Bico Group Aktie

Hello, and welcome to BICO Group's Quarter 1 2026 Earnings Call. I'm Maria Forss, President and CEO, and I will together with BICO's CFO, Ewa Linsater, present this interim report.

Here is today's agenda. I will open today's session by summarizing quarter 1 2026 and also describe how BICO serves the world's leading pharma and biotech companies with solutions that transform how labs operate, innovate and solve our customers' challenges.

Following that, Ewa will present the group's financial performance. I will then comment on our R&D pipeline with our ongoing product development efforts. Additionally, I will highlight some recent and upcoming product launches. The session will conclude by highlighting our focus for 2026 before we open up for Q&A.

A strong start to the year with 11% organic growth, navigating in a dynamic market still affected by geopolitical uncertainty and a weak academic funding in the U.S. Due to continued currency headwinds, our total reported growth was negative 1.4%. All numbers presented are in million Swedish kroners, unless otherwise stated.

EBITDA was negative SEK 42 million with adjusted EBITDA of negative SEK 11 million and the difference is mainly related to our restructuring cost of SEK 52 million, of which SEK 30 million affected EBITDA.

Cash flow from operating activities totaled SEK 47 million. BICO successfully issued senior secured bonds of EUR 40 million and the new capital puts us in a position to support further growth and capture market recovery while navigating ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty.

A property in Oulu, Finland carved out from the divestment of Ginolis was also divested for a total of EUR 3.5 million. We settled our convertible bonds originally issued in 2021 with a total outstanding amount of SEK 1.08 billion in full on their scheduled maturity date.

Before Ewa provides more details on our financial performance, I will present how BICO serves the world's leading pharma and biotech companies with solutions transforming how labs operate and innovate, which is what our vision is about.

Our customers all share one ambition, reducing time to market and increasing the probability of success. With our leading software suite, Green Button Go, together with off-the-shelf automation products as well as bioprinting, our portfolio is in the sweet spot of meeting that ambition and solving their core challenges with long and costly development cycles. Our solutions enable smarter, faster and more efficient labs and here lies an underlying strong demand.

Pharma and biotech companies all face the same fundamental challenge, long costly development cycles for new therapies. The development of new therapy often takes more than 10 years and cost between USD 2 billion and USD 4 billion, with the probability of approval after Phase I at just 10%.

To overcome this, our pharma and biotech customers are investing heavily in automation and AI to increase efficiency, speed and quality to bring innovations to market faster and at a lower cost.

Our products and services enable our customers to connect data across systems and apply AI tools to plan, run and optimize experiments in real time. We are enabling AI-driven drug discovery workflows through our Green Button Go platform, connecting workflows and data streams.

The AI acceleration shifts the bottleneck to the wet lab, where our automation solutions are at the core. And I will explain how Green Button Go enables AI-powered automation in the wet lab to ease this bottleneck.

AI accelerates discovery and then the wet labs become the new bottleneck. Generative models and predictive biology dramatically speed up hypothesis generation, yet the wet lab validation remains the hard constraint.

In fact, more AI-driven candidates mean more experiments, not fewer, intensifying pressure on lab throughput, system uptime and data reproducibility. This means that wet labs become more critical rather than obsolete.

AI breakthroughs have made wet labs even more sensitive to R&D. The lab is now a biological compute cluster, validating AI predictions for high throughput automation and trusted data become mission-critical.

So all in all, BICO lab automation provides a trusted execution and validation layer that converts AI-generated hypothesis into proven experimental evidence.

We have already integrated assistive AI into our platforms, bringing natural language workflow creation and troubleshooting in Green Button Go, making automation accessible to every scientist. And we are also developing next-generation systems like Crescendo to scale up experiments while keeping human in the loop oversight.

So by emphasizing reliability, data integrity and compliance, we ensure the coming search of AI-driven experiments can run at scale without compromising quality or uptime. This execution-focused strategy cements our platform as indispensable infrastructure in an AI-powered biotech landscape, making AI an opportunity for us rather than a threat. And this leads us to our vision, which have been updated this quarter.

BICO's updated vision have been developed to position us as more visionary and with a clear portfolio position and direction in line with the BICO 2.0 strategy and portfolio. And from this quarter, we are reporting BICO as one operating unit, which reflects the integrated operating model, shared resources and joint strategic initiatives across the group.

Our updated vision is to enable life science labs to accelerate the discoveries that change lives with a mission where BICO leverages a global portfolio of pioneering brands, fusing automation, intelligence and data to unlock scientific discovery at scale.

Ultimately, we support customers to advance science so therapies can reach people faster. Customers using BICO lab automation solutions consistently report measurable gains in productivity and reliability, including reduced hands-on time, faster turnaround times and higher instrument utilization.

Let me show you one example that emphasizes the value BICO delivers to our customers. The data shown here are from one of the top pharma customers we are serving and they kindly share their efficiency improvements by using our lab automation solutions.

Downstream process and assay development was reduced by 75% and the capacity with existing equipment they already had was revved up by 400% because parallel processing and variable-driven robotic processes just allow for more uptime to be squeezed out of each piece of equipment in the lab.

And ultimately, these productivity increases mean that their scientists are able to achieve 200% of their original productivity. And this is because the automation was coming alongside them, supporting them, taking over the manual steps and running concurrently in ways that a person just can't manage alone. And this is just one example of a lab leveraging Green Button Go and we're taking technology and using it to augment the work of humans, using technology to get to innovation faster.

So to summarize, we lead the way in solving the challenges in life science with speed, accuracy and efficiency. All in all, our customers can run their processes faster, improve their quality of data and ultimately make better decisions.

I will now hand over to Ewa to present the results for the first quarter.

Thank you, Maria. I will now give some more details to the numbers presented by Maria. After a strong start in January with a positive outlook, the market was again affected by geopolitical uncertainty with tariffs and war.

The weak academic funding seen in 2025 has continued during Q1, where academic end markets remain soft with cautious spending and delayed capital equipment purchases. Despite this general trend, we see some pockets of improvement sales also in the academia segment during the quarter.

Total organic growth was 11%. As from this quarter, we are reporting BICO as one single operating segment. Following the divestment of 3 bioprinting companies, a step towards a more consolidated business, the portfolio is now more focused on lab automation and software intelligence across our entire business.

And this reinforces the One BICO approach where strategic decisions and performance evaluations are made on a consolidated basis. This reporting, which is now focused on the group as a whole, reflects the integrated operating model, shared resources and joint strategic initiatives across the group.

Navigating these dynamic market conditions, sales in Q1 amounted to SEK 330 million, an organic growth of 11%, mainly deriving from strong desktop instrument sales. The 12 percentage points difference between reported and organic growth can be explained by FX headwinds, mainly due to the weaker U.S. dollars against the Swedish krona.

To align with industry standards, we have revised our reported sales categories into Instruments, Consumables and Service and Other. Lab automation projects have previously been grouped as a single category and are now split into Instruments for the product part and into Service and Other for the software and installation parts. In Q1, we saw growth in the segments Instruments and Consumables.

EBITDA amounted to a negative SEK 42 million and adjusted EBITDA being negative SEK 11 million. The difference mainly relates to one-off restructuring costs of SEK 52 million, of which SEK 30 million affected the EBITDA.

These restructuring costs are connected to a program launch during the quarter. The aim is to improve cost efficiency, further simplify the operating model and improve the R&D pipeline execution in one of the business units. The program includes organizational streamlining as well as a planned closure of one site in Europe.

We also have aligned some group functions to our current business needs. These programs will yield annualized savings of about SEK 30 million.

Even if we see a decline in the gross profit margin compared to the same quarter last year, mainly due to unfavorable product mix, the adjusted EBITDA improved as a result of increased sales as well as continued cost control activities.

One example is legal costs, where we have invested in legal competencies in-house which has led to reduced external legal costs.

In a growing yet still emerging and increasingly demanding market, we continued during the quarter to address execution challenges in parts of our lab automation business, primarily related to complex projects. These initiatives are receiving focused management attention and we are actively implementing targeted measures to strengthen execution, enhance scalability and reinforce our competitiveness going forward.

Cash flow from operating activities amounted to SEK 47 million, impacted positively by working capital changes of SEK 79 million. During the quarter, we settled our convertible bond and also issued new senior secured bonds.

We sold our Finnish property with a net proceeds of SEK 32 million. The total cash flow during the first quarter amounted to minus SEK 547 million due to the settlement of the convertible bonds of SEK 1.08 billion. Cash reserves by the end of the period were SEK 744 million.

As mentioned on the previous slide, the effect of changes in working capital amounted to a positive effect of SEK 79 million compared to the previous quarter. Operating receivables decreased by SEK 146 million.

Inventories increased by SEK 13 million. Operating liabilities decreased by SEK 55 million. In percentage of the last 12-month sales, net working capital in the quarter corresponded to 7%.

The low working capital is a consequence of reduced accounts receivable as our sales normally are lower in the first half of the year, but also fewer new large projects started. Over time, we expect working capital in relation to sales to be in line with industry standard of closer to 20% of sales.

As earlier mentioned, we issued senior secured bonds in January with a total nominal value of EUR 40 million. The bonds have a tenure of 4 years and the carrying floating interest rate of 3 months Euribor plus a margin of 5.9%.

As Maria has mentioned earlier, the new capital puts us in a position to support further growth and capture market recovery while navigating ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty. The transaction also serves as a clear testament to the capital markets' continued confidence in BICO.

I will now hand over to Maria to present the R&D portfolio and some recent product launches.

Thank you, Ewa. One focus area for growth is continuous product innovation and we have a solid R&D pipeline and road map in place at BICO. And this is based on the portfolio strategy, which is part of BICO 2.0.

On this slide, you can see our comprehensive product development pipeline within BICO's prioritized focus area. The majority of the R&D investments are made in software development and the use of AI, while there are several upgrades of the instrument portfolio, meeting customer needs.

One example of a software upgrade is the AI-powered VCD and cell counting on the UP.SIGHT. AI is more than large language models and [indiscernible].

In this case, AI is used for image-based pattern recognition to detect and segment sales quickly and precisely even under challenging conditions. And thanks to the new software update in combination with other features, the UP.SIGHT offers a solution that is 10x faster to results versus sequential viable cell counts on the industry standard. And savings are estimated to SEK 200,000 to SEK 300,000 per midsized cell line development lab.

Multiple launches are planned for this year and these include both software, instruments and consumables. We have already launched a few products in quarter 1 and some more are around the corner and those were pre-launched at the major lab automation Congress, SLAS in February this year.

The G.STATION Generation 2 automates the next-generation sequencing library prep workflow, enabling the scalable, cost-efficient production of consistent sequencing-ready libraries for genomics and drug discovery applications.

The G.PURE Generation 2 automates DNA purification, delivering rapid, reproducible, plastic tip-free sample cleanup for seamless next-generation library prep workflows. And these are just 2 examples of technology and solutions delivering customer value, which are the results of our efforts within R&D.

As presented earlier in this call, we have already integrated assistive AI into our platforms, bringing natural language workflow creation and troubleshooting in Green Button Go, making automation accessible to every scientist.

In our R&D road map for Green Button Go, we're also developing next-generation systems like Crescendo to scale up experiments while keeping human in the loop oversight and data integrity end-to-end. So by emphasizing reliability, data integrity and compliance, we ensure the coming search of AI-driven experiments can run at scale without compromising quality or uptime.

Before the Q&A session, I will repeat our strategy, give some concluding remarks and highlight our focus for 2026.

Here, you can see our strategy BICO 2.0 on a page. Our 5 strategic focus areas to drive our top line and profitable growth are enabling end-to-end lab automation and scientific workflow solutions, coupled with further development of integrated data, AI and software solutions.

To enable increased sales to pharma, we need to ensure regulatory compliance readiness. We also want to expand strategic partnerships such as the one with Sartorius and Becton Dickinson as well as increasing the recurring revenue.

In 2026, we have and we will continue to execute our strategy with focus on commercial excellence and R&D pipeline that delivers clear customer value and financial discipline for profitable growth. And with our strengthened cash position, we can accelerate commercial as well as R&D initiatives and also more seriously engage in dialogues for bolt-on acquisitions, strengthening our portfolio further.

The new capital puts us in a position to support further growth and capture market recovery. We have also increased our innovation efforts, including software solutions and the use of AI, as I just presented. And above all, we remain committed to supporting our customers' research.

I strongly believe in BICO's updated vision, which is to enable life science labs to accelerate the discoveries that change lives. By providing innovative instruments, software, services and consumables into one continuous operating system, we create labs where data flows seamlessly, every experiment advances next and breakthroughs move with efficacy from idea to impact.

Together, we enable our customers to deliver what matters the most, the discoveries that advance human health. This was our final slide before the Q&A.

I will now hand over to the earnings call host for further instructions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Ulrik Trattner from DNB Carnegie.

A few questions on my end. 11% organic growth is obviously strong and you talk about or highlight strong desktop instrument sales. Can you just sort of highlight what the development has been here through the quarter and changes you're seeing in the dynamics of the market?

And I guess you're still seeing delayed purchasing cycles for larger projects. And if you can highlight which products or subsidiaries that are going particularly strong, that would be helpful.

Yes. So as you say, Ulrik, there are desktop instruments that are mainly growing in the quarter and while larger projects still take longer time to complete in terms of business cycles. So it's our German-based companies that are driving the growth when it comes to the desktop instrument sales mainly.

Okay. Great. And if there are any sort of -- I know that you like to sort of segment it into academic or R&D-based sort of focused companies. But is there any direction of the sort of subsidiaries, i.e., is it early research? Is it sort of genomics, diagnostics? What is the general industry trend that is helping you sort of towards a double digit organic growth?

I would say that we have -- there are still some effects of a muted U.S. academia market where our companies that are exposed to U.S. academia have had it tougher. At the same time, though, in, for instance, next-generation sequencing, we can see that there are strong sales growth and also in customers that have OEM business there, we start to see that the business is starting to have -- brighten up a bit.

That's great. That's kind of what I've been seeing as well. Just trying to get everything in line. And just on the sort of restructuring savings, how much should come through in '26 versus '27? I'm not sure, you might have addressed it, but I missed it.

Can you please repeat that again, Ulrik?

How much of the sort of restructuring savings that should come through in '26 versus sort of, I guess, would be fully run in 2027?

I think you can start seeing some savings maybe the last quarter of 2026. So the main parts will not fall in until the 2027.

Okay. Great. And last question on my end before getting back into the queue. Q1, obviously, seasonally the smallest quarter on your end. Have you sort of deciphered any type of quarterly sales level where you can reach a positive adjusted EBITDA on a sustainable basis? Or is this fluctuating?

It's a good question, Ulrik. I think given that we have done so much transformation of the business, and we have one pedal on the gas and one put on the gas and on the rate, I think it's too early to say where those levels ultimately lies. So we'll have to come back to you on that one.

Sure. That's fair enough. Last question, sorry, squeeze in one additional in. Obviously, a very strong cash flow here in Q1. Is there any spillover effect from sort of late deliveries in Q4 or anything? I do note some changes here in working capital helping the cash flow for Q1, but it looks fairly strong. So any type of one-offs that we should not extrapolate?

I think -- I don't think there were any delays in the deliveries. What we can see is we had a really strong Q4 and also some larger entities might pay on the wrong side of the year-end. That is a small effect that you can see. But otherwise, it's more that we had a strong Q4 and the sales is not as strong in the Q1. So that's the main reason.

The next question comes from Ludvig Lundgren from Nordea.

Starting off with a bit of a follow-up to Ulrik's question there. You highlight that you were somewhat affected by the geopolitical uncertainty during the quarter. So maybe if you can just elaborate a bit on how the quarter developed and also if this implies that customers might be a bit more hesitant with instrument orders here in the second quarter?

Yes, happy to do so. So as you saw in my CEO comments, the year started really, really strong in January. And then in February, we got both new tariff discussions as well as some uncertainty in the Middle East region and that halted some of -- it was clearly seen in February that, that affected business decisions.

As always, the end of the quarter is always better. So we saw things coming back in March again, which then all in all, in total, deal a quarter with strong organic growth of 11%. So some muted academia in the U.S. still. But as I said to Ulrik's question before, we still saw some good growth in other parts of the business, both when it comes to OEM as well as in next-generation sequencing.

Okay. Very clear. And just if you can elaborate a bit on your exposure to the Middle East, do you have any significant sales there?

No, we don't. It's more that -- I mean, prices of transports and the general uncertainty is, of course, affecting our business as anyone else operating in a global world, but not anything directly.

Okay. Fair enough. And then a final one from my side, just on lab automation and Biosero, which started off a bit slower here, it seems in Q1. So I just wonder what to expect for Q2 and the rest of the year? Is this current activity level a good indicator for where -- what Biosero will deliver in the next few quarters?

I think as we have been very open about the past quarters, we are investing heavily to make sure that we can close legacy projects, freeing up capacity. And all the different initiatives with different target measures will both strengthen our execution, enhance our scalability and also reinforce our competitiveness moving forward.

So as we never guide forward, I cannot comment on quarter 2 or forward, but we're doing everything in our power to make sure that we can scale that business.

The next question comes from Filip Einarsson from Redeye.

So I have actually -- I mean, the presentation was focusing a lot on AI and I wanted to follow up with a few questions on that. So you sort of emphasized building a data backbone for AI-driven lab automation. Is it possible to quantify sort of the percentage of your installed base currently connected and generating usable data to train AI models?

Every single instrument that is used by a customer are generating data that can be used. And in our development that we have now that we're doing in Crescendo, for instance, we're utilizing [indiscernible] of data from different installations to feed our algorithms.

But overall, it's -- all instruments that are used in customers are generating data and instruments are roughly 75% of our sales this quarter, 65%. But overall, you should see it, Filip, as a continuous operating lab flow where data from the dry lab feeds into the wet lab where we are present and then data flows back to the dry lab again. So it's a continuous loop where several different instruments and players are involved in that total workflow.

Okay. Got it. And maybe then if you could elaborate a little bit on how the monetization opportunities of the AI and the data you're generating. Maybe you could give us some pointers here. Are we talking like subscriptions or usage-based pricing or what should we expect?

I think that's difficult to quantify to put -- I mean, overall, as I said in the presentation, AI is an opportunity for us. But to put a number how much that would generate in terms of sales connected to our instruments overall, that's super, super difficult to say.

Okay. Sorry, I had a hard time hearing what you said with the connection. Maybe you could repeat.

Okay. So when it comes to AI and monetizing that, that is difficult to do. Overall, AI is an opportunity for us rather than a threat. And we put our tech stack together to ensure that whatever AI model that our customers are using, that could be used together with our different solutions.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you for all the questions received, and thank you for your continued interest and support in BICO Group. Together with Ewa, I wish you all a great Wednesday. Thank you, and goodbye.

Welcome to BICO Q4 2025 Report Presentation. [Operator Instructions]

Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers, CEO, Maria Forss; and CFO, Jacob Thordenberg. Please go ahead.

Hello and welcome to BICO Group's Quarter 4 2025 Earnings Call. I'm Maria Forss, President and CEO; and I will together with BICO's CFO, Jacob Thordenberg, present this year's end report. Here's today's agenda. I will open today's session by summarizing 2025 and also describe how BICO serves the world's leading pharma and biotech companies with solutions that transform how labs operate, innovate and solve our customers' challenges. Following that, I will summarize the full year 2025 as well as quarter 4 '25 and Jacob will then present the group's financial performance.

We will then proceed and comment on our performance in the 2 business areas, Life Science Solutions and Lab Automation. I will also comment on our R&D pipeline with our ongoing product development efforts. Additionally, I will highlight product launches made at SLAS, the Society of Lab Automation and Screening Congress, that took place last week in Boston. The session will conclude by highlighting our focus for 2026 before we open up for Q&A.

When summarizing 2025, we can conclude that we finished the year on a strong note with double-digit organic sales growth in Lab Automation and a strengthened cash position. After the quarter in January '26, we successfully raised new capital, enabling investments to support further growth. 2025 has been a year of strategy execution. We have delivered on all key strategic initiatives and the impact is clear; a portfolio focused on lab automation, significantly reduced debt and a strong cash position, we have leaner operations and a more focused and customer-centric product portfolio, providing a strong foundation for 2026.

Before commenting on our performance, I will present how BICO serves the world's leading pharma and biotech companies with solutions that transform how labs operate and innovate. Our customers share 1 ambition, reducing time to market and increasing the probability of success. With Biosero's leading software suite, Green Button Go, together with their off-the-shelf automation products as well as bioprinting, our portfolio is in the sweet spot of meeting that ambition and solve the core challenges with long and costly development cycles. Our solutions enable smarter, faster and more efficient labs and here lies an underlying strong demand.

Pharma and biotech companies all face the same fundamental challenge, long costly development cycles for new therapies. The development of a new therapy often takes more than 10 years and costs between USD 2 billion and USD 4 billion with probability of approval after Phase I at just 10%. To overcome this, our pharma and biotech customers are investing heavily in automation to increase efficiency, speed and quality; to bring innovations to market faster and at a lower cost. Our products and services enable our customers to connect data across systems and apply AI tools to plan, run and optimize experiments in real time. And already today, we're enabling AI-driven drug discovery workflows through our Green Button Go platform.

We are at the core of this transformation, connecting workflows and data streams and enabling AI-powered experimentation, and this is what our vision and mission is all about. Our vision is to enable and automate the life science lab of the future. And our mission is to be the first choice lab automation partner and provider of selected workflows to pharma and biotech. During the fourth quarter, I visited several pharma customers who use BICO lab automation solutions and they consistently reported measurable gains in productivity and reliability, including reduced hands-on time, faster turnaround times and higher instrument utilization. And hearing this directly from the scientists using our system every day was both energizing and validating.

Let me show you 1 example that emphasizes our mission, our strategic direction and the value that we deliver to our customers. The data shown here are from 1 of the Top 20 pharma customers we are serving. They kindly share their efficiency improvements by using our Lab Automation Solutions. Downstream process and assay development time was reduced by 75%. The capacity with the existing equipment they already had was revved up by 400% because parallel processing and variable-driven robotic processes just allow for more uptime to be squeezed out of each piece of equipment in the lab.

And ultimately, these productivity increases means that their scientists are able to achieve 200% of their original productivity. This is because automation was coming alongside them, supporting them and taking over the manual steps and running concurrently in ways that a person just can't manage alone. And this is just 1 example of a lab leveraging Green Button Go and every lab we work with is looking to see numbers like this. The interest in integration services is strong and it's because we're taking technology and using it to augment the work of humans. And we're using technology to get to innovation faster. So to summarize, we lead the way in solving the challenges in life science with speed, accuracy and efficiency. All in all, our customers can run their process faster, improve the quality of the data and ultimately make better decisions.

I will now move on to the next section and summarize the fourth quarter as well as the full year 2025. 2025 has been a turnaround year for BICO, building a strong foundation for 2026. Across the industry, 2025 was marked by a challenging market environment. Geopolitical developments, including tariffs, created uncertainty and led customers to take a more cautious approach to CapEx investments. The U.S. academia segment was hit hard by significant NIH funding cuts. FX headwinds with a weaker dollar and euro also weighed on the margins. The diagnostic market normalized, consumables continued to grow and the instrument sales remain muted, but recovered increasingly over the course of the year.

I will now present key metrics for the full year and the fourth quarter and Jacob will later in the presentation give more details about the financial development. Sales for 2025 amounted to SEK 1.497 billion corresponding to negative organic sales growth of 8%. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 5 million corresponding to a margin of 0.3%. And cash flow from operating activities amounted to SEK 68 million. And let's turn over to the fourth quarter where sales amounted to SEK 451 million corresponding to a negative sales growth of 4%. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 56 million corresponding to a margin of 13%. Cash flow from operating activities amounted to SEK 52 million and net working capital in relation to the last 12-month sales was 13%.

In late January 26, we issued senior secured bonds and I will now hand over to Jacob to comment further on this.

Thank you, Maria. As just mentioned, we issued senior secured bonds on January 28 with a total nominal value of EUR 40 million. The bonds have a tenure of 4 years and carrying a floating interest of 3 months Euribor plus a margin of 5.9%. The bonds were issued at 96.81% of par and were placed with a consortium of Swedish institutional investors. The new capital puts us in a position to support further growth and capture market recovery while navigating ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty. The transaction also serves as a clear testament to the capital markets' continued confidence in BICO. I will later in the presentation describe what this means for BICO in terms of cash reserves post settlement of our current convertible bonds.

I will now give some more details to the numbers just presented by Maria. Sales amounted to SEK 1.497 billion, which corresponds to an organic sales growth of negative 8%. With most of the portfolio being instruments and the industry-wide CapEx restraints as well as a muted academia market, the weak first half of the year could not be fully compensated by a stronger second half of the year despite increased demand. Improvements in Scienion and CELLINK strengthened the results while the very weak H1 for Biosero and challenges in the U.S. academic segment impacted the full year results substantially.

Biosero has gained positive momentum with new ways of working, new management in place and finished the year with double-digit growth in the fourth quarter. The adjusted EBITDA was SEK 5 million corresponding to a margin of 0.3%. The updated cost estimates in ongoing projects in business area Lab Automation and declined gross profit were the main factors impacting the adjusted EBITDA margin compared to prior year while continued cost control had some positive effects. Operational cash flow amounted to SEK 68 million.

In Q4, our seasonally strongest quarter, sales amounted to SEK 451 million corresponding to a negative sales growth of 12% and a negative organic sales growth in constant currency of negative 3.7%. The 9 percentage points difference can be explained by FX headwinds with a weaker U.S. dollar and euro against a stronger Swedish krona. It is also worth mentioning that the corresponding quarter last year was strong in Lab Automation. And in Life Science Solutions, we saw, especially in the U.S., significant budget release prior to the installment of the new U.S. administration.

Adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 56 million corresponding to a margin of 13%. During the year, we have continued to be very cost conscious to mitigate the adverse effects of lower sales. When looking at the margin development, it is also worth mentioning that we have had a more conservative approach on which R&D costs we capitalized due to a more comprehensive R&D governance with the implementation of a gate stage project model. BICO will continue our clear focus on structural cost reductions and tight expense management in 2026.

And if we move on to cash flow in Q4. Cash flow from operating activities amounted to SEK 52 million impacted by working capital changes of negative SEK 12 million. Total cash flow during the fourth quarter amounted to SEK 36 million. Cash reserves by end of the year was SEK 1.282 billion. These cash reserves will be used to settle the remaining balance of our current convertible debt of SEK 1.008 billion. The original debt amount of SEK 1.50 billion have over the years been reduced by early bond buybacks to a nominal amount of SEK 482 million resulting in savings of more than SEK 50 million.

Following the settlement of the existing bonds based on Q4's cash reserves and all else equal, BICO will have a strong cash position of around SEK 670 million. Maria will later in the presentation describe how we plan to allocate this capital. As mentioned on the previous slide, the effects of changes in working capital amounted to negative SEK 12 million for the quarter and out of this, operating receivables increased by SEK 62 million, inventories decreased by SEK 26 million, operating liabilities increased by SEK 24 million.

In percentage of last 12 months sales, net working capital in the quarter corresponded to 13% confirming that the continued operational excellence actions have been successful. The quite low levels of net working capital is primarily an effect of less net working capital by 0 due to decreases in receivables. Long term we expect working capital in relation to sales to be in line with industry standards of closer to 20% of sales.

I will now hand over to Maria to present the results in our 2 business areas.

Thank you, Jacob. Let's now turn to our largest business area, Life Science Solutions. Sales in 2025 amounted to SEK 1.108 billion with an organic sales growth of 1%, which is an improvement year-over-year with 11%. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 83 million corresponding to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 8%. When looking at our peers, we can conclude that peers with a significant amount of instrument business, which is comparable with Life Science Solutions, reported negative sales growth for the year.

The flat sales development which we have seen over the year was primarily driven by a weaker demand in the U.S. academic segment. U.S. academic customers have reduced instrument purchases following funding-related constraints primarily in the U.S. and biotech activity has also remained soft amid longer investment cycles. In contrast, the diagnostics segment continued to perform comparatively well supported by a normalization of the diagnostic market and adoption of automation-linked solutions. Consumables continued to show healthy demand in quarter 4, in line with previous quarter during the year.

We have also spent a lot of effort together with the management teams of Scienion and CELLINK, respectively, to sharpen the commercial offering and strengthen the operational excellence during 2025. This work has paid off and both companies have adapted into a new way of working, a more rightsized cost and clear focus on profitable growth. And if we move to quarter 4 results for Life Science Solutions business area. Given the continued tough market, the year ended on a strong note excluding U.S. academia dependent business units, which continued to struggle as mentioned previously.

The corresponding quarter 2024 was also very strong due to a lot of U.S. academic sales before the new U.S. administration when they were to cut NIH funding, which results in a tough comparison that Jacob mentioned earlier. The Life Science Solutions delivered in a seasonally strongest quarter SEK 326 million in sales meaning a negative 9% organic sales growth. The adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 49 million corresponding to a 15% adjusted EBITDA margin. The profitability was pressured by softer sales, less favorable product mix and tariffs and cost related impacts.

And if we move on to our business area, Lab Automation. Revenue for the full year '25 amounted to SEK 391 million, an organic growth of negative 26%. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to negative SEK 31 million corresponding to an adjusted EBITDA margin of negative 8%. The very weak first half for Biosero, including a revision of estimated hours in quarter 2 with a negative effect of SEK 40 million, impacted the full year results substantially. Transformative actions to scale up Biosero have been executed since quarter 2 and the focus has been to significantly enhance processes, leadership and operational capabilities.

As Jacob mentioned earlier, Biosero has gained positive momentum with new ways of working, new management in place and we finished the year with double-digit growth. New operational capacities in Biosero are hence paying off and when legacy projects are finalized, the operations will be able to scale and operate in a more sustainable and profitable way. The Lab Automation business area finished the year on a strong note. Sales for the quarter amounted to SEK 125 million, which equals an organic sales growth of 15%.

This sales growth was mainly driven by hardware revenue from the large orders won in quarter 3 and accelerated project completions, sales or service contract and software business. The adjusted EBITDA was SEK 18 million corresponding to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 15%. The profitability was supported by higher volumes and increased hardware contribution from the large orders, but also partially offset by continued substantial investments in operational resources for the benefit of our customers to accelerate the closing of legacy projects that have been delayed.

I will now move on to the next section where I will comment on the R&D portfolio. One area for growth for BICO is continuous product innovation and we have a solid R&D pipeline and road map in place and this is based on the portfolio strategy which is part of BICO 2.0. And before I comment on some of our recent launches coming from our R&D efforts, it's worth repeating that our current product portfolio covers the full spectrum of lab automation solutions and selected workflows. It's important to emphasize that we have lab automation products and solutions in both our business areas and this is illustrated on this slide where you can see instruments from various BICO business units positioned along different stages of the lab automation continuum.

Products in the business area Life Science Solutions are also automation-ready and can be powered by Green Button Go. Here are some examples. C.STATION is a unique product. It's a standardized integrated work cell for pharmaceutical cell line development. This is also an example of synergies in the group as the product includes products from CYTENA [Audio Gap] Instruments and Biosero. To the right, you can see the benefits of automation and how this off-the-shelf lab automation solution saves both time and money to the customers through lower staff requirements as well as lower CapEx investments. The optimized workflow shortens cell line development by 4 weeks accelerating product delivery.

And if we move on to another solution, G. PREP combining products from CYTENA and Dispendix. G. PREP is a miniaturized NGS workflow enabled by noncontact liquid handling. It reduces reagent consumption with up to 90% as well as pipette usage and plastic waste, delivering return on investment within 12 months to the customers. Now these are just 2 examples of technology and solutions delivering customer value. And if we take a look at our R&D pipeline and road map. On this slide, you can see our comprehensive product development pipeline within BICO's prioritized focus areas. The majority of the R&D investments are made in software development and the use of AI while there are several upgrades of instrument portfolio as well, meeting customer needs.

Multiple product launches are planned for this year and these include both software, instruments and consumables. We have already launched a few products last week during the SLES, the Society of Lab Automation and Screening Congress, in Boston. And for those of you who is not familiar with this congress, it's the most important congress within lab automation in the year generating a lot of sales opportunities. At SLES, one of the products launched was GoSimple by Biosero, which is designed to simplify workflows, reduce hands-off time, increase sample throughput and enable extended lab operations.

GoSimple is initially launched with commercial partnerships covering selected instruments from Sartorius and Becton, Dickinson & Company. And this product is an example of how we are introducing new commercial concepts in lab automation with shorter lead times to balance the product portfolio. And given the high interest we saw at SLAS, there might be additional collaborations added over time, including expanded work with existing partners as well as new partnerships and the partners will promote GoSimple alongside their instruments.

And this approach strengthens market adoption with the aim of positioning GoSimple as a preferred automation-ready solution across multiple worksites. Biosero has also made an early access release for the new assistive AI tool set during SLAS where our software suite Green Button Go enables workflow creation, review and troubleshooting using natural language instead of code. The assistive AI solution is designed to improve speed, usability and error resolution in lab automation while maintaining full human oversight and validation. It also uses AI responsibly by augmenting workflow development and not by introducing autonomy.

This early access program is available to a limited group of customers through a controlled access program and this approach allows us at Biosero to learn alongside the users and evolve the capabilities based on real-world needs. Before the Q&A, I will repeat our strategy and give some concluding remarks and highlight our focus for 2026. Here you can see our strategy BICO 2.0 on a page.

Our 5 strategic focus areas; to drive our top line and profitable growth are enabling end-to-end lab automation and scientific workflow solutions coupled with further development of integrated data, AI and software solutions; to enable increased sales to pharma, we need to ensure regulatory compliance readiness; and we also want to expand strategic partnerships such as the one with Sartorius and Becton Dickinson as well as increasing the recurring revenue. In 2026 we will continue to execute our strategy with focus on commercial excellence, an R&D pipeline that delivers clear customer value and financial discipline for profitable growth.

And with this strengthened cash position, we can accelerate commercial as well as R&D initiatives and also more seriously engage in dialogs for bolt-on acquisitions, strengthening our portfolio further. The new capital puts us in a position to support further growth and capture a market recovery. We will strengthen our innovation efforts, including software solutions and the use of AI. And above all, we remain committed to supporting our customers' research and enabling the lab of the future. For us, automation isn't just about efficiency. It's about empowering scientists to accelerate innovations that shapes healthier societies.

Before the Q&A, I want to sincerely thank our customers, business partners and shareholders for your continued trust throughout 2025. And I also want to extend my appreciation to all BICO colleagues around the world. Thanks for your dedication and meaningful contributions this year. This was our final slide before the Q&A.

I will now hand over to the earnings call host for further instructions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Ludvig Lundgren from Nordea.

So I have 3 and I take them one by one. So starting off on Life Science Solutions. You highlighted a slow academic spending here and it has been rather slow throughout 2025. But outside of this end market, it seems as if demand has been rather good actually lately. So I know you don't provide any guidance, but given that you have started talking about the slowdown in academic spending already I think in Q1 '25, is it fair to assume organic growth to improve from here looking into H1?

As you say, Ludvig, there has been slow academic spending throughout 2025 and I think we as well as our peers, there are difficulties to make predictions about what's happening in 2026. The assumption from peers in the market is that the NIH budget cuts will not be further cut, but there will likely be a more stable situation during 2026, but it's still unsecured. So I think we will have to just see what the future has in its -- and see where things are going. But remember that we have normally a seasonally variation when it comes to Life Science Solutions where quarter 1 is usually our weakest quarter and quarter 4 is our strongest quarter.

Okay. Very clear. And just a follow-up to that. Would you say that like looking this far into Q1, is the market, so to say, worse than what it was in Q1 last year when you like initially saw this slowdown in academic or is it -- it sounds like it's somewhat of the same market basically.

I would say that this is the new normality and the market has adapted to that and there is -- there are no news that is making any more insecurities than before. So if anything, it's more stable than last year.

Okay. And then I want to jump over to lab automation and you mentioned SLAS here and we saw a lot of like pharmaceutical companies announcing new AI drug discovery initiatives with Eli Lilly I think being the largest one that I saw at least. So I just wanted to hear like are you already seeing an effect from this on Biosero in terms of new project proposals and so on or is this more of a long-term growth driver for Biosero?

I think we have -- if we split AI in machine learning that has been around for decades and the use of large language models, those are 2 different things. And overall, AI is something that supports our business model that we work with Biosero. So initially what we do with AI is to ensure that we can help our customers make more efficiencies by reducing their time that they are using for managing large amounts of information and complexity so they can easier reach their potential on automation. And for AI to work, you need a lot of data. Without data -- you cannot contextualize data; without that, you cannot make any good algorithms that help makes AI help you. And since we have been around for such a long time with Biosero and have so much data, we can then utilize that in advancing our different solutions forward. So AI coupled -- AI and data and software coupled with end-to-end lab automation, that is the large demand from our pharma customers when they are trying to get products to market faster and with a higher probability of success.

Okay. Very clear. And then a final question from my side is on the OpEx side. I think excluding the one-offs here in the quarter, it seems to be down quite a bit both sequentially and year-over-year and that's despite of course Q4 being a high sales quarter so to say. So I just wanted to set some reasonable expectations here for '26. Is it fair to view this OpEx level here in Q4 as a new base or how should we look at the current OpEx level?

Ludvig, I would say yes. I would say that the OpEx levels in Q4 are indeed sort of a good proxy and where we hope to stabilize. Some of the decrease that you see between 2024 and 2025 I believe is also related to impairments in R&D in 2024. So that's driving some of the decline in OpEx because that's included in OpEx. But in addition to that, we have also been cost conscious and made savings in 2025 and we are quite happy with the current cost base. We believe that we perhaps could do a little bit more, but not from sort of the elevated levels that we saw in terms of reductions in 2024. And the ambition going into 2026 is of course that we should be able and are able to scale on our current cost base.

The next question comes from Filip Einarsson from Redeye.

I'll actually start with some of the recent news relating to the launch of GoSimple. Can you give some color or any immediate impressions on the launch?

Filip, it's a very bad line. Can you please repeat the question?

So my question relates to the recent news flow on maybe the launch of GoSimple. I'm curious if you could share some like immediate impressions on the launch and maybe provide some color on that.

Yes, sure. So at SLAS in Boston where we launched GoSimple, both with instruments from Becton, Dickinson & Company and also Sartorius, there was a huge interest from customers, but also other potential collaboration partners. So we have quite a long list of other potential collaboration partners that want to do the same that we have now done with Sartorius and Becton Dickinson. When it comes to what the different sales leads will generate in terms of actual sales, that is something that is being followed up as we speak. So that I will know in a few weeks' time. But by just looking at the flow in the booth and the immediate feedback, it was a successful launch.

Okay. Good. And just a short follow-up. Sort of from our point of view, when should we expect this to become a material part of the sales mix? Could you provide any sort of guidance there?

I think overall in terms of the business case for GoSimple, it's a complement to balancing the portfolio with large and more complex projects. And I mean it takes some time before you can see effect of the sales given the sales cycles, but you should still think about the large complex projects being the largest revenue stream for Biosero and GoSimple is a complement to it for now.

Okay. And I'm curious also, look, you talked about academia being headwinds obviously. But I'm also curious on sort of other customer segments. I hear from other actors in the industry that activity among biotech customers for example is improving. Is it your view as well? And could you comment on how that has progressed?

I would say that the second half of last year, we saw increased demand in all different segments in essence as we commented: diagnostic increased, the consumables market continued to go well in terms of growth and so did lab instruments. So it's really the academia U.S. segment that has been muted while we see positive development in all the other areas.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you for the questions received and thank you for your continued interest and support in BICO Group. Together with Jacob, I wish you all a great Wednesday. Thank you and goodbye.

Welcome to BICO Q3 2025 Report Presentation. [Operator Instructions]

Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers, CEO, Maria Forss; and CFO, Jacob Thordenberg. Please go ahead.

Hello, and welcome to BICO Group's Quarter 3 2025 Earnings Call. I'm Maria Forss, President and CEO, and I will, together with BICO's CFO, Jacob Thordenberg, present this interim report.

Here's today's agenda. I will open today's session by presenting how BICO serves the world's leading pharma and biotech companies with solutions that transform how labs operate and innovate. Following that, Jacob will provide a summary of the quarter's key developments and present the Group's financial performance. We will proceed and comment on our 2 business areas, Life Science Solutions and Lab Automation. Additionally, we will highlight our R&D pipeline with ongoing product development efforts. And this session will conclude with final remarks before opening up for Q&A.

At BICO, we serve the world's leading pharma and biotech companies. Our portfolio ranges from Biosero's market-leading Green Button Go software, enabling full lab orchestration to off-the-shelf automation products and bioprinting from our Life Science Solutions business. Our solutions enable smarter, faster and more efficient labs and here lies an underlying strong demand.

Pharma and biotech companies face the same fundamental challenge, long and costly development cycles for new therapies. And the development of a new therapy often takes more than 10 years and cost between USD 2 billion and USD 4 billion, where 90% of the pipeline ultimately fails. To overcome this, these companies are investing heavily in automation to increase efficiency, speed and quality, bringing innovations to the market faster and at a lower cost.

The next wave of automation goes beyond instrument orchestration to connect entire workflows and data streams, where AI and machine learning continuously optimize experimentation and decision-making. And BICO is at the core of this development, providing the data backbone that unifies AI-powered services with Lab Automation.

Our products and services enable our customers to connect data across diverse informatics systems and apply AI tools to plan, run and optimize experiments in real time. And already today, we are powering AI drug discovery workflows that follow the design, make, test, analyze paradigm using our Green Button Go platform. Further, we integrate AI-driven image analysis as high throughput analytical tools into cell line development workflows, enhancing speed and precision in bioprocess optimization.

Today, researchers spend too much time on manual tasks and fragmented data, resulting in wasted samples and stalled projects. And combined with macroeconomic pressure, talent shortages and cut of budgets, automation has become not just a competitive advantage, but a necessity for the future of discovery. BICO is at the core of this transformation, connecting workflows and data streams and enabling AI powered experimentation. And this is what our mission and vision is all about.

Our Vision is to enable and automate the life science lab of the future. And our mission is to be the first-choice lab automation partner and provider of selected workflows to pharma and biotech. And this brings us to a video I'm about to share, which shows an example of an integrated lab automation solution we have designed and delivered to one of our customers. And in my view, this truly reflects our mission.

[Presentation]

With this introduction, my aim has been to emphasize BICO's mission, our strategic direction and the value we deliver to our customers. We lead the way in solving the challenges in life science with speed, accuracy and efficiency.

Speed by reducing the time to find optimal candidates for treatment therapies and supporting our customers in driving forward a personalized approach to treatment.

Accuracy by enabling the development of physiological relevant models and enhancing the reproducibility through automated processes that reduce variability in experimental outcomes.

And by efficiency, we develop solutions to maximize productivity of automated lab equipment and scientists. All in all, our customers can run their processes faster, improve their quality of data and ultimately make better decisions.

I will now hand over to Jacob to present the results for the third quarter.

Thank you, Maria. I will summarize the third quarter of 2025 for the group and then provide more financial details for the quarter.

When looking at the performance for the third quarter, Life Science Solutions delivered 4% organic sales growth, in line with market performance. The growth was mainly driven by a positive uptick in diagnostics as well as increased demand for Lab Automation components.

Scienion continued to perform well, delivering double-digit growth after major commercial and operational improvements in a diagnostic market, which is coming back to more normal investment levels.

Lab Automation delivered 35% organic sales growth, rebounding after an abnormal Q2. Good progress has been made in the execution of the action plan, significantly enhancing processes, leadership and operational capabilities.

In addition, Biosero received orders from a global pharma company worth USD 15.2 million as a part of a global master framework agreement. This showcases the strong underlying demand for Lab Automation and Biosero's market-leading software suite, Green Button Go.

We have also resolved impairments in Discover ECHO and Biosero totaling SEK 1,036 million. These impairments will not affect cash flow but impacted EBIT for the quarter.

With that said, I would like to highlight that we anticipate long-term growth of around 10% CAGR, which is in line with our financial targets for both Discover ECHO and Biosero. I will elaborate more about this shortly.

The closing of the transaction of the divestments of MatTek and Visikol was finalized in early July. These divestments generated SEK 740 million, which significantly strengthened our cash position.

Next slide, please. Q3 was a quarter of solid progress. Net sales reached SEK 387 million despite ongoing macroeconomic challenges and funding headwinds in key markets with an organic sales growth at 12%. We also experienced that academic and biotech funding remains constrained, especially in North America, which has led to cautious customer spending and extended sales cycles.

Adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 17 million, corresponding to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 5%, which is an improvement in the adjusted EBITDA margin of 3 percentage points year-over-year. The improved margin is a result of continued cost control activities, mainly due to synergies derived from centralization of functions as well as initiatives for operational efficiencies.

Maria will now comment on the progress of the execution of the comprehensive action plan to scale up Biosero.

Since September, we have a new Managing Director in Biosero with long and extensive experience in the global life science industry, and he has the right toolbox to drive sustainable growth and create long-term value for customers and shareholders.

And we have made solid progress in executing the action plan, significantly strengthening not only leadership, but also processes and operational capabilities.

We have also continued substantial investments in operational resources to better serve our customers and accelerate closing of delayed projects.

Furthermore, we're implementing more standardization to scale the business and introducing new commercial concepts with shorter lead times to balance the project portfolio.

Also worth mentioning again is that Biosero secured several orders from a global pharma company valued at USD 15.2 million in the quarter. And this project will develop integrated lab automation solutions, which will support this big pharma customers' drug development process.

I will now hand over to Jacob again for comments on the divestments and impairments.

Thank you. Well, in Q3, we completed the divestments of MatTek and Visikol, generating SEK 740 million, as previously mentioned. And this significantly strengthened our cash position. And these divestments follow our updated strategy with a focus on Lab Automation and selected workflows. Sartorius acquired both companies at a 2024 sales multiple of 3.7x and an adjusted EBITDA multiple of 15.3x. The companies have been treated as discontinued operations from Q2 2025.

And if we move on to the next slide. In the quarter, we also resolved SEK 1,036 million in impairments for Discover ECHO and Biosero, which are noncash flow affecting one-off items, but affecting EBIT in Q3. In May 2024, we implemented an updated model for impairment with shortened the forecast period before terminal calculations from 10 to 5 years, following recommendation from the Swedish Financial Reporting supervision. The impairments stem from a short forecast period and lower year-to-date trading in 2025, leading to changed forecast assumptions compared with previous periods.

With that said, we see a strong underlying demand for Biosero's integrated lab automation solutions centered around the company's market-leading software suite, Green Button Go. And in ECHO, we see a market recovery in the U.S. academic segment over time. We anticipate long-term growth of around 10% CAGR in both companies, which is also in line with our financial targets.

I will now move on to the next section, group financial performance. In Q3, sales amounted to SEK 387 million and grew 5% in total and 12% in organic sales growth. The difference of 7 percentage points is mainly explained by a weaker U.S. dollar against the Swedish krona.

Adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 17 million, corresponding to a margin of 5%. The improved margin is a result of continued cost control activities, mainly from centralization of functions as well as initiatives for operational efficiencies.

And if we move on to Q3 cash flow. Cash flow from operating activities amounted to negative SEK 32 million, impacted by working capital changes of negative SEK 30 million. Total cash flow during the quarter amounted to SEK 570 million. And as mentioned before, MatTek and Visikol were divested as of July 1, 2025, and generated net proceeds of SEK 740 million. We also made a third bond buyback in our convertible debt in August 2025, which amounted to SEK 98 million. So in connection to this, I will also comment on BICO's outstanding convertible debt and our cash position.

In total, we have made 3 buybacks in our convertible bond between November 2024 and August 2025, totaling a nominal amount of SEK 492 million. The rationale for the bond buybacks has been to optimize BICO's capital structure and further reduce long-term debt. Post buybacks, the convertible debt now amounts to nominal SEK 1,008 million. As per Q3, BICO's cash position was SEK 1,241 million, leaving BICO with a positive net cash position.

As mentioned on the previous slides, the effects of changes in working capital amounted to negative SEK 30 million for the quarter. And out of this, operating receivables increased by SEK 96 million, inventories increased by SEK 1 million and operating liabilities increased by SEK 65 million. In percentage of last 12-month sales, net working capital in the quarter corresponded to 13%, confirming that the operational excellence actions implemented in 2023 and onwards have been successful.

For Q1 up until Q3 in 2025, the further decrease in net working capital to low double digits is primarily an effect of less net working capital in Biosero due to decreases in receivables.

I will now hand over to Maria to present the results in our 2 business areas.

Thank you, Jacob. Let's now turn to our target business -- largest business area, Life Science Solutions, which accounted for 2/3 of our revenue this quarter. Life Science Solutions delivered SEK 263 million in sales with a 4% organic sales growth and an adjusted EBITDA of SEK 19 million, corresponding to 7% adjusted EBITDA margin.

The growth was mainly driven by a positive uptick in diagnostics as well as increased demand for Lab Automation components. Scienion continued to perform well, delivering double-digit growth after major commercial and operations improvements in a diagnostic market, which is coming back to more normal investment levels.

And if we move on to our business area Lab Automation. In quarter 3, Lab Automation delivered 35% organic sales growth year-over-year, rebounding after the abnormal quarter 2. The business area sales for the quarter amounted to SEK 124 million. The adjusted EBITDA was SEK 10 million, corresponding to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 8%, turning the negative trend from the recent quarters.

The profitability is still impacted though by continued substantial investments in operational resources for the benefit of our customers to accelerate closing of projects. And as mentioned earlier in this presentation, good progress has been made during the quarter in the execution of the comprehensive action plan to scale Biosero. We have significantly enhanced processes, leadership and operational capabilities.

I will now introduce a new section where I will share our data on our ongoing product innovation efforts. One focus area for growth is continuous product innovation. BICO has a solid R&D pipeline and road map in place, and this is based on the portfolio strategy, which is part of BICO 2.0.

Our current product portfolio covers the full spectrum of lab automation solutions and selected workflows. And it's important to emphasize that we have lab automation products and solutions in both of our business areas. And this is illustrated on this slide where you can see instruments from various BICO business units positioned along different stages of the Lab Automation continuum. Products in the business area Life Science Solutions are also Green Button Go ready.

In BICO, we invest substantially in product development. We're continuing to bring new products and innovations to the market. Recent product launches include I.DOT LT and TurnStation. The I.DOT LT is a new addition to the I.DOT series and offers a compact solution optimized for automated low-volume liquid dispensing. This product is Green Button Go ready.

TurnStation by QINSTRUMENTS is a Lab Automation device for liquid handlers. It optimizes the workflows for plate handling and it's purpose-built for seamless Lab Automation. This is an example of how we are driving growth through synergies in the BICO Group.

Let's now move on to an example of a successful product launch from an ongoing external collaboration. This is a result of the scientific collaboration between Sartorius and BICO. Sartorius' Octet and Biosero's Green Button Go is an integrated solution, delivering faster results to the market, enabling labs to operate more efficiently and effectively. And these were just a few examples of recent launches and collaborations.

Let's now move on to look at R&D pipeline and road map. We have a comprehensive product development pipeline within our prioritized focus areas, as you can see on this slide. The majority of the R&D investments are made in software development, while there are several upgrades of the instrument portfolio meeting customer needs. Multiple product launches are planned for 2026, and these include both software, instruments and consumable products.

And as mentioned before, we are also introducing new commercial concepts in Lab Automation, with shorter lead times to balance the product portfolio. And these concepts are developed both through internal collaboration between the 2 business areas as well as together with external collaborators.

Before the Q&A, I will give some concluding remarks. One year ago, we launched BICO 2.0, which is our updated strategy to enable and automate the life science lab of the future. Since then, we have streamlined our portfolio, we have strengthened our commercial engine, we have invested in our people and culture and delivered operational excellence. It's been a year of change, and we have worked hard.

The impact that we together have achieved is clear, significantly strengthened cash position, leaner operations and a more customer-centric solutions, and this is just the beginning. We're excited to drive Lab Automation forward and equip pharma companies with tools to shorten drug development time lines. By enabling increased success rate and reducing time to market, we empower scientists to accelerate innovation and deliver breakthroughs that shape healthier societies.

I would also like to take the opportunity to thank our customers for your continued trust in BICO as well as our employees around the world for your work and dedication, which enable our customers to deliver what matters the most, the discoveries that advance human health.

This was our final slide before the Q&A. I will hand over to the earnings call host for further instructions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Ulrik Trattner from DNB Carnegie.

A few questions from my end. And if we can start off with Lab Automation, and you talked about healthy demand in Lab Automation. If you can clarify what that entails?

Well, as we can see in the quarter, we are landing substantial orders of more than USD 15.2 million, and we continue to see demand also from other big pharma customers, and that's what is the basis for our claim of healthy demand.

And just to sort of clarify, are you seeing increased tender activity? Are you seeing a growing order intake? Or is there customer assessment of your software or like just to get some sense on how this could be quantified?

As you know, like we are never guiding or talking about our order stock or order intake due to competitive reasons, but we have several ongoing discussions with customers and help the business.

And I know that you don't quantify sort of order intake, but in terms of any type of granularity, have this improved over the last 6 months versus -- in terms of customer interest? Or how should we view this?

I think the customer interest has been retained. But as we have talked about in previous calls, and we'll talk about today, too, is that the first half of 2025 has been a challenging first half for us as well as many other peers, and that has also been reflected in not the demand, but the time it takes to close orders. And some of those orders are now being executed.

Do you expect the sort of time line from sort of interest to close the deal have sort of shortened? Or is it still the same?

When you have master service agreements with large pharma customers or customers overall, of course, those will facilitate the time it takes to get orders in place.

Okay. And again, on Lab Automation, and you've done some structural changes in the management of these contracts. Does this apply for the newly assigned contract, the one you signed in September? Or is this under the sort of same type of agreement that you had in -- like prior to doing the restructuring?

We have changed the way we are operating overall, both in terms of how we run projects, how we are scoping the projects, the way we are structuring the contracts to make sure that, that is clear moving forward. So I would say it's a new way of working that has been implemented since earlier this year, which is now starting to show effect.

Great. And on the phasing of the USD 15 million contract, should we sort of assume and apply the same type of phasing that we have seen historically, which has been a lot of revenue and profit being front-end loaded and then that being tapered off gradually throughout '26 when -- since it's set to be delivered throughout '26 as well?

Yes. Maybe I can answer that question, Ulrik. And the short answer is yes, and that is due to the revenue recognition profile that we have in Biosero, which is based on percentage of completion. And our percentage of completion model is based on anticipated costs. And in these projects, a large chunk of the anticipated costs is indeed related to hardware. And roughly speaking, the other part of the anticipated cost is labor hours.

And given that we typically buy a lot of instruments when we start a project, you usually see a spike in revenues due to the purchase of hardware and that being a quite significant share of the anticipated costs. And then you have less acceleration in revenue recognition related to the labor hours. So yes, it has a similar profile as we have seen from previous large orders.

And I guess you assume given sort of your outlook that you will be signing new orders to bridge sort of that gap into '26?

I'm not sure I follow that question, Ulrik.

Given the tapering off of revenues into '26 in order for you to grow from the level in absolute terms, you would need to add additional contracts?

Yes, correct. Yes.

Great. And just on the discontinuation effects, both in the quarter as well as for Q4, if it's possible to quantify to what sort of -- what are the sort of actual numbers here that we should be modeling for Q4?

The numbers are -- we don't have any effect from MatTek and Visikol in the quarter, given that they were sort of completely out of our books as of July 1.

Yes. But if it's possible to quantify, I know that you've restated it, but based on sort of general modeling purposes for...

But there's nothing in our books in Q3. So there's nothing to quantify because the assets are not in our economic ownership anymore in the quarter.

Sure. But from a comparable perspective in Q3 last year, they were in your books and in reported numbers and [indiscernible] deviation.

Yes, [indiscernible] in the report. So there's no effect in the report. It has been excluded in the comparison.

Yes, yes. Sure. Yes, yes. But if we were to quantify it for Q4 then, I guess like you reported some sales in Q4 for some of these subsidiaries that will not be presenting for Q4...

Okay. So the comparison figure for Q4 last year. I can perhaps provide you that separately. I don't have those numbers in my head right now.

Okay. Great. And just last 2 questions from my end. I know that sales expenses is down sequentially while your top line is up. Is there something to read into that? Are you doing something different in terms of your selling expenses?

And secondly, where is kind of sort of a steady state like working capital level to top line in percentage terms?

Yes. Do you want to answer the first question, Maria, in terms of –

Yes. I think overall, we have -- as we have talked about earlier, we have made sure that we can get the commercial synergies as well as operational synergies in the group. And with our sales skills group as well as other commercial skills group, we are then reaping those synergies. Part of the cost management that Jacob talked about earlier in the call is about those synergies, but also centralizing some functions as well as operational efficiencies. So that's where the improvement in the margin comes from. And then this second part of...

I can answer the second question in terms of working capital in relation to sales. And as we mentioned in the call, we're very happy to see that we have had great progress in our working capital, and now it's down to 13% in relation to LTM sales. We do believe that a stable level should be between 15% and 20% of sales.

The next question comes from Ludvig Lundgren from Nordea.

So continuing a bit on Lab Automation. Sales was positively affected by this order you received in September. So I just wonder if you could elaborate a bit more on the effect we saw here in Q3 and whether the positive contribution will increase sequentially as we move into Q4?

That's a good question, Ludvig. And I expect to see a similar type of impact in Q4. I won't disclose how much the impact will be, but we saw a positive impact from the purchase of hardware in Q3, and we will see a similar impact also in Q4 [indiscernible]

Yes. Great. And then also on Lab Automation. So I think like median reported EBITDA margin in the last 3 years is close to the current level actually at 80%. So I just wonder like if you can give some flavor on this current margin level and if it's reasonable to expect a significant increase in margin for Lab Automation as we move into '26 because you highlight some elevated costs here in Q3 as well.

Yes. I won't go into sort of specifically commenting on what kind of margin we can expect, but we do have higher ambitions for the cost base in Biosero, and we expect to be able to scale that cost base in a more efficient way going into 2026. And by that, of course, also expand our EBITDA margins that we do believe could be higher than the margins that we see today.

Okay. And so it's largely a consulting business. So like is it possible to quantify the utilization that you currently have? And like how much more projects could you add on this current cost base without -- yes.

Yes, we won't go into utilization rate because that would be quite commercially sensitive, but we do believe that we can gain more efficiencies on the cost that we have in Biosero and by that, also be able to take on more projects. But we won't comment specifically on what kind of utilization rate we have as of today. But we do believe that we can scale the cost base in a more efficient way in Biosero.

Perfect. Great. And then finally, on the framework agreement, I just wonder if you could share a bit more on the potential for further similar orders from this customer. Like does this relate to only one location and then they could possibly expand it to other locations as well? Or how should we view this in the longer-term?

The framework agreement that was signed early in the quarter is a global framework agreement. And the orders that we won now in quarter 3 are for one project in one site, but the framework agreement applies to all the different sites for this big pharma customer.

Okay. So is it fair to assume then if this is a successful project, then they could expand this to other sites as well, I guess?

Yes, that's correct. Having that framework agreement in place facilitates the whole procurement process, which is usually quite long and tedious in big companies. So it's a very good thing to have that in place.

Okay. Just a follow-up on that then. So like what would you say is the visibility for an order from this customer? Like will you have some -- how much visibility will you have into an order coming in, so to say?

Well, with these type of large customers, it's really a strategic collaboration. And some of these strategic collaborations, they have usually plans for a couple of years ahead. And then it's a dialogue between us and the customers, so we can ensure that we have the capacity and resources when -- to meet their demands when the different orders will come in. So it's a good collaboration.

The next question comes from Suzanna Queckborner from SHB.

Suzanna Queckborner, Handelsbanken. Just a follow-on on the Biosero. Regarding the write-down, perhaps you could give us a better or like a more detailed explanation of how you're thinking about this given that you see continued high demand, but you have now reduced the forecast for 2025 and to some extent beyond. So maybe explain what the thinking is here and how we should think about it?

Yes. Thank you, Suzanna. Well, I think the way you should see it is that when we started 2025, we had much higher ambitions for Biosero and expected more out of Biosero. And now when we are about to conclude the year, we can see that we will not meet the expectations that we set for Biosero when we started 2025. And by that, we also see that the implicit growth then between what we expected in 2025 and what we then expect for 2026 was too ambitious given where current trading is at Biosero.

And when looking at year-to-date trading in Biosero and what we expected for 2026 going into 2025, we realized that the growth targets for 2026 were too high and have adjusted those targets, but with that said, still high ambition. But given the outcome in 2025 and the year-to-date trading in 2025, we realized that we had to revisit 2026. And by that, we also had knock-on effects for the following years following 2026.

Right. And then also a question on consumables and services. You've seen a pick up. Should I see this as a one-off? Or are you actually making some kind of transition to selling more consumables, for example? What's happening here?

There are several initiatives to increase recurring revenue. That's one of our 5 focus areas commercially. And as you can also see from other peers in the industry, consumables is going very well. We have also focused on increasing our service sales. And as you noted, Suzanna, there has been an increase in this particular quarter. I think we should look at that trend looking at several quarters and because there can also be an effect of the product mix, but much focus on consumables and service overall.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Filip Einarsson from Redeye.

So I'd be curious to get to understand a little bit more on the sort of operational efficiency and margin improvements, which we saw in Q3. Could you help us with sort of a reasonable expectations on the OpEx base for the coming quarters? That's the first.

Okay. Well, in terms of the OpEx base, I would say that it's quite stable at the moment. We do talk about in the report that we have elevated costs in Biosero as we're investing into our customers. And if anything, we want to continue to scale on the current OpEx base rather than increasing costs in the coming quarters. And as we have also been quite clear, we do keep a strict cost control, and we want to continue that and get operational leverage on our current cost base.

Okay. And a short follow-up on that would be then on what sort of line item in the income statement would you see you can make the sort of primary savings with the current outlook?

No, I wouldn't say that we see any primarily savings. The opposite, I do believe that we should be able to grow while keeping all lines in OpEx flat.

Okay. Okay. So I've got one more, which is sort of a broader type of question. But I mean, we saw that Sartorius lowered the equity exposure in the second half of 2025. And I just thought maybe you could provide some additional color on this. It might be hard for you, but anyway. And maybe if you could also provide some commentary on the current status of the collaboration with Sartorius after the divestments.

Yes, I can answer the first question, and then Maria can answer the second question. And the first question is quite simple. We cannot comment on sort of the activities of Sartorius. That's not our job to do that. It's the job of Sartorius.

And when it comes to our collaborations, we have a handful of different scientific collaborations ongoing that will eventually coming to the market and these are all going great, and are evaluated on a continuous basis to make sure that assumptions and business cases are holding. And so all fine when it comes to the collaborations. And you saw an example of a result of a collaboration with Sartorius in our presentation with Octet and powered by Green Button Go, which was launched earlier this year, has been a good commercial success so far.

Right, right. So what -- that was out was more like there are no -- has there been any sort of changes in the sort of collaboration dynamics following the recent half year of happenings?

No.

I would take that as a no then.

No, no. Things are going according to plan.

The next question comes from Ludvig Lundgren from Nordea.

So just a follow-up on the cost base that you mentioned there. So R&D on a gross level has really decreased a lot in the last 12 months at, I think, around SEK 50 million now in Q3. Like is it fair to extrapolate this level of R&D ahead? Or will this increase in Q4 as you typically have somewhat of a sales increase there as well? Or for us to model this, how would you do it?

I think it's important to understand here that we do substantial investments in R&D. And what you find in the report is capitalized R&D, what is put on the balance sheet. And we have taken on a much, much more conservative way of capitalizing R&D. So then it's the different projects will have to pass toll gate 3 in our gate stage project model before we capitalize any R&D to make sure that we have more security and success of the project. So the capitalized R&D and the level of that is not an indication of the amount of R&D that we're doing, but rather what we put on the balance sheet or not.

Okay. I was actually referring to the like gross total level, including both the amount in the P&L and in the balance or in the cash flow. And that one as well has decreased a lot. So just this SEK 50 million, is that a sustainable level in the P&L then?

Well, yes, it is a sustainable level. And I don't see that we will change this. However, as Maria mentioned, we have a much more stringent model now in terms of capitalizing R&D. And that is contingent that the different R&D projects within the group pass certain toll gates. But the level of R&D, I don't expect that to -- in terms of both P&L and what's capitalized I don't expect that to change dramatically in the coming quarters, no.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you for all the questions received. And thank you for your continued interest and support in BICO Group. Together with Jacob, I wish you all a great Tuesday. Thank you, and goodbye.

Welcome to BICO Q2 2025 Report Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers, CEO, Maria Forss; and CFO, Jacob Thordenberg, please go ahead.

Hello, and welcome to BICO's earnings call, where we will present the second quarter 2025. My name is Maria Forss, and I'm the President and CEO of BICO, and I will together with BICO's CFO, Jacob Thordenberg, present the report. Here's today's agenda. First, the summary of the quarter to be followed by group financial performance. And after that, a deep dive into our 2 business areas, Lab Automation and Life Solutions.

This is the first quarter where we report our new business area structure post the divestment of MatTek and Visikol. And I will also give some concluding remarks before the Q&A. The sections before the Q&A will be in listening only mode. And the earnings call host will be back with further instructions, if you wish to participate in our Q&A. I will start to summarize the second quarter 2025 for the group and comment on the market sentiment and other important events from the past quarter.

In the beginning of the second quarter in early April, we announced an agreement to divest MatTek and Visikol to Sartorius. The closing took place July 1 after customer regulatory approval was obtained. This transaction significantly strengthens our balance sheet, which means that we now have a net cash position, and Jacob will give you some more details in a few slides. When looking at the performance for the second quarter, it's a mixed picture for the group, which means that I need to comment on business area level. And if we begin with Lab Automation, we had fewer project starts and project delays that impacted the quarter negatively as the organizational capacity has been outpaced by the high demand for Biosero's market-leading solutions.

To scale the business and unlock the full potentially in the growing Lab Automation market, we're implementing leadership and process changes Biosero. And I will address this more in the business area section. If we move on to the performance of our largest business area, Life Science Solutions, the business area delivered flat sales with growth in line with peers. The performance of our companies within Life Science Solutions differed depending on the market and customer base. We saw a soft market for our instrument companies, catering to Academia, while SCIENION showed healthy growth and profitability.

And if we continue with the macro environment, this quarter was just like the previous quarter, affected by macroeconomic headwinds and uncertainties remained persistent. Like many of our peers, we continue to experience the effect of these dynamics, for example, cuts in NIH funding in the U.S. have along with ongoing tariff turbulence, introduced further uncertainty and led to hampered demand and delayed CapEx investments, especially in the Academia segment. At BICO, we have had readiness to manage those uncertainties. And in this quarter, we have, for instance, adjusted some of our logistic routes and reviewed and amended our freight and delivery terms where necessary.

Let's move to the next slide and the summary of BICO's quarter 2 results. For the second quarter, sales amounted to SEK 324 million, corresponding to a negative organic growth of 17%. Adjusted EBIT amounted to a negative SEK 49 million, corresponding to a margin of negative 15%. And the cash flow from operating activities were negative SEK 28 million and the net working capital for the last 12 months sales amounted to 11%. I will now hand over to Jacob to present the divestment of MatTek and Visikol.

Thank you. As Maria mentioned, the transaction was announced in April and closed on July 1. This divestment of MatTek and Visikol follows our updated strategy with a focus on Lab Automation and selected workflows. Sartorius has acquired 100% of the shares in both MatTek and Visikol for USD 80 million on a cash and debt-free basis corresponding to a 2024 sales multiple of 3.7x and an adjusted EBITDA multiple of 15.3x.

Following net debt adjustments and transaction costs, net cash from the transaction amounted to SEK 740 million, which with a current cash position of SEK 636 million as per Q2 and increases BICO's cash position to approximately SEK 1.4 billion. The proceeds from the transaction will be used to strengthen our balance sheet and reduce our debt on our convertible bond. MatTek and Visikol have been treated as discontinued operations in this interim report. I will now move on and comment on the group's financial performance for the second quarter.

Please note that all numbers presented in this section are in million Swedish krona. If we begin with sales, all in all, sales amounted to SEK 324 million for the second quarter with a total sales growth of negative 23% and negative 17% in constant currency. The difference of the 6 percentage points is explained by a weaker U.S. dollar against the Swedish krona and that BICO has over 90% of sales in U.S. dollar or euro, and around 80% of our costs in the same currencies, resulting in a significant translation exposure to Swedish krona, but no significant transaction exposure on EBITDA and due to revenues and costs largely being matched and thereby naturally hedged.

As Maria mentioned, sales for our largest business area, Life Science Solutions were flat in the quarter year-over-year, which is in line with peers, amounted to SEK 277 million. Sales for Lab Automation amounted to SEK 48 million, corresponding to a negative sales growth of 58%. This was impacted by fewer project starts and project delays where the latter resulted in a substantial reestimation of remaining project hours of around negative SEK 40 million. It is also worth mentioning that the correspond quarter last quarter was positively impacted by the large order that Biosero won in late December 2023. And if we move on to profitability, the gross margin amounted to 44%, down 8 percentage points year-over-year negatively impacted by the development in business area Lab Automation and the reestimation of remaining project hours.

Adjusted EBITDA amounted to negative SEK 49 million, corresponding to a margin of negative 15%. The negative adjusted EBITDA can be explained by the development in Lab Automation and the reestimation of the remaining project hours. We are not satisfied with the profitability levels for the quarter. And in combination with the leadership and process changes being carried out in Biosero, we will continue to have a clear focus on structural cost reductions and tight expense management for the group, although the transformation in Biosero requires investments in operational resources.

And if we move on to the next slide and our cash flow. Cash flow from operating activities for the quarter amounted to negative SEK 28 million and primarily related to negative profitability in the quarter. The effects of changes in working capital amounted to a positive SEK 29 million in the quarter. Investments in tangible CapEx amounted to less than SEK 1 million and investments in intangible CapEx in the quarter amounted to SEK 2 million. Total cash flow during Q2 amounted to negative SEK 54 million. In connection with this, I will also comment on BICO's outstanding convertible debt and cash position.

We have made 3 buybacks in our convertible bond to a nominal amount of SEK 118 million in November 2024, an additional SEK 276 million in February 2025, and SEK 98 million yesterday as of August 18. Post buybacks, the convertible debt now amounts to nominal SEK 1.08 billion. The rationale for the bond buyback is to optimize BICO's capital structure and further reduce long-term debt, and the net proceeds of SEK 740 million from the divestment will be used to resolve the outstanding convertible bond, which matures in March 2026.

To conclude on our cash position, we closed Q2 with SEK 636 million in cash. And with SEK 740 million divestment proceeds, our cash reserves stood at around SEK 1.4 billion on a pro forma basis at the quarter end. Following the post Q2 converted bond buyback announced yesterday and the remaining convertible debt of SEK 1.8 billion BICO had a net cash position of roughly SEK 270 million, all else equal. As mentioned on the previous slide, the effects of changes in working capital amounted to positive SEK 29 million in the second quarter. Out of this, SEK 9 million was related to an increase in operating receivables, inventories decreased by SEK 8 million and operating liabilities increased by SEK 29 million.

In percentage of last 12 months sales net working capital in the quarter corresponded to 11% confirming the operational excellence actions implemented in 2023 and onwards have been successful. For Q1 and Q2 2025, the further decrease in net working capital to low double digits is primarily an effect of less net working capital in Biosero, due to decreases in receivables and the reestimation of project hours.

I will now hand back to Maria for a presentation of the business area performance.

Thank you, Jacob. I will start by briefly outlining the rationale behind our new business area structure and then move on to the performance of our business areas. After the divestment of MatTek and Visikol, the remaining companies from the business area bioprinting, that is CELLINK and ABM have moved to business area Life Science Solutions. Consequently, from this quarter, BICO reports in 2 business areas: Lab Automation and Life Science Solutions. The divestment also increases our focus towards Lab Automation and selective workflows, where Lab Automation products and solutions can be found in both our business areas, which you can see on the next slide.

Product from CYTENA, DISPENDIX, QInstruments, Cellenion and SCIENION has automation-ready products and solutions, which are used all the way up to fully integrated Lab Automation solutions. Let's now move to the business area's quarter 2 performance, where I will start commenting on Lab Automation. As we have commented on earlier during this call, fewer project starts and product delays in the business area, Lab Automation, impacted the quarter negatively as the organizational capacity has been outpaced by the high demand for Biosero's market-leading solutions.

Sales amounted to SEK 48 million, which resulted in negative organic growth of 58% and adjusted EBITDA amounted to negative SEK 56 million, corresponding to a negative adjusted EBITDA margin of 116%. The project delays resulted in a substantial reestimation of remaining project out of around negative SEK 40 million in the quarter. In Biosero, we apply a percentage of completion, which is commonly used for project-based businesses. It's based on anticipated costs and revenue is recorded as costs occur in the project, including labor hours spent. This means that if the expected remaining hours increase, the level of completion decreases, resulting in a negative impact on revenues.

As I mentioned on the previous slide, quarter 2 was impacted by fewer project starts and project delays as well as the reestimation of the remaining project hours, which generated a negative impact of SEK 40 million. And it's also worth mentioning that Lab Automation had a tough comparable quarter where quarter 1 '24 was boosted by the large order won in December 2023. We are now executing a comprehensive action plan and significantly enhancing process leadership and operational capabilities to scale up Biosero to meet the high underlying demand.

Recently, we have made turnarounds in both CELLINK and Cellenion, and we're now focusing our efforts on Biosero to scale the business. We're coming from a situation with rapid growth and large demand that has outpaced our internal processes, impacting scalability and project delivered -- project delivery. Earlier commercial decisions, including contract structures have pressured our margins. Legacy projects and resource-intensive deliveries have limited flexibility and tied up our capacity, and our current operations require coordination to unlock the full margin potential as well as longer project time lines have delayed repeat orders from key customers.

A strong demand continues, steps are underway to free up capacity and better balance intake with delivery. And we have refined the commercial model, including pricing strategies and stricter contract reviews to protect margins. We're actively managing the complex projects and legacy commitments to free up resources and have put in place new operations and project management leadership alongside a gate-stage model to enhance governance as well as execution. We're also standardizing components and developing new concepts, driving shorter lead times and a scalable growth.

And this will all in all, ensure that we can deliver on our mission to the first-choice Lab Automation partner and provider of selected workflows to pharma and biotechs. So to conclude and to unlock the full potential of the Lab Automation market, where new -- now executing a comprehensive action plan significantly enhances -- enhancing processes, leadership and operational capabilities. We have improved leadership during the quarter and instill operational excellence by strengthening management and executive resources on site at Biosero's headquarter in San Diego.

To enhance the resource planning and project executions, we have increased contract stringency and employed a gate stage project model, and this ensures more robust project management and reduces the risk of scope creep. To free up resources for both existing as well as new projects, we have made substantial investments in operational resources for the benefit of our customers to accelerate close of delayed projects. And we're also implementing more standardization to scale the business and introducing new commercial concepts with shorter lead times to balance the project portfolio.

We have made good progress in the transformation of Biosero this quarter, and we are confident that these actions will show results over time in the coming quarters. However, it will require patience and time before reaching the full effect. And these actions, along with our commitment and tenacity will, in time, realize the full potential of Biosero.

If we move on to Life Science Solutions, the business area Life Science Solutions delivered flat growth in line with peers compared with the corresponding quarter last year. The mixed performance resulted in a revenue of SEK 277 million, resulting in an organic growth of 1% compared with quarter 2 2024. The business areas adjusted EBITDA was SEK 90 million which corresponds to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 7%, so within our largest business area, Life Science Solutions, as previously mentioned during this call, performance of our companies differed depending on the market and the customer base.

Academia especially saw a softer quarter due to the macro development in the U.S. However, it's really encouraging to see that the diagnostic market is picking up and that operational improvement initiatives made in SCIENION has resulted in a healthy growth and profitability.

Before the Q&A, I will give some concluding remarks on the quarter and the road that lies ahead of us. We continue to execute on our strategy BICO 2.0 towards an integrated group harnessing both operational as well as commercial synergies. We are collaborating as an integrated organization, which allows us to streamline resources, harmonize processes, and fully leverage our critical assets for greater impact in Lab Automation.

In the short term, we've faced challenges with macroeconomic uncertainties, particularly in the U.S. and the transformation to strengthen and scale up Biosero. However, the transient macroeconomic conditions do not offset the long-term trend of growth and high demand in the Life Science sector. In this quarter, we have made meaningful progress in transforming BICO to capitalize on these long-term trends.

And this was our final slide before the Q&A. I will now hand over to the earnings call host for further instructions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Ulrik Trattner from DNB Carnegie.

Thank you very much and just a few questions on my end and most of them regarding your Lab Automation business. The SEK 40 million roughly in reestimation of projects, how much do you still believe is left to adjust for in the second half of the year? Or do you think that you've done most of the work to clean out the project portfolio as well as how much of a quick fix is this?

And if -- obviously, you've done organizational changes. And if you can speak a little bit more into what exactly you've done and that would be helpful.

Thank you, Ulrik. Maybe I can start with answering the first question around the reestimation of ours, and then Maria can answer your other questions. So if we start with that, we always do each monthly and in quarterly and we do an estimate of remaining hours in the project. As a percentage of completion is based on anticipated costs and in this labor hours is one of the elements or one of the anticipated costs. And we continuously do reestimates of remaining hours.

In this quarter, however, which we have described in the earnings call, we have done accelerated efforts in Biosero to strengthen the organization. And in these efforts, we have concluded that the remaining hours in our project portfolio are longer than we have previously estimated. And when doing this work, we concluded that we needed to do a negative reestimation then amounted to SEK 40 million. But with that said, with the operational excellence activities and the action plans that we're now implementing, we are confident that we will not see similar revisions in upcoming quarters.

If I go to the second part of your question, Ulrik, in terms of the organizational changes. So I mean, in essence, we are not only enhancing the processes but also strengthening the leadership to execute on these processes as well as improving the operational capabilities. So we have, during the quarter, strengthened the management substantially and other executive resources on site in Biosero's headquarter, and also to improve the project planning and project executions, improving contract stringency as well as implemented gate-stage project model. And this -- both these in combination will ensure a more robust product management as well as reducing the risk for scope creep, which is one of the major reasons for project delays.

And to also free up resources, not only for the existing but also for new projects, we have also made substantial investments in operational resources to benefit our customers and, of course, also to accelerate the closing of the delayed projects, and those are the minority of the total number of projects, the majority are trading the way they should do. And we're also then implementing more standards and standardization in to scale the business as well as introducing some more new commercial concepts that has shorter lead times and this is then to balance the project portfolio overall.

So these are some examples of the comprehensive action plan that Jacob mentioned that we also talked about in the call. And we have made good progress during the past quarter in this transformation of Biosero and we will show good results in the coming quarters, but it will require, of course, both patience and time before we reach the full effect.

But just on the topic, you talked about sort of delayed projects or sort of late completion of projects and you're talking about investing into managing new contracts. But does that entail that you are a bit limited in the second half of the year to take on new contracts and new project starts and how does the sort of pipeline look like for second half of the year to initiate new starts? What is your ability?

I would say in terms of commenting on our pipeline, given that we are the only Lab Automation company that are listed and reports lab automation separately, that would be exposing us to something which would be not good competitively wise. But I can say that with the changes that we have made, it's definitely not an issue to take on new projects, but we will work in a different way in terms of when promising when you can start and also when these projects can be finished.

So with the gate stage project model, we now have much better scrutiny of how the difference stages of the projects can be done and a much better dialogue with the customers on when done is done. So the scope is much clear, which will change the way that we are working together with the customers that has been received in a very positive way.

And last question on my end. Throughout the last year, you've done quite a lot of cost side of the business and improved the profitability of BICO and in this sort of struggling environment that you're in currently, what is your ability to -- like if we were to assume that this underlying market development continues, what's your ability to increase profitability further? Or is this sort of where we're at the level that is manageable without doing cuts that would impact you significantly in the medium term?

I think we need to -- I mean, in this environment, you need to have both one foot on the gas pedal and another one on the brake. So ensuring now as a more integrated group that we can utilize the synergies by centralizing more functions. There are some cost synergies to reap. But at the same time, we need to make sure that we invest in the growing areas such as Lab Automation and also in new product development, and we have seen some recent launches from us.

So I don't foresee that you will see major cost-cut initiatives that we will cut where needed on an ongoing basis, as all companies do, you have a stringent cost management, at the same time, you make sure that, that cost management allows you to invest to where you can reach the best return on investment. Jacob, you want to add anything?

No, I think what I can add, Ulrik, is because I think what you're alluding to is what will happen to margins when the market comes back, right, and I think the way you should look at it is the margin development that we had as per Q4 last year where we had sort of high 20% EBITDA margin. So the operations in BICO are indeed scalable. And when the market comes back, we should surely be able to scale on our current cost base, if that was part of your question.

Yes, yes, absolutely. That was all on my end, and I'll get back in the queue.

The next question comes from Ludvig Lundgren from Nordea.

So first, I wanted to continue on Ulrik's question here on Lab Automation. So I appreciate the color on what caused this sales slowdown here in Q2. But I wonder if you can help us set reasonable expectations here for sales for Biosero in H2. Like with the current project pipeline as it looks today, is it fair to assume H2 sales to be higher than H1, given that Q2 was negatively affected by somewhat of a one-off effect? That would be my first question.

Yes. Thank you, Ludvig. And as you know, we don't give any guidance, but I think it's safe to assume that we will not see any negative revisions as we saw in Q2 and thereby all else equal, the second half would be stronger than the first half. But with that said, we don't give any guidance, but we can be confident that we will not see a similar type of negative revision as we saw in Q2 this quarter.

And to add to that, Ludvig, the investments that we're making now in Biosero is to make sure that we can really, really capitalize on the underlying growing Lab Automation market. So the underlying demand is definitely there. So that is not the issue.

And then secondly, I had a question on Life Science Solutions. So slight organic growth here or constant exchange rate growth here in the quarter. So I wonder if you have seen any significant difference or like change in the market dynamic during this quarter if comparing the end versus the beginning, so to say?

I would say that we see a continued uncertain macroeconomic environment just as in quarter 1. In quarter 1, we saw there was uncertainty of what would happen with tariffs and that itself, together with the stipulated NIH cuts instilled further insecurity in the market. And it's been the same trend in quarter 2 really, so not much of a difference. Of course, we can see how it has impacted us. And with the measures that we took prior to the Trump administration when it comes to where we manufacture and also our -- how we route goods, et cetera, the changes that we have made has impacted -- meant that our impact by the tariffs have directly been quite small.

And so -- but indirectly, the overall insecurity that all the changes that happen in the macroeconomic environment has, of course, made the less investment in capital investments, which we can see, especially then in the academic segment. Well, the diagnostic market is picking up even further. So that's positive.

Okay. And just a quick follow-up on that. So both Q1 and Q2 saw quite solid diagnostic demand, it seems. Do you expect there to be some kind of tariff pre-buying effect here? Or is it just that market is coming back?

It's a good question, Ludvig. And we have seen both some buying earlier and some delaying. So the net effect for us in quarter 2 is really, really neutral. So let's see what the tariffs will mean these coming quarters. But so far, it's been neutral.

The next question comes from Suzanna Queckbörner from SHB.

Suzanna Queckbörner, Handelsbanken. I also have a question on Biosero, I just wanted to find out a little bit more about the new commercial concepts that you're introducing with Biosero. And then maybe also, can you talk about how you think the investments in Biosero are going to impact your profitability there? And how should we think about those going forward?

Yes. I will start with your first question, Suzanna, in terms of the new commercial concepts. And it's still in development and the launch is happening soon. And it's about using an existing installed base of instruments that are in the market. And these new commercial concepts are developed together with collaboration partners. We have started with 2 collaborations partners. And I cannot, at this stage, preannounce anything since those collaboration partners are also listed companies, and we are preparing joint releases. So you will have to bear with us.

But it's utilizing existing equipment in the market and automating those as a more off-the-shelf solution, which means shorter lead times, and that also means that we can balance our product portfolio with shorter lead times and less complex projects with the more complex projects that we have. And then you had a question about the investments in Biosero. And we are doing investments in operational resources, ensuring that we can execute and accelerate the closing of our legacy and delayed projects and this will mean that we will increase our capacity to even further improve our ability to grow in the Lab Automation market.

And how should I think about that going forward in terms of the specific profitability of Biosero?

Suzanna, as I told Ludvig earlier, I don't give any type of guidance. But the way you should think of it is that we will continue to do everything in our power to execute as quickly on the projects and installed sort of a stronger operational excellence in Biosero. And by doing so, we should, over time, reach much higher profitability levels. But the timing of that, we cannot comment on. But we will, as Maria also said earlier, continued -- we'll have to continue in investing into operations, which most likely will have a negative impact on profitability for the coming quarters.

I can also say that part of the -- as I commented on Ulrik's question, part of the issue with eroding margins. It's not only the lack of scalability at the moment, but it's also that we are -- we have had contracts that have not been in our favor. So the fact that we now are implementing more contract stringency as well as better project management means that there will be less risk for scope creep and hence, less risk of delays, and that will also protect our margins moving forward.

One very simple question. Can you just explain what is the source of these delays? Where is the bottleneck here?

We have done a full analysis of every single project, and we have a top list of what are the key crux and the key reasons for the delays. And for competitive reasons, I will not go into what those details are, but we are addressing every single piece of those, and we're seeing good traction in quarter 2 in improving those.

Okay. And then just one quick question on Life Science Solutions. You've previously said that your intention is to pivot away from academic clients more towards pharma and biotech, maybe you can give me an update on that. And then also the same with regards to the geographies that you're looking more to Europe and APAC to sort of counterbalance the macro uncertainties with U.S.

That's correct, Suzanna. In terms of -- in BICO 2.0, our strategy there was to improve and increase our sales to pharma and biotech at the expense of Academia. And when we are decreasing the bioprinting part of our business. That also means that we will have less sales to Academia since bioprinting is mainly Academia. Although part is also pharma, but most is Academia. So -- but we still have some companies that are catering to Academia, but trying to move towards -- through regulatory readiness, moved to more professional customers in pharma and biotech because that will also give more repeated business since they have several labs around the world.

In terms of geographies, as you can see, we're still quite exposed to the U.S., and there are several initiatives to increase our distributor based in Asia and to also cater to European and Asian customers to a larger extent. And hence, we are investing in further sales resources in those regions.

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you for the questions during the Q&A session and all for your participation. Together with Jacob, I would like to wish everyone a great Tuesday. Thank you, and goodbye.