Vita 34 Aktie

So, hi again to this small round, as usual in our earnings calls, and welcome to the full year 2025 earnings call of FamiCord. As usual, we prepared a small presentation for you, just a couple of slides to get into the topic, and then I'll hand over to Jakub, and he will lead you through the presentation. And afterwards, we have time for Q&A, of course.

So, Jakub, please go ahead.

Welcome, everyone. Maybe some others will join because we got some e-mails from investors interested, but who knows whether they would be able to join today's call. So, we published our results as planned. The year was pretty good. So, we delivered more or less what we expected. Revenue grew solidly by over 7%, earnings even more by 12.3%. We had, as usual, a certain impact at net level, related to goodwill impairment. What is worth noticing is that we see -- we noticed a strong shift of our clients towards subscription services. So much more of them are selecting yearly payment over those who decided to prepay for 5, 10 or 20 or 18 years depending on the option.

What we also announced in our guidelines that we noticed in the second half of the fourth quarter a sudden change in consumer behavior and then we became pretty cautious as that already continues in Q1 of 2026. One important information, we decided not to continue supporting our CAR-T project, understood that we cannot afford investing more. So we stay as a minority shareholder, but having less than 20% of the equity, and we are just a passive shareholder, and we are not consolidating the result of the company, which is called FamiCordTx or FamiCord Therapeutics, and that company is burning cash because it's a typical R&D company.

We are living in pretty difficult environment that everybody knows, yes, which is rather getting more complex and complicated. There are less and less children, right. Economy is really fragile. So, that overall uncertainty may have a strong impact on our potential clients' behavior. And it's also related with AI because I believe that certain industries might be under pressure in terms of maintaining jobs of people, particularly, let's say, younger cohorts or simply employees of corporations, which are at age of, let's say, 30 to 35, and that is also part of our target group. So, we believe that impact of AI could be also responsible for the change of shift of interest in our services.

From the cost perspective, we believe we are trying, at least, doing our best to maintain the cost in order, and we reduced, let's say, unnecessary spendings. And also, we decided to postpone unnecessary CapEx until having more clarity how the situation develops. That's it, I think, from the summary.

Maybe, Thomas, you can add something from your end.

Can you go one slide back just to see if we said something about financial stability and full focus. Yes, we are taking care, of course, about the development that's also that we will see maybe this year. So, we are close monitoring our cash position. As you saw on the first page in the summary, equity ratio went down to 3.3%, which is pretty low, which is not a major situation for us, but needs to be understood that is mainly driven by impairment and also by extending our asset balance. So therefore, the equity ratio came down, but it is closely monitored. And yes, maybe from the financial side, it's also something we might add to be aware of.

Yes, I did not comment on particular markets, right, because it's not that all the markets are doing the same or we're doing the same. So, we see still continued growth in GCC despite the situation caused by a war between Israel, the U.S. and Iran, right. So, we see that our operations, they are doing pretty well and that they are doing also pretty well in Q1, right, and April. And certain selected countries in Eastern Europe are also pretty resistant to potential issues we see in other markets. So, it's not that everywhere we see a sudden drop of interest, but it's in majority of countries, but not in all of the countries.

One more comment. Regarding this year, we decided to be really cautious as the situation is really unclear, economic environment is influenced by, let's say, political decisions and distortions and the outcome is completely unclear which direction it will go. We know that there will be no more children. There is no magic solution to be implemented in the short term. At least nobody invented that. Maybe Chinese will do something because they have even bigger troubles. So, maybe something new will come from Asia, who knows. And taking all of that into consideration, we decided to issue that kind of forecast or guidelines showing revenues in the range of EUR 80 million to EUR 90 million for 2026 and group EBITDA in the range of EUR 9 million to EUR 11 million.

So, I think that's it from my side. If you have any questions, happy to answer.

Great, Jakub. Thank you. So, I'd say, as we have such a small round here, just please feel free to open your mic any time and ask a question.

Tim, yes, as I saw. Happy to take you first.

So, I was a bit -- I mean, it's understandable, I think the outlook, right? But I was a bit disappointed or it comes at a timing where at least from the last reports you had to Q3 with placenta banking, positive sort of momentum in Eastern Europe, at least in some countries, yes, the overall impression is so much more muted, obviously, which then I'm pretty certain also led to those new impairments because the muted outlook obviously then results in another business outlook.

So, my question there would be, is this what you already see? I mean you mentioned this that you are seeing parts of this in Q1, right? And that's led to this stance. But maybe you could just sort of outline where is it coming from? Is it more the overall contracts, pricing pressure in what regions? So, we just understand a bit more where your cautious, sort of, outlook is coming from? Or is it more precaution than actually what you're seeing?

And Thomas, probably the follow-up for you, monitoring your equity ratio is an interesting formulation. I mean is this -- are you at levels where you have to take action? I mean your covenants for the banks, et cetera, that's all fine, right? Your EBITDA is good. So, this is more -- from my point of view, but please tell me if I'm wrong, it's more a cosmetic topic than an actual financial distress situation.

So, maybe I will start and then Thomas will answer. So first of all, we see something which is pretty unusual that consumer sentiment dropped in most of the countries. In the past, it was like some countries were performing very well, sometimes some of them not so well, some of them were in average, blah, blah, blah. So that was balancing, more balanced. At the moment, it's different. So, we see drop of sentiment or interest in majority of the geographies. And this is why we started to be really cautious because that is probably the first time in our history. It has never happened before.

So, as I said, I mean, we are doing well in GCC. We are doing pretty well in Turkey. We are doing pretty well in Hungary. Romania, Poland is also not that bad. But some of these countries, although they are doing not that bad, they are doing below our expectations. So, that means that even the countries which we consider healthy are sometimes below what we would have expected. Whether there is one reason for that is unclear because we don't see what you ask maybe. We don't see that much pressure for price, but the fact that more people are choosing subscription is an indicator that consumption power is smaller or people don't like to spend money. So, we don't see that suddenly we should lower our prices by 20%, but by the selection of giving packages is also an indicator that price might be or might be an issue.

We don't see competitors being suddenly hyperactive or offering special prices or being somehow desperate. No, we don't see that. So, I think it's overall market perspective rather than one action or one cause or one reason. We also mentioned that we -- in our letter - that we should also adjust our marketing strategies due to AI and the way AI is now used and how the information is searched. So, all the, let's say, digital communication was optimized for, say, traditional search engines. Now we are simply optimizing that to be better visible by engines supported by LLMs, by models because they are providing information in a different way and also, they are reading information in a different way. And that will take us a couple of quarters to adjust and adapt to be better visible or to have higher or bigger efficiency of marketing campaigns. So, that's more or less the situation from the market perspective.

Obviously, there is one factor which we believe is rather positive after political changes in Hungary, a lot of money should flow from European Union to Hungary. So, we believe that that country would benefit. So indirectly also some of our potential clients will benefit out of that. But it's a very good market, but it's not that big market overall.

Whether -- as I mentioned, I mean, we don't see very negative impact of the conflict in Middle East at our operations there. We are still growing. We are actually at record sales there. The question is on whether we can continue growth. That we don't know because that also depends on the political situation. We are not only operating in Emirates, we have also partners in Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, so in the entire region. Yes. And otherwise, I think that Thomas may comment on the banking side.

Yes. Thank you, Tim, for the question. Why did I mention the equity ratio to say in the first step? It's not an issue of us, of course, because often, we have one financial covenant, which is net debt to EBITDA. So, it's not the equity ratio. But for somebody who is not within our business, it sounds strange to see an equity ratio just of 3.3%. But if you do understand our business as you do, it's mostly coming from our contract liabilities, so enhanced balance sheet plus the situation that we had some impairments last year, especially on FamiCord AG, so our German entity and our Portuguese subsidiary, Stemlab. And of course, we had some M&A activities last year. So, our debt position increased because it was financed with cash and debt last year.

So overall, that's why our equity ratio came down. It's not worrying us, but we are taking care, of course, especially since last year, our operating cash flow changed since we have more subscription, which is good to have in the long run, it's a sustainable development. But nevertheless, we have less cash that we received. So, this is something we are really taking care and taking into account what Jakub said and what we are seeing in the outlook, you just need to be careful. That's why we highlight this. And this, let's say, our job to be careful on this, whatever would come in the market or in the macroeconomic development.

Okay. But just to clarify, the equity ratio itself is nothing which would require you to do any kind of capital measure or I just wanted to clarify that.

Tim, of course, it's better to have a higher ratio.

Sure.

That's clear. That's clear.

Great. Thanks, Tim. Any other questions today? This does not seem to be the case.

Okay. But if nobody has a question, of course, I have another question. Can you give an update on the placenta banking? I remember that Portugal was the next country you were looking. And I remember that you had some positive -- surprisingly positive signs from Germany also what this topic was. So...

Yes. I mean -- so Portugal, we introduced Placenta Banking in December. At the moment, what we see is a practical execution because hospitals in Portugal were not well prepared for that. Obviously, it's not our responsibility in terms of Portuguese regulations. It's different in Germany. So, we are gradually now training hospitals in Portugal to be familiar with the topic. So, sometimes we have cases that somebody signed the agreement and then hospital did not collect placenta, which is not complex, as you know, because we are just taking entire placenta. We are not doing anything with that. Cord blood collection is much more complex.

But that was done and that we believe that we will improve in Portugal. We don't expect to reach that ratio of like 35%, 40%. We have seen some countries or even more than 50% of people taking that offer, but at least minimum, 20% is the goal. Germany, yes, we got the license after more than 2 years of discussions with the authorities. So, we have collection license and production license. And what we started is signing the agreements with hospitals across Germany. It is required. And that's a very regional process. So, there is no German or federal standard on the topic. We have to do it at the [ level of Länders ] in Germany. At the moment, as far as I remember, we had a range of 35 or 40 agreements signed, in that range out of more or less 600, which is the total number of hospitals.

So, in that case, we believe that after we'll have at least 100 agreements signed, we will launch the product in the territory of Germany. We believe that will be in Q3 this year. It's more complex in Germany because due to regulations, not only we have to have it in the form of written amendment to our existing agreements with hospitals, but also, we have to formally train the hospital staff collecting placenta like we do regularly for cord blood and cord tissue.

What is planned for this year is Hungary. We -- in the past, we were rejected to get the license because the authorities in Hungary told us there is no law in Hungary, which will allow to issue such a license. We believe that, that was a wrong interpretation of the law. And we reapplied to get the license. I think we placed a request again in end of February. And we expect rather positive answer. Obviously, the government is now changing. So, we will see also maybe some changes in the Ministry of Health and all the agencies. So, that will be probably a little bit longer process than usually. But we really believe that we may introduce also this product in Hungary this year.

Maybe a quick reminder. I think you once mentioned that your expectations or your -- what you're seeing currently is that it doesn't really cannibalize the navel blood.

Cord blood. Yes. I mean there are two things. I mean one thing that we simply have more money per client. Obviously, we cannot sell with the same margin, it's an add-on product. So, the margin percentage-wise is smaller, but it's simply a higher margin per client. But obviously, there is another factor which is important. Placenta seems to be well accepted by stakeholders. So, as I said, if you would ask person on the street, what is placenta? everybody -- almost everybody knows what is cord blood, not necessarily. So, from that perspective, we see that. And this is why the takeout is so high as for the new product. On average, it's over 35%. I think it's even more. I mean, even weighted should be over 40%.

And another country, I forgot to mention, we also introduced that in the U.K. So, we will not process it in the U.K. We'll use our Portuguese laboratory for that because we have already the license in U.K. We don't have the license in placenta yet. So, we also introduced that in placenta banking in the U.K.

So, any further questions at this point? I think now that's not the case anymore.

Maybe one from my side.

Of course.

Thank you very much for hosting the call today. So, maybe you could also share some light on the ongoing efforts on Cryo-Save. Where do we stand there in terms of customers which you have won from the existing customer base? And how do you see the future in signing up more of those customers?

Pretty positive. I think last year, we solved all the formal issues related with court proceedings we are involved in and which were blocking us from active communication with these families. So, there is an entire process of communication going on. We started the year much better than we expected. So, we see a rather positive response of these families.

I believe that these families will contribute positively to our, not only revenue but also profit this year, which would be first time since we saved all these samples. So there is an action plan prepared. We are regularly -- we selected certain cohorts of clients per country, per year of storage and so on and so. We have a dedicated call center for that multilanguage call center, which is operating from Warsaw with some help of our daughter companies across Europe. So, I'm rather positive. I'm rather positive.

The issue we have -- main issue we have is the addresses and contact numbers we have are unfortunately, in 30% or 35%, they are simply old and not correct anymore. So, it's an issue how to get to these families because we can use those official channels to identify the person, but that is pretty costly exercise. So, we are rather focused on mass now sending communication to as many as possible, which makes sense and then trying to obviously upsell because we are not only offering storage, but we can -- we are offering extra services, including also check of the physical check of the sample, right, whether it is expanding, cells are expanding, cells are growing, and we can also test -- reconfirm the genetic origin of the sample and this kind of stuff. So -- so I'm rather positive. And that should grow in perspective of next years.

And how many clients have you already signed? And what's the current target?

We have over 50,000 signed. But you should remember that in the very beginning of a couple of years until we had the so-called backup agreement binding, backup agreement was between PBKM in Poland and the bankrupted Cryo-Save, we were accepting prepayments, yes, which were paid before to Cryo-Save. Now we are not accepting them anymore because backup agreement is over. So, this is why I'm pretty positive in terms of growing revenue from these clients.

To remind -- everybody -- we are talking about roughly 50,000 families out of more or less 225,000 families who are direct clients of Cryo-Save. On top of that, there are also B2B relationships. So, these are partners of Cryo-Save who store the samples with Cryo-Save. And we have, at the moment, I think, four agreements signed with former partners of Cryo-Save and these companies are now our clients, right. But they are paying B2B wholesale price, not individual price. So, it's different in terms of profitability.

And what's the current target in terms of customers from Cryo-Save? How much of the 225,000 will you convert?

No, we are not disclosing that kind of information.

And regarding the recurring revenue, where are you standing there? And where will you stand at the end of the year, roughly?

I mean last year, I think that we disclosed that information. Maybe Thomas, you can comment on that, yes.

Yes. We -- last year, we had EUR 22.7 million recurring revenues at the end of the year, not.

Yes, that is the range. But this is -- these are recurring paying annually, yes. And on top of that, we have also roughly EUR 7.5 million extra cash from prepayments done by existing clients or clients who prolong a finished contract. So altogether, roughly EUR 30 million from cash, yes, from existing client base.

And where do you think will you stand at the end of the year?

Subscription base should grow. It's natural process, yes, because churn is low, as you know. The question is only the prepayment component. And here, we don't know. Really, we don't know because we see that less people are choosing prepayments overall, right. So, even for those who continue expired contracts, we don't know which fraction of them will really go for prepayment. So, the component Thomas mentioned, EUR 22.5 million, let's say, that will grow.

How much do you think?

I mean it's natural. I mean, assuming you can calculate that information is public, let's say, cash-wise, it should be in the range of between EUR 0.5 million and EUR 1 million. That depends because depends on the ratio of how many clients will select subscription model. And also, Cryo-Save has an impact because Cryo-Save, we also offer both annual payments and prepayments, and we push for prepayments here in case of the -- why? Because mostly these clients are older. They banked 20 years ago, 15 years ago. So, people are at age of 50 today. So, they are probably stronger from a financial point of view because when they were banking at age of 30, 35, likely their income was lower than they have at age of 45, 50 or something, yes. So, prepayment is better accepted across, let's say, ex-Cryo-Save clients than for our regular clients.

So, did I understand it correctly that you expect a growth of EUR 1 million in recurring revenues? Or is it EUR 1.5 million?

No, no, no, between EUR 0.5 million and EUR 1 million.

Yes. Great. Thanks. Any further questions? So, that doesn't seem to be the case for today. So, then I think it's time to close the call. We've reached the end of today's earnings call. Thank you all for participating in this small round. For those of you who were not able to follow the call from minute 1, we will download this conversation and make it available on our website in the course of the day. And for the time being and until our next call in the mid of the year, thank you all for joining, and have a great weekend.

Thank you.

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the 9 months 2025 Earnings Call of FamiCord. As usual, this place takes -- this call takes place in a small group meeting here on Zoom. So thank you for joining our session today again. We prepared a short presentation for you as an update on the Q3 financials and the business highlights during the quarter. Following this, there will be a Q&A session.

Please be reminded that as usual, this call will be recorded, and the recording will be made available publicly after this call.

And now I'm handing you over to Jakub Baran, CEO of FamiCord, who will lead you through today's call. Jakub, please go ahead.

Good morning. Welcome to our quarterly call, and I believe our results were pretty good and we can shortly jump to details.

I would not maybe read all the numbers but just focus on financial highlights. So first of all, our revenue grew visibly. Our EBITDA -- reported EBITDA improved unproportionally better. Net profit is positive again. What changed against last year and that continues for this entire year is more clients choosing subscription model over prepayment model. That means that from a cash flow perspective, we have worse result you might have expected but that's on the short-term perspective. In long-term perspective, these clients will obviously pay us more in annual payments.

We did a few M&As. So that means our equity ratio improved in H1 but liquidity declined. We also started a few quarters ago showing invoiced amount, which is probably important for investors willing to better understand how IFRS rules are, let's say, may be applicable to CAC revenues. And what is probably strategically one of the key aspects is growth of annual recurring payments by almost 7% to 17.3%. So overall, 3 quarters were solid or very solid. And that is, I think, 10th quarter in a row, we are improving our results. So I'm pretty happy with performance of the company.

Certain things changed, certain things are same. We are living in the world of a small number of newborns, and that will not change. It's all over Europe. It's the same in developed countries in Asia, and I believe that, that would continue at least for a while. I already mentioned increased share of recurring revenues. What we see in terms of geography is that Eastern European countries are doing pretty well or very well. Southern Europe depends, let's say, we have certain issues. And in Central Europe, we have a mix of countries developing well, and we continue suffering in Germany.

As mentioned also before, we increased our stakes in Slovakian and Czech companies to 95%, and I believe that was the only spot we are not controlling in Central -- or Central Eastern Europe. And we believe these countries have potential of growth, particularly Czech Republic. Slovakia is due to the size of the country, which may be then not that promising. However, Slovakia many years ago used to be one of the most developed markets in terms of corporate banking, thanks to a very strong local player who is now not so much active.

Two important things from business perspective. First of all, we see certain improvement -- visible improvement in CDMO activity. So in Q3, we signed 3 contracts worth more than EUR 1 million in total, and there are more prospects, which we believe will materialize in next year. Revenue from those contracts, obviously will come mostly with certain delays. It's natural for B2B business, we have to prepare certain things first before delivering products to the clients.

Interestingly, one of these clients is a German company, which will start clinical trial in Germany. And I hope first application a patient will be this week, tomorrow, over the weekend. And if not, maybe that would come on Monday or Tuesday. But the samples are already in line to get Fraunhofer. We are cooperating with Fraunhofer.

In terms of something which is very, very old historical issue, Cryo-Save, our former competitor, which bankrupted 6 years ago, we had several issues related to that, although we are not fully involved in problems of Cryo-Save. We simply took over the storage of 300,000 samples belonging to 300,000 families. And we settled court cases we had in Poland, and that is an important message because we would be able to open communication with these families proposing them to sign storage agreement with us.

What would be the financial income? We don't know. However, we believe strategically that may have certain positive -- only positive impact at our revenues in coming years. We decided to maintain our guidelines in terms of revenue and EBITDA over -- after 3 quarters, you see that there is a high likelihood we will be in the -- rather in the top part of our guidelines in terms -- particularly in terms of EBITDA. But as we know from the past, fourth quarter usually brings more costs and is less -- a little bit less predictable than the previous quarters. So we stayed rather conservative. If only we would see that the results are even better than guidelines, obviously, we will notify the market. But at the moment, it's definitely premature.

And I think that, that's -- that's everything in a nutshell. If you have any questions, obviously, we are happy to answer.

Maybe Ingo, I mean, for participants, Thomas Pfaadt and Ingo knows him, team knows him. Martin, I don't know. Thomas is our CFO. So maybe we should...

Yes. We have a small group here, so it's a rather cozy happening. So I would like to ask you to unmute yourself and just your questions.

I'll take Jakub, Tim here. Just a few questions from my side. Can you remind us -- maybe this is for Thomas actually, what the impact of the consolidation of the new entities was in Q3 in terms of EBITDA roughly. So -- that would be interesting. And then in terms of M&A activities, do you see anything else sort of on the horizon? Any other yes, targets or minorities you might want to take over? And then lastly, what's the status on the CAR-T wind down? Where are you with that program? I mean you're obviously reporting continued operations. So it seems you still have discontinued operations. So maybe a quick update would be helpful.

So for Czech and Slovakia, I'm not fully aware of the detailed number but Jakub, you might help me for Q3, what we expect for Czech and Slovakia. So it's consolidated since June this year. So we have the first impact in Q3 for Czech and Slovakia.

I believe that for entire 2026, the impact will be in the range of EUR 400,000 to EUR 500,000 -- sorry, EUR 200,000 to EUR 250,000.

For 205 or 2026?

For 2025. Okay.

So -- but that's not a full year -- that's the sort of the half -- second half.

Half year, yes, because we...

Full year effect would be like EUR 500,000, EUR 500,000.

Yes. That range, yes. That depends, obviously, because we are now budgeting next year, and there are several question marks whether we should invest more and or rather stay conservative to understand better the market. So I don't know. I mean, normally, with normal approach, that should bring us in that range of EBITDA. If we decide to invest, obviously, there will be a delay, because first you invest, then you see the result.

What is interesting in Czech Republic, in particular, are very high prices there because competition is very limited and it seems that the statistical client is a bit better, you mean better probably from mid upper class rather than mid-class, which is our statistical clients across Europe, including Germany. So in Czech Republic, that product is offered to, let's say, the really top part of the society. This is our understanding. Yes, in Slovakia, it's like for most of the other countries. So yes, we will see. But yes, that is the range, yes, anyway.

M&As, there are some targets but not so many, honestly speaking. And for that, we would need capital increase because we cannot afford doing that from our credit lines. Remember that we have some payments remaining for the transactions in Slovakia and Czech Republic. This year, we have expected closing of nOvum transaction, signing was a couple of weeks ago, right? So I don't think we can afford doing more. I would say there are maybe 3, 4, not more left in Europe, which are considerable. Yes but that's another story. I would say that this is not a topic for the moment, not the top.

And maybe very important from an IR side to stress, there is no transaction in preparation. So this is a very important...

Yes. That we can say. That we can say. Obviously, we are in touch because that industry is super niche. We know each other very well with most of the owners or CEOs or Boards. But at the moment, we don't expect anything coming soon.

Maybe just -- maybe have a quick follow-up on that. What is the sort of the magnitude? Like do you have an idea of sort of EBITDA of these targets, the size or the overall transaction...

Very different. We have one company where, for example, the founder is already 80 years old. He handed over the company to the son and son is in renewable energy sector, and he's not interested, yes. And these clients are paying mostly annually. So it's a very interesting top because it's very easy to measure that there is no risk. The size is in the range of EUR 0.5 million, EUR 1 million for transaction. So it's -- you may name it even risk-free but that would mean we have to enter a new country. And I'm not sure we like to do that because that's an effort as well, right? So that's one transaction.

Another is pretty big one is in the range of EUR 10 million. Yes. But again, we don't have money. So why consider at the moment, we stay in touch. Obviously, we see certain synergies but it does not mean we would agree price, and it's simply premature. So there are also targets -- and I mentioned 3, 4, yes. There are some targets I would like to buy but they are not on sale. And they are highly profitable.

Those are usually the best target.

I mean, obviously, everything goes on sale but the price would be unproportionally high. So -- and as several -- I mean we mentioned several times, the industry is continuing consolidation. However, there are not so many targets, which are really interesting. So we have probably reached the moment the market is saturated in terms of new transactions, yes, maybe as I said, 3, 4, not more, I don't expect. And for CAR-T, we expect in November or December, we will drop below 20% of shareholding. General assembly already happened of FamiCord Therapeutics.

And at the moment, the company Board is collecting interest from minority shareholders and from some new investors, mostly individual people. Interestingly, these are people from pharmaceutical companies, usually managers willing to invest. Competitors, they are competing as companies, each other but these are private investments, right? So we expect that to be finalized in November and December. Then we will continue as -- you may name it financial investor a little bit with 20% stake and as potential subcontractor, yes, in case the company continue research projects and they will need products, we will be providing them from our, let's say, CDMO from -- by the way, our CDMO activity, we branded it Bramble Bio. So we are promoting Bramble Bio and so Bramble Bio will be supplier for FamiCord Therapeutics.

No further questions for the moment?

I would have one question. You mentioned that you settled the dispute with Cryo-Save. And could you give us some light on the current process where you are standing there in terms of invoicing or like that you basically invoice some of the samples from Switzerland? And what's the time line around this?

I mean we -- what I can say that we are communicating now with these families actively. We started in second week of October. So it's pretty new. And we started from families who or which already left the updated contact data at our website, right? So that is limited to roughly 20,000 families. To remind, we store samples belonging to 300,000 families. 50,000 of them already signed with us, it's 50,000. 20,000 is registered. And the rest is a mix of clients of different portfolios of clients, yes, because some of these families actually are our clients because originally, the companies we acquired over years used to cooperate with Cryo-Save in the past.

So by protecting Cryo-Save inventory, we also protected part of our own inventory but still, we estimate that we should reach at least 100,000 more families, right? So that communication is under preparation. The difference is that we -- starting November, end of November, we are not respecting prepayments done by those families to Cryo-Save. Before, we were somehow obliged to respect money they paid to Cryo-Save, yes, for storage of the samples. It's not the case anymore, right? So we will simply see what's the interest, real commercial interest of these families to continue the storage.

But overall, we can only be let's say, on the surplus here because until now, we had limited revenues, right? Because obviously, as mentioned, we signed 50,000 contracts. And these families, we sold some extra services like checking the samples, expansion of sales, they were simply very interested in understanding the quality and so on and so. But we are not publicly sharing information about expected revenues from that group of clients because it's simply a bit unpredictable. I would say that Q1, Q2, we will have more information. And then I believe that we can start sharing if we would only be able to say, yes, this is the number we can publicly confirm.

But what I can also say from the other hand, it is not a subject of ad hoc. So that is a certain positive impact but not that big, yes. You would be able to say what is the financial impact on the current results and future results, definitely positive. And over time, that is definitely super positive because the prepayment periods will be over. And from our perspective, from 40% to 70% of these families will continue storage. And remember, Cryo-Save started in 2001 -- or 2000 and the highest number of clients they had in years 2009, 2012. So in 3, 4 years, there will be a bulk of families, which will have to decide whether to continue storage or not, and we believe 40% to 70% of them will continue under one condition. We have to reach them. And after so many years, it's not that easy because, obviously, people are moving, they are changing e-mail addresses, telephone numbers. And they were -- these contracts are not fully up to date.

Just one more question from my side, Jakub, for better understanding. So you currently have 50,000 clients already and you target to reach 100,000 clients or...

I mean, in total, I believe 100,000 clients is possible, yes.

So you want to double the current amount of...

Yes. Yes. I think that we can say. However, this is not like -- that's a guess. That's not a forecast because we don't know why. And it's pretty psychological topic, yes, because those families, we think that those families who are the most interested already signed. So we don't know what would be the tail, let's say, of interest from the other families. And obviously, we know thousands of people are completely not aware that something happened to Cryo-Save because if you -- they did service in 2003, imagine, yes, you signed something so many years ago, you don't care, yes. You think everything is fine. And then you can discover new information. So this is why it's a bit unpredictable.

And one last question from my side then really. If you invoice them on an annual basis, what average revenue do you expect?

I mean we are charging roughly between EUR 90 to EUR 100 per year. And that's 3 of VAT, yes, because the families are signing with our Swiss entity.

May I just have a quick follow-up on [ Neil's ] question. But if I understand correctly, from those 50,000 potential in brackets, yes, sort of your estimate, 20,000 already left their data on -- or is that additional to the 20,000.

No, no, no, it's -- 50,000 families already signed.

But I think you mentioned something of 20,000...

20,000 is on top of this 50,000, which left updated data but did not sign.

Exactly, yes. And that -- and those would be within the 50,000 additional but maybe a bit more easy because they've already in contract et cetera.

Yes, yes. Exactly.

Okay. Okay. Understood. And then just maybe one final question from me. Maybe a quick update on the Placenta business.

Yes. Good news from Germany. We got the license, which we struggled to obtain for more than 2 years, I think. So finally, we have it. And the next topic is as a process of amending the agreements with clinics. So we will not start offering that before we reach -- we guess -- we estimate 100 clinics amended contracts because we cannot just contract and then say the client, we can't deliver. So I hope that we will be able to go to the market with this product in Germany in Q3 next year.

But what would be the reaction of the market is difficult to say. Overall experience is positive from all the countries, what we mentioned several times. Actually, we -- in none of the countries we started that we saw negative reaction, only positive. So there is only a question mark how many clients will decide on this kind of product. And the next country would be probably Portugal because that depends on the authorities a little bit.

But that's great news. I mean I think the order was the other way around before. I think you always mentioned you think Portugal would be before Germany.

Yes, yes. We -- I mean...

Overall, this is good news, right?

We were negatively surprised first by German authorities. Now we are positively surprised by German authorities. So they did not raise more questions. They are precautious, as said, because that is the first license of that type in Germany. So I think they were really, really precautious asking several questions. And at a certain moment, they stopped, and they just told us you have the license.

Good news.

But may I add, Tim, even if you -- as Jakub said, when we start in Q3 next year, there will be kind of ramp-up phase. So you won't see that much revenue in the beginning, of course.

Yes, it's natural. I mean, first of all, this limitation by the number of hospitals, maybe I don't know whether we communicated that but there are roughly 650 hospitals with deliveries in Germany at this moment in comparison to 750, which was 10 years ago roughly. So they are consolidating. And out of the 650 hospitals, we have roughly 90% coverage in terms of collection of cord blood. But for cord tissue, I think that we have roughly 70% of these hospitals covered with agreements. So we expect similar situation for Placenta. So there will be a fast growth in the very beginning with hospitals, which are, let's say, easier to amend such a thing.

And then that will gradually go up, but not that way, right? So that will be like a jump and then up, up, up, up. like we continue with cord tissue, yes. We like to have the same coverage like for cord blood. But this is a long process because you have different authorities in lens and they have different requirements in certain lens, the authority has to approve the agreement with the hospital. So that is a very, very slow process. But overall, it's a positive message because we see really how positively is reaction of the clients, but also midwives. I think this is something which is very, very important because when you collect cord blood, some midwives are saying you should do it in the very last moment, enabling the fetal or the baby to get as much blood as possible.

And this is so-called delayed clamping. And that is done to even to set an extreme. It went to set an extreme how much blood or how long the baby could be connected with mother. So some midwives may consider cord blood banking as a negative thing from fetal perspective but that has nothing to do with placenta. And there is much more [indiscernible] supporting placental cells are very, very interesting and rich in many substances or active substances, which could be used for treatment. And it is also more natural. Tim, 10 years ago, if I would ask you on the street, what is cord blood, you probably would have no clue. If I would ask you what is placenta, I would guess 99.9% of people are aware what is placenta. It's more natural, right? So we really believe that, that should bring us simply more margin overall, right?

Are there further questions for the moment? I assume not.

So then we've reached the end of today's call. Thank you very much again for participating. Should any further questions occur, then please just drop us a mail or call us. We're happy to assist you. And then talk to you soon on our next call. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Thank you.