 and the first half?

Then finally from me, just in terms of the BPT activities, obviously, significantly lower organic growth in H1 than the H2 last year. Are you able to just say, sort of bottom up within the business, what's going to make that recover?

Thank you.

Thank you very much. The margin is mostly stopping things that cost money.

We've made no secret that for the last 3.5 years we've been building the network. We have been building hub labs, moving things from labs we acquired to new labs.

Every time we do that, we become more efficient and that reduces cost. You mentioned Synlab.

Yes, by Synlab we took out a lot of cost last year and this year because there was duplication of our existing network in Spain, and there is still some more to do. Also, we mentioned that post-COVID, in our Clinical business in Europe, we had much too much capacity and potential for rationalization.

We've done that. Every time we finish a hub lab, after integration, we get more operating leverage in that hub lab.

We also have a number of companies, as I mentioned, that we have been closing and we've been either integrating the business in other labs. We've sold a couple in the Netherlands or closed one.

All of those things flow into higher margin. We're not done.

We still have a lot to do. We still have a lot of things that will improve.

Coming back to what Delphine is saying, maybe it's too slow, but you find it too slow, but we are doing a lot on that and we see the impact. We even see the impact on the margin faster than probably you expected, and because nobody believed we would do 24% margin next year, or very few people believed that, and now it's it seems like a lot of people much more credible.

We're doing that and we still have a very long list of things we are working on and we'll complete by the end of next year that go in that direction. That doesn't even take into account the much better competitive position we'll be in when we have finalized our digitalization program, which takes a long time, but it's a big network and it's a lot of applications.

On BPT, well, we continue to do very well in the US. It's just in Europe that we've had a bit of weaknesses in France and Germany mainly, and some that ended.

We're every day we talk with clients and we sign new contracts and that I don't think it's a normal situation that what you've seen in BPT Europe for the first half of this year.

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question.

Firstly on the BioPharma business excluding Product Testing, you mentioned earlier to a question that you're not in the business of providing rolling forecasts regarding visibility, but you flag that you've got confidence in the improvement in the second half in bioanalysis and North American CDMO. I just wonder what gives you that confidence to make that comment.

Then where end markets look quite slow still in Discovery, Genomics, and then also the CDMO business in Europe where you haven't yet replaced contracts, and also Central Labs, too, can you just comment on the underlying market activity and, just sort of what's happening down the pipe? My final question is just on the margin.

Obviously very strong margin growth in the first half and you've previously mentioned in Q&A that you think, a lot of your businesses deliver over 30% margin, but the group's never been there. You're very close to the 24% margin that you've guided to for 2027.

Is now the time to talk about what you could do beyond that? Where are you on the programs, if you were to sort of say, out of 100%, where are you in the programs and delivering all the cost savings that you expect?

What could drive margins beyond 24%? Thank you.

Thank you, James. A number of questions.

We have activities where we have thousands of small contracts compared to the size of the business. That's Food, that's Environment, that's BioPharma Product Testing.

Then we have the clinical phases, central lab, bioanalysis to some extent, where the contracts are much large, and CDMO, where the contract are much larger relative to the size of the business. What we have in central lab, bioA, and CDMO is a bit of a base effect because we've had a lot of contracts ending in the back end of 24 and 25, and so they and some of them are signed to restart, but we don't know when they will restart.

When they do, this will be material in the growth, as the end of those contract was in the decrease of revenues. We have more visibility, if you want, on that because once we get those contracts and we see them start, we know the impact will be significant because you just take two or three programs to have a major impact on our central lab business, for example.

Discovery, Genomics is a smaller is more lots of small businesses, it's really harder to forecast. It's the law of large numbers more that play.

It's more the general outlook. Genomics, the outlook has been affected by the reduction of research spending in North America, NIH cuts, etc.

Business outlook is not great. We don't think it will continue to go down because at some point you get your core volume of customers unless the there's even more cuts and more reductions in spending and funding.

We don't see that continuing to go down, we get to a base effect there. Discovery is mixed.

We have some good signs, but we it's really hard to know when those orders will really translate into samples. It's hard to give you more visibility on the Discovery business than saying, okay, we don't think it's going to get much worse.

When will it start to be much better, I don't know. It's not a huge business for Eurofins.

It's €100 million, and on the profit, once we've adjusted the cost to the level of revenues, we still can make very good margins at those level of revenues.

Thank you very much. Thank you everyone for your questions and your research and your homework.

We'll be meeting some of you in London tomorrow and follow up one-on-one. As I said, we are building a very strong network of laboratories, as you can see by the result of our mature business.

This is a very profitable activity. We still can improve that.

We are not done where we are. We think all the those actions will also have a positive impact on organic growth.

We think we're in good market, regulated market where scale and regulation make it very hard for new entrants, and also we are in resilient markets in difficult times or difficult economies. We're happy about what we have done.

Of course, we would wish to have had a better growth in Q2 of this year, but, as you can see, even with moderate growth, we can significantly increase our profitability, and we think we can continue doing that. Thank you very much for your support.

I wish you all happy summer breaks if you take some, and looking forward to meeting you in person soon. Goodbye.