Evotec SE (NASDAQ:EVO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And especially, our INDiGO offering sees a lot of demand at this stage. We also see a lot of demand at this stage when it comes to biotech companies that are going for high quality chemistry, that are going for high quality biology. So you see a lot of traction here from biotech companies that are well funded. And for example, yesterday’s announcement from a partnership with Dewpoint is a testament that the high quality biotech companies continue to use our service and even increase that. I hope that gives you a bit of a color. And on the AI question, I apologize, but I don’t want to spoil the Capital Markets Day.

Pippa Pritchard: That’s absolutely fine. Thank you very much.

Werner Lanthaler: Pleasure. Next question, please.

Operator: The next question comes from the line of Michael Ryskin with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Michael Ryskin: Great. Thanks for taking the question. Can you hear me?

Werner Lanthaler: Yes.

Michael Ryskin: Okay. Wonderful. So I have got two and I will — maybe I will throw — I will do the first one first. So first, I want to touch on the updated guide or sort of the maintained guide for fiscal year 2023 in light of your third quarter performance. So if my numbers are correct, it implies a little bit of a step down from 3Q to 4Q. I think the guide is at the midpoint, something like €190 million in the fourth quarter. So I am just wondering if you could talk about that a little bit more. I know there was always going to be some catch-up following the cyberattack. I think you talked about €30 million catch-up. So was all of that already captured in the third quarter, and so therefore, we should sort of think of that number and that pacing just, because if it looks — if we look at it as is the fourth quarter implies, a pretty meaningful stepdown year-over-year, and certainly, sequentially. So just wondering what the drivers of that are?

Werner Lanthaler: So if — so stepdown is clearly not what you will see in Q4. I think maybe we are a bit cautious here and cautiousness comes, especially throughout our development business, because the development business, which, quote-unquote, is somewhere between €150 million and €200 million total capacity, is the latest that was going fully online after the cyberattack. And we were basically not able to contract any business into the summer, because we didn’t know when to go fully online again and how this then translates into work completed and revenues recognized is probably behind the, quote-unquote, visible step down here, if it then is in our actual visible like that, I cannot fully guide you to that. But I think the development business is the key driver behind that and that’s due to the fact that up to mid-September, we were not fully sure when to fully start contracting business into development again. I hope that gives you color.

Michael Ryskin: Okay. Yeah. That’s helpful. And then, somewhat related to that, I thought the pie chart visualization you had, I think, on slide 14 was really helpful, illustrating the growth from PanOmics and from Just, which is doing really well, obviously. But I also want to focus on just the Execute segment excluding Just, obviously, that’s been a little bit more challenged. I think I imagine that’s where a lot of the one-time impact of the cyberattack is, but even if you back that and its still roughly flat year-over-year. So I am guessing that’s where some of the, one, the development work you are talking about now is taking place, two, that’s where some of the market weakness and choppiness you talked about from biotech is going on.

So I am just wondering if you could talk about that a little bit more sort of the business other than just Evotec and other than PanOmics, what are you seeing there and when do you think that can return to more consistent growth? Thanks.

Werner Lanthaler: Yes. Maybe on the second part of the question, I hand over first to Craig, who can give you really an operational view of where we are, and second to Matthias, who is out in our business development lines that you have also here better visibility. So maybe Craig first and Matthias second.

Craig Johnstone: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Werner. Thanks, Michael, for the question. So in terms of the pie chart, your interpretation is right and your conclusion that, that would be where the main one-time hit of cyberattack is felt at its most heavy if you like. So — and there are two reasons. There are two elements to it. So first of all, on the cost side, of course, the Execute segment as we report it carries the vast majority of the fixed cost of the group, the buildings, the people, the infrastructure and so on and we unable to transact on that for some weeks, of course, has a negative impact. And on the revenue side, and I should say, of course, because it’s fixed cost, you can’t easily adjust them in short-term. On the revenue side, even within what we call our base business, there are variable impacts at the point of sale.

So some aspects of our business and the base business are multiyear, longstanding FTE-based contracts. And of course, those kind of contracts are quite resilient to the negative effects of being unable to do transactional work. But there are other aspects of our business mix, which are, in shorter cycles, such as Cyprotex, and indeed some aspects of the development business, as Werner said, where the cycles are measured in either days or weeks or months. And of course, those areas suffer very sharp deteriorations due to the cyberattack and it’s very hard to fully catch up. But to finish on where we are now, of course, since Q3, operations have been fully back to full service, albeit with some remaining drag in productivity due to sort of complexity of data handling, while we come fully out of the details of cyber.

So, hopefully, that gives you a perspective on the operational side of the question. Matthias?