Stevanato Group S.p.A. (NYSE:STVN) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Franco Moro: Hi, Paul. Yes, I go through your questions. Starting from saying that we are on track on our capital expansion — our capital execution. Moving from Latina, Latina is close to generate the first commercial revenues in line with our expectation. I’m glad to say that we positively received also the first audit from certification bodies and customers. So we are very glad about the startup of Latina. We are in the same trajectory in Fishers, where we expect to have commercial revenue generation mid of next year. But also in this case, we are supporting the startup of both with local resources and also the staff moving from Italy to Fishers to help our new colleagues there. So we are very positive in the view about this big investment.

And you are right, we are also supporting our growth and our customer needs in engineering, heading resources not only to overcome the temporary challenges we are facing, as Marco noted in his comments, but also to prepare the stage for next step of growth. Because the success of our technology in the market is higher than expected at IPO, and we are scaling up the rating as a supplier of high-end technology in visual inspection and assembly.

Paul Knight: On the Engineering Segment, is this demand largely monoclonal antibody, or is there some GLP1 demand out there?

Franco Moro: Yes, Biologics. Biologics is growing fast and Biologics is an area where auto-injector play a major role, that is a good driver not only for assembly line in devices, but also because in each of these devices there is a containment solution — high value containment solution that needs a visual inspection after filling. And most importantly, [indiscernible] more production high value solution in cartridges and syringes. So overall, it’s a very interesting area of our business and biologics is the most important driver.

Lisa Miles: And Paul, just as a reminder, during our Capital Markets Day, we did outline that we are serving GLP1 with engineering lines as well.

Paul Knight: Okay, thanks.

Lisa Miles: Sabrina, next question, please.

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

David Windley: Hi, thanks. I wanted to come back to a couple of Derik’s good questions. One, on the engineering revenue push-out. If — the straightforward question is, could you please quantify the revenue amount you talked about cost-to-cost, as — but you know, if you would please quantify the revenue amount that got pushed out.

Marco Dal Lago: You mean the shifting from Q3 to Q4?

David Windley: Yes, please.

Marco Dal Lago: Yes, it’s about EUR5 million to EUR6 million.

David Windley: Got it. Thank you. And then, Marco, you said in your prepared remarks you made a comment about managing SG&A costs closely. Both the sales and marketing and G&A lines were lower both in dollar and in ratio percentage than we were looking for. I wonder, on the point of managing those costs closely, do some of those costs need to come back? Was there some delay in spending given the lower revenue? Or are you managing to a more efficient level of operation where you can sustain the lower levels that we’re seeing in the third quarter?

Marco Dal Lago: We are carefully managing, not postponing cost, obviously. So it’s the second one. You can see we are well in line with our R&D expenditure. We are between 3.3% to 3.4% in the nine months. So in line with our expectation. We are taking some cost in sales and marketing and G&A to manage efficiently our P&L.

David Windley: Okay. And then last question for me. On the order book question, you said it’s closer to your IPO period, we were still in the pandemic, lots of players were receiving orders that where clients were looking further out into the future, willing to do that because of supply chain challenges, managing inventory, higher levels of demand, a lot of different reasons. And as a result of that, some of your backlog at that time would have lapped not only into the following year but into the year after that. So if I bring that forward to current, that would be out into fiscal 2025. Does your current committed order book include 2025 orders or has that kind of compressed from a forward visibility time frame standpoint in customers eyes? Hope that question makes sense.