Paul Chaplin
Analyst · SEB
Thank you, operator, and welcome, everyone, to Bavarian Nordic's Q1 results for 2026. Together with me is Henrik Juuel, and I will walk through some of the key highlights and activities for the first quarter and then hand over to Henrik, who will go through some of the more detailed financial results. So if you all turn to Slide 4, we've had a solid start to '26. Revenues just over DKK 1 billion with a 16% EBITDA margin. And as I said, I'll leave it to Henrik to walk through some of the details of the financials. However, before I go into some of the practicalities, I just need to remind everyone that on Travel Health, it's a very seasonal business. So sometimes our quarterly results don't really reflect the business that we're expecting over the entire year. And typically, for Travel Health, Q1 is more of a light quarter with Q2 being a heavier quarter. And on Public Preparedness, really quarterly results, it's driven all by government contracts and the delivery schedules according to those contracts. So we can either have a light or a low quarter depending on those contracts. And some of that explains -- and Henrik will get into it, when you look at Q1 in '26 and compare to '25, last year's Q1 for different reasons, for stocking and all the rest of it was slightly higher. Having said all that, we have had a great fantastic start to the year, a 14% growth in our Travel Health business, and I'll come back to that, but it's driven by rabies, the continued rollout of our Vimkunya vaccine for chikungunya, and TBE. Vinunya, as I said, the rollout continues of the launch. We have recently got the approval in Switzerland, and we've launched in -- we continue to launch in new countries such as Belgium and Netherlands. And we're seeing good demand in some of the countries that we launched in last year. On Public Preparedness, we recently, after Q1, this Monday, announced a new order from the U.S. government, and I'll come back to that in more detail. But that has led to an increase in the '26 guidance, increasing the Public Preparedness up to potentially DKK 2.5 billion from the DKK 1.8 billion to DKK 2 billion and an increase in the EBITDA margin up to 28%. As I said, I'll come back to more of the details on Public Preparedness. So really a strong start for the year, already a hike in guidance based on the Public Preparedness, the new contract and strong continued demand in Travel Health. If we go to the next slide, talk a little bit about the Travel Health, as I said, a 14% increase in Q1. On rabies, we're really seeing strong demand, continued strong demand in the 2 key markets in the U.S. and Germany with a 23% and 29% growth in Q1. And really, this strong growth that we're seeing with rabies is really due to, unfortunately, an increase in the number of deaths last year in the U.S. and a number of different cases of travelers coming back infected and again, unfortunately, succumbing to the infection. And I would say rabies is really getting into the category now of a standard travel vaccine. And what I mean by that is there are a number of vaccines for travel that are considered pretty standard when people turn up at their GP or travel clinic. On TBE, we saw a 12% growth in the overall market. And although there was a decline compared to last year, as I said, this is more related to a stocking situation by wholesalers in '25, which we didn't see in this year. But we are completely on track in a normalized year for TBE. And as I said, we typically see stronger growth or stronger demand in Q2. Another thing to mention that's not on the slide is Vivotif, which is our vaccine against typhoid, which we acquired back in '23. Unfortunately, the typhoid market, we really have not seen a rebound of that market since post-COVID as we have in other travel sectors. And one of the reasons we saw for that -- for Vivotif was that we weren't really addressing one of the markets -- previous markets, which were GPs, which prescribed the vaccine in the U.S. So last year, we took action and had a contracted sales force really targeting that sector. And this year -- this quarter, I should say, we've seen a 12% growth in Vivotif, and that's really showing signs that the actions that we're taking is really beginning to show signs or shoots of growth. So if we go to the next slide and talk a little bit more about Vimkunya, really, we are on track with our launch. And if anything, I would say our original plan last year, post approval, has been accelerated. So we've now launched, I believe, in 14 countries, U.S., throughout Europe and also the U.K. and as I said, recently added Belgium and the Netherlands. In Germany, we're seeing strong demand. And hopefully, we will begin to see that strong demand in the other territories that we're rolling out. Of course, part of the launch is to raise awareness of chikungunya. So it will take time, but we are beginning to, as I say, see a very successful rollout. One area which is not going as well as we would like is in the U.S. And unfortunately, this is related to some headwinds related to the recommendation. While the recommendation was achieved last April, this is still not being published by the CDC. And unfortunately, some wholesalers are not buying the product and stocking until this publication. So that is slowing the demand that we were expecting in the U.S. But as I said, in other areas such as Germany and elsewhere, such as the U.K., we are seeing nice demand. As I said, in Switzerland, we've got recently -- we got the recent approval, and we plan to launch in Q2. And we're also expecting an approval from Health Canada in the first half of this year. So again, continued regulatory approvals and continuing on the planned launch for Vimkunya, and we stand by our projected guidance for this vaccine in '26. If you go to the next slide, often, we're getting a lot of questions lately around our Travel Health portfolio and the -- with the current geopolitical situation, whether there's an impact on travel. What this slide is showing is that travel in most areas of the world continues to grow, albeit at a slower rate than we've seen post-COVID. So you could -- there is an argument to say that, that growth is slowing down. We, however, have not seen any impact regarding our travel health portfolio in terms of geopolitical situation. But of course, it's obvious that there could be impacts if the situation continues, airfares and all the rest of it increase. But as I said, right now, we've seen no impacts. We're seeing solid growth. And as I said, right now, travel is still growing, albeit at a slower rate. If we go to the next slide. On Public Preparedness, I want to talk a little bit about the recent order from the U.S. government. So this is under our -- what we refer to our freeze-dried contract that was awarded in 2017. If you look at the graph, the red graph at the bottom to the left of this slide, this came with an original order for 11.5 million doses of our freeze-dried version. At that point in time, we had not developed the freeze-dried. So there was also of that almost USD 540 million, there was about $140 million to perform clinical study, to do a tech transfer from a contract manufacturer. There was $300 million to fill the bulk, and there were some bulk orders in that $540 million. With the latest order that was announced on Monday, the $97 million, BARDA are now completing the order for the 11.5 million doses, really showing their long-term commitment over what is almost 10 years to develop, to tech transfer and to acquire 11.5 million doses of the freeze-dried version. It's a great example of a private -- of a public-private partnership because BN also invested in our own manufacturing line here in Denmark, and it's a great success story. What it also shows is that under this contract, the U.S. government has ordered additional bulk and additional doses to address the mpox outbreak of '22. And we've received orders of greater than $1.2 billion since 2017 under this contract, which again really demonstrates the strong partnership between Bavarian Nordic and the U.S. government. Of that $97 million order that we received on Monday, the majority is for additional bulk to replace bulk that was used for the mpox order, and that will be revenue recognized this year. And that led to the increase in guidance that I've already stated, and I'm sure Henrik will walk through. So within that increased guidance to up to DKK 2.5 billion, we now have secured contracts for DKK 2 billion, and that really represents the upper range of what we call a normalized year, but we still expect additional orders between DKK 300 million to DKK 500 million in the remainder of the year, again demonstrating that our Public Preparedness is a steady base business moving forward. If we go to the next slide, a few words quickly on the pipeline. In terms of R&D, the majority of our R&D spend this year is really on what we refer to as life cycle management activities, primarily chikungunya. We have a number of post-market commitments which have been initiated, a pediatric study to expand the label to include children, a booster study looking at the longevity of the immune response and also an efficacy study. We're also in the midst of a Phase II study, which will support the transition from an egg-based production to a proprietary cell line that we've developed. And that initial data or interim data will read out later this year. We also have a program fully funded by the DoD for equine encephalitis. And indeed, there is a public request for information regarding future Phase III studies for such an indication, which we have responded to. And we also have some early-stage programs for Lyme and EBV that will be coming through in the years to come. So with that, I will hand over to Henrik, who can walk through the more details on the financials.