Stevanato Group S.p.A. (NYSE:STVN) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Paul Knight: Okay. And then my – I think the most frequent investor question right now is, you know, you’ve been guiding to around 10% long-term organic growth with the emergence of GLP1s with, I think what has been surprising number of biologic approvals last year, this year. What are your thoughts about that long-term 10% potential growth rate?

Franco Moro: But there’s a little you’re right, we are not addressing a single therapeutic area, we are talking about the opportunities we have in biologics, where our solution matches actually the needs of our customer. So obviously, we see opportunities that are embedded and our expectation to continue to have a healthy growth in the years. And this is something about the ‘24 next year is too early to release any specific information, but we are investing so eagerly in a high-value solution, because we consider biological space as the main driver of our growth in the future, where because also the possibility to convert the market for our vials having the cartridge in that space even faster than in general. But we arrive with our expectation to support the growth for the years. Not – no major changes in that.

Paul Knight: Thank you.

Operator: The next question is from David Windley from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

David Windley: Hi. Thanks for taking my question. In high-value solutions, can you comment on or maybe peel apart the demand for particular products within our groups of products, within high-value solutions? So, for example, are you seeing more of the push from standard to pre-sterilized? Or are you seeing more uplift in your higher-end products like Nexa and Alba?

Franco Moro: Yes, it’s a very interesting question, but I have to say that both, because we see very strong demand is even higher than expected for the right cartridges and also for Alba and Nexa, because both these products line, all of three these product lines are associated with the biologics and auto-injector or pen. So, we are very happy to say that our value proposition, our portfolio of a solution is not overweight in a single product line, but as a well balanced portfolio of a solution that drives the growth in biologics. There is nothing in specific that we consider more important that where I have to say that we have many different opportunities.

David Windley: Okay. Maybe a question for Marco. When you talk about higher industrial costs. Could you detail kind of what comprises industrial costs? What types of costs are you including in that descriptor, please?

Marco Dal Lago: Yes. Thanks, David. So, the reported gross profit margin, we have been impacted by the non-recurring startup cost related to the prelaunch of the commercial revenue in Fishers and the Latina. So we are training our people to secure the success of the ramp up. And these are treated as non-recurring expenses, without that, we would have done 32.3% in gross profit margin. Another important difference compared to last year is about depreciation, where we have about 80 basis point more than last year due to the CapEx we have been doing since the beginning of 2022. Obviously, the offset of that is about the shifting towards high-value solution where we are gaining profitability with the metric we shared several times that we are gaining 100 basis point of standard gross profit margin, whenever we increase 4% however, that shift the share of high-value solution.

So, it’s consistent with the plan we designed in the past. And those are the two main headwinds we are facing.

David Windley: Okay. Very helpful. Thank you. Last question for me. Kind of similar to Patrick’s question around the environment in life sciences. Destocking has been a theme and for you in your order pattern, you’re talking about order patterns returning to normal. Does that include – do you believe that that includes some amount of customers bleeding down their own inventories. Are they overstocked in inventory of your containment products, such that you know order patterns are not only lower, but are actually kind of undershooting current demand?