Evotec SE (EVO) Q4 2025 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Financial Results. My name is Joseph, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] This conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or for broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Sarah Fakih, Head of Global Communications and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Joseph. Good morning, good afternoon, and welcome to today's webcast and conference call. My name is Sarah Fakih, and I'm the Head of Global Communications and Investor Relations at Evotec. Please allow me to introduce today's speakers. Joining me on the call are Christian Wojczewski, Chief Executive Officer of Evotec; Paul Hitchin, our Chief Financial Officer; and our Chief Scientific Officer, Cord Dohrmann, will be available for the Q&A session. Please note that this call is being webcast live and will be archived in the events calendar on our website. Before we begin, a few forward-looking statements. The discussion and responses to your questions on this call reflect management's views as of today, Wednesday, April 8, 2026. During this call, we will make statements and provide responses that state our intentions, beliefs, expectations or projections regarding the future. These statements constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. They are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. Evotec disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. For further information regarding these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our public filings and disclosures. With this, let me hand over the call to Christian.

Thank you, Sarah. Good morning, and good afternoon to everyone. Thank you for joining today's call. Let me start with the headline results for 2025 and the first months of 2026. '25 was a year of significant progress for Evotec as we laid critical groundwork for the company's next chapter of sustainable and profitable growth. Throughout a persistently challenging market environment, we remained anchored in the strength of our science and the dedication of our teams, which continue to be the foundation of our performance. Building on these fundamentals, we introduced a new company strategy in 2025 that defined our priorities and now guide the transformation work underway in 2026 and beyond. Our four levers of midterm value creation, scientific leadership, operational excellence, better monetization of Just-Evotec Biologics and capturing pipeline value have already translated strategy into targeted action. As a result of this work in 2025, we have delivered more than EUR 60 million in annualized cost savings, streamlined our asset pipeline and reduced our capital expenditure by around 60%, important steps that have strengthened our balance sheet and our financial resilience. Against the challenging market backdrop of 2025, financial results were at the high end of our guidance range and Paul will go into more detail on that later in this presentation. Both segments of Evotec business have contributed to our progress in the past year. Discovery and Preclinical Development continued clinical advancement across partner programs, delivered milestones and underscored the productivity of our platforms despite continued softness in early-stage biotech funding. Just-Evotec Biologics delivered a breakthrough year supported by the landmark agreement with Sandoz and continued progress across global health programs. And last month, we kicked off our Horizon initiative, a comprehensive transformation of our operating model. We are already making substantial progress across the three Horizon pillars of operations, science and commercial execution. The last of which recently saw the appointment of a new Chief Commercial Officer, reinforcing our commitment to building a more agile, customer-focused organization. As Horizon implementation continues, we expect to see the first structural and financial benefits in the second half of 2026. Turning to the progress in our Discovery and Preclinical Development segment on Slide 5. We saw robust clinical and scientific advancement over the past 12 to 18 months, across key therapeutic areas, including oncology, neurodegeneration and kidney disease, as well as exciting developments in emerging modalities such as condensate modulation. During this period, and as already reported during our Q3 results in November 2025, two partnered assets moved into Phase II clinical studies. Since then, a partnered preclinical asset advanced to a first in human Phase I study, bringing our partnered clinical portfolio to a total of 2 programs in Phase II and 5 programs in Phase I. Let me briefly highlight the progress within some of our key alliances. In our cancer protein degradation collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb, we are jointly developing a broad pipeline of next-generation molecular glue degraders, a revolutionary modality with a potential to target previously undruggable disease-causing proteins and an area in which BMS is the clear industry leader. The first candidate progressed from IND acceptance in November 2025 into a Phase I clinical study in March 2026 in advanced clear cell renal cell carcinoma, the most common form of kidney cancer. These advancements, which validate the strength of our screening and AI-supported analytical platforms resulted in milestone payments of $5 million and $10 million, respectively. In our neuroscience partnership with BMS, we achieved continued progress across a jointly developed preclinical pipeline focused on therapies for neurodegenerative disorders, triggering a $25 million milestone payment in October 2025. Lastly, in our kidney disease partnership with Bayer, a Phase II clinical study in Alport syndrome, a rare genetic kidney disease was initiated in December 2025, underscoring our discovery and translational capabilities in renal conditions. The momentum across these collaborations highlights our ability to translate our outstanding science into a successful clinical [indiscernible]. It validates our platforms and carries through on our fourth strategic lever, capturing pipeline value as assets advance to generate meaningful financial upside. Looking ahead, we expect the total number of assets in Phase II to have grown from 2 to 4 during 2026. Turning from our small molecule business to biologics, let me give you an overview of our Just-Evotec Biologics segment on Slide 6. 2025 was a breakthrough year for JEB defined by a strategic pivot away from a capacity-constrained manufacturing model toward an asset-lighter technology-focused partner enablement model. This evolution centered on our highly differentiated continuous manufacturing platform is reflected in the news flow throughout the year, featuring technology-enabled partnerships and significant progress in global health programs. However, the defining milestone for JEB was the completion of our strategic agreement with Sandoz, which closed in December 2025. The agreement is valued at $650 million with additional royalty potential for 10 biosimilars, the sixth most advanced of which have an originated value of about $92 billion. Further recent developments include a multi-year BioMaP-Consortium award of up to $10 million from the U.S. government, Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. The program aims to optimize the biomanufacturing of monoclonal antibodies against Ebola and Sudan viruses, strengthening preparedness for hemorrhagic fever outbreaks. In January 2026, we also expanded our long-standing collaboration with the Gates Foundation, receiving a new grant supporting 10 new molecule design projects over the next 3 years. These projects apply our AI and computation-driven J.MD platform to improve antibody developability and advanced access to affordable biologics. Taken together, these advances show how JEB is evolving into a high-margin, technology-driven business with durable long-term value creation potential firmly validating JEB as a core pillar of future growth ambitions. Let me now hand over the call to Paul to walk you through our financial results.

Thank you, Christian, and a warm welcome from my side as well. On Slide 7, you can see our condensed income statement is in line with the preliminary unaudited financial results we provided as part of the Horizon Communication on March 10, 2026. For the fourth quarter of 2025, group revenues increased by EUR 32.1 million or 14.5% to EUR 253.3 million. And for the full year 2025 decreased by EUR 8.6 million or 1.1% to EUR 788.4 million compared to the same period in 2024. On a constant currency basis, Q4 revenues grew by 21% and full year revenues grew by 1.7% compared to 2024. While the broader CRO market showed early signs of recovery in 2025, the environment for early-stage drug discovery remained challenging. As a result, the full year revenue decline was primarily driven by lower revenues in our D&PD segment, where revenues declined by EUR 27.3 million or 16.6% to EUR 137.1 million for the fourth quarter and by EUR 82.5 million or 13.5% to EUR 528.9 million for the full year compared to the prior period. Unfavorable foreign exchange movements represented an additional headwind to full year revenues of 2.8%, driven by the U.S. dollar and British pound. However, those effects were largely offset by strong performance in Just-Evotec Biologics segment, including the positive contribution from the Sandoz transaction in the fourth quarter of 2025. Revenues within Just-Evotec increased by EUR 59.4 million or 104.2% in quarter 4 and by EUR 73.8 million or 39.8% and to EUR 259.4 million for the full year 2025 compared to 2024. This growth was driven by the continued progress in the Sandoz partnership, including an incremental contribution from a license payment of approximately EUR 65 million in the fourth quarter. While revenues from the U.S. Department of War-related activities declined in the second half of 2025, following announced budget cuts, revenues of our non-Sandoz and non-DoW customers continue to grow by more than 60% in the full year. Fourth quarter costs in Just-Evotec were temporarily elevated versus the underlying run rate driven by additional expenses associated with the Sandoz transaction and temporarily higher material costs, both of which are expected to normalize early 2026. In line with our guidance, R&D spending decreased further and amounted to EUR 37.5 million or 4.8% of total revenue for the full year 2025 compared to EUR 50.9 million or 6.4% of total revenue in 2024. Investing in our technologies and platforms remains a core part of the strategy and we will continue to allocate capital to scientific capabilities and technology leadership while maintaining a balanced investment approach in a challenging macroeconomic environment. Adjusted group EBITDA increased by EUR 29.5 million or 103.6% to EUR 58 million in the fourth quarter and by EUR 18.5 million or 81.9% to EUR 41.1 million for the full year of 2025 compared to the same period in '24. Adjusted EBITDA in the D&PD segment decreased by EUR 12.6 million to EUR 6.8 million in the fourth quarter and by EUR 24.7 million to minus EUR 12 million in 2025 primarily driven by the aforementioned lower revenues, which contracted faster than the cost base, creating internal overcapacity and weighing on segment profitability, underscoring the need for the operational transformation program recently announced as part of Horizon. Adjusted EBITDA in the Just-Evotec segment increased significantly by EUR 42.1 million or 463% in the fourth quarter and by EUR 43.3 million or 443% to EUR 53.2 million in 2025 compared to the prior periods. This strong result reflects continued progress in the validation of our continuous manufacturing technology as well as favorable shift in revenue mix towards higher margins and an asset-lighter technology enablement model. Turning to liquidity and the balance sheet on Slide 8. We closed 2025 in a solid position. At year-end, cash liquidity stood at EUR 476 million, representing a strong balance sheet with a net cash position. The improvement in our cash liquidity reflects disciplined financial execution, including the monetization of technology leadership through Just-Evotec Biologics, the realization from maturing equity stakes including the upfront payment from the sale of our minority stake in Dark Blue Therapeutics and our continued shift toward a capital-efficient operating model with CapEx spend reducing 38% year-on-year. Importantly, we entered 2026 with no active financial covenants, providing us with a high degree of financial flexibility. Now let me hand back to Christian, who will provide an update on some of our key revenue impacts.

Thank you, Paul. To further contextualize our 2025 results and frame the trajectory into 2026 and beyond, let me briefly address one of our key strategic levers, our long-standing partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb. From 2016 to the end of 2026, our two BMS collaborations in urology and oncology are expected to have generated close to EUR 800 million in cumulative revenues. At their peak, they accounted for more than 20% of group revenues making BMS one of the most significant and successful strategic relationships in Evotec's history. With this partnership, the oncology collaboration today represents a larger contributor to BMS-related revenues. As illustrated on Slide 9, it has evolved through distinct phases from platform built out to expansion and now into portfolio maturation. These phases are characterized by alternating periods of investment and harvest, which are naturally reflected in corresponding changes in revenue contribution. Since the peak in 2023, revenues from the oncology collaboration have declined by more than 1/3 over the 2023 to 2025 period. This reflects a shift into a renewed investment phase focused on molecular glues and areas of exceptionally high scientific and commercial potential. While this transition has temporarily increased cost intensity and weight on D&PD profitability, it does not signal a weakening of the collaboration. Rather, it reflects the cyclical nature of a large multi-program discovery alliance. Looking ahead, it's important to recognize that the collaboration is already creating value in its current phase with a focus on building scientific depth and portfolio quality. While this phase continues to require investment, the scientific value being created today is expected to translate into renewed revenue growth and improved margins. Importantly, this fluctuating profile is expected to evolve as programs progress through the clinic. With the first joint asset having recently entered Phase I, clinical stage programs are expected to progressively complement the base business from 2027 onwards. This clinical progression will have smooth revenue fluctuations, add new growth drivers and support the margin expansion underpinning our midterm framework, which Paul will discuss in more detail later in the presentation. Continuing on Slide 10, I would like to address the second factor that significantly impacted our '23 to '25 revenue profile, alongside our BMS collaboration, the evolution of our EVOequity strategy. Between 2016 and 2022, we invested approximately EUR 200 million to build up an investment portfolio of approximately 40 early-stage biotech companies. The objective was to gain early access to innovation while generating revenues to our role as an operational and scientific partner. At its peak, this portfolio generated close to EUR 100 million in annual revenues. As these companies advance into clinical development, their strategic relevance for Evotec naturally declined. This was accompanied by a reduction in our operational involvement and consequently lower revenue contribution. We've, therefore, moved decisively into the monetization phase of this strategy. Following the divestment of recursion, generating proceeds of nearly $70 million at the end of 2024 and additional access throughout 2025, we have significantly reduced our equity exposure. As of year-end 2025, 29 investments remain with our strategic focus shifting from revenue contribution to value realization. These divestments represent pure upside for Evotec. Recent transactions include the sale of our stake in Dark Blue Therapeutics following its acquisition by Amgen in a deal valued at approximately $840 million, generating an initial cash consideration for Evotec of around $13 million. In addition, the recently announced sale of Toulouse in a transaction valued at approximately $5 billion is expected to deliver cash proceeds of around $100 million to Evotec at closing. In both cases, the upfront amounts are complemented by meaningful contingent milestone payments of more than $150 million, providing additional future upside. EVOequity is transitioning from a cash out to a cash realization model. As operating involvement declines by design, the associate [indiscernible] will fade away in 2026 and beyond as we wind down the portfolio. On Slide 11, let me briefly remind you of Horizon, our major operating model transformation and a core element of Evotec's value-creating strategy. We introduced the Horizon transformation earlier this year to implement a new and focused operating model built across the three pillars of operational excellence, scientific leadership and commercial execution with the goal of creating a more agile, more focused and more competitive Evotec. Under the operational excellence pillar, we are streamlining our footprint from 14 to 10 sites in '26 and '27 with planned closures of sites in Abingdon, Munich, Lyon and Framingham. This continues our shift from a dispersed multisite structure to a focused network. The footprint optimization also anticipates a reduction of approximately 800 positions across affected locations and enabling functions, a necessary step to align capacity with demand and reinforce execution discipline. Under the scientific leadership pillar, Horizon will consolidate key capabilities into dedicated centers of excellence, each with clear mandate and end-to-end accountability, strengthening our ability to deliver integrated high-quality signs. And finally, under the commercial execution pillar, we're expanding our commercial organization and upgrading how we engage with customers under new leadership. Following the appointment of our new EVP and Chief Commercial Officer, we will accelerate growth, drive a more integrated go-to-market model and increase strategic partner engagement to improve our win rates across high-value mandates. We're now progressing at pace through the required legal and regulatory processes to deliver a structural run rate savings of approximately EUR 75 million by the end of 2027. These savings primarily reflect a structurally lower cost base resulting from targeted workforce reductions and reduced footprint related to overheads as we consolidate our global operations. We expect between 20% and 30% of the total savings to materialize in 2026, with the remaining majority becoming visible in 2027. Horizon is a defined time-bound realignment with a clear end state. We plan to execute swiftly and only once. Importantly, we do not expect material disruption to ongoing customer and partner programs. In the context of expanding our commercial organization under new leadership on Slide 12, we are very pleased to welcome Dr. Ashiq Khan as our new Chief Commercial Officer. Ashiq joined Evotec at the beginning of April, bringing more than 15 years of international leadership experience across biotech, COO and AI-driven discovery platform companies. He has closed multibillion-dollar agreements and led business expansion in markets around the world, including several years at Schrodinger where he helped advance AI-enabled drug discovery partnerships and closed major strategic pharma agreements. With a strong track record of driving growth and closing high-value deals worldwide, Ashiq will lead the build-out of a globally integrated fit-for-purpose commercial organization at Evotec. Let me now show you on Slide 13 how our leading commercial indicators are beginning to move in the right direction. It's a new commercial organization we're putting in place is gaining traction. The selected indicators shown here are ordered along the commercial funnel from early customer engagement through to net sales progression and provide us with an early view of business momentum ahead of reported revenues. Over the course of 2025, and into early 2026, we have seen a strong decrease in negative change orders. At the same time, the number of proposals submitted to customers in our Discovery segment has steadily increased reaching levels around 50% higher than at the start of 2025. While this reflects improved commercial outreach and a more systemic engagement with customers, activity in preclinical development has not yet achieved the same momentum, reflecting a low number of fully integrated discovery to development customer engagements. In parallel, the aggregated value of the proposals in the Discovery segment has increased. Streamlining our sales and delivery processes has further led to improvements in execution metrics. Proposal turnaround times have been significantly shortened. And these improvements are translating into better order dynamics and reinforce our assessment that the new commercial organization is operating more effectively. These leading commercial indicators are now feeding through to sales performance. D&PD sales orders declined in 2024 and reached a trough mid of 2025. They recovered towards the end of the second half of 2025 and have since stabilized above early 2025 levels. Today, we are seeing our deal pipeline growing with increasing interest from potential partners. Looking forward, our differentiated technology platforms are expected to enable a higher number of strategic technology-driven deals starting in the second half of 2026. While it is still early, we see initial indicators of recovery and the commercial transformation in D&PD being on track. Let me hand back to Paul to provide an overview of our path to sustainable growth in 2026 and beyond.

Thank you, Christian. On the next few slides, I'd like to take you through the building blocks of our 2026 outlook and how the measures we've discussed today translate into our medium-term framework. Let me begin with our full year 2026 outlook on Slide 14. As outlined in our Horizon communication on March 10, we view 2026 as a transition year with Horizon measures phasing in over the course of the year. For the full year, we guide toward the group revenues of approximately EUR 700 million to EUR 780 million and incurred foreign exchange rates and EUR 730 million to EUR 810 million at constant exchange rates. Adjusted group EBITDA is expected to fall within the range of approximately EUR 0 million to EUR 40 million of incurred foreign exchange rates and EUR 10 million to EUR 50 million at constant exchange rates. Turning to the phasing of the year. The first half of 2026 will reflect transformation actions already initiated under Horizon. While we see an improvement in our commercial indicators, we still expect a weaker first half driven by the continuation of early drug discovery market softness seen in 2025 and the nonrecurrence of the $25 million Sandoz license that contributed to the first quarter of 2025. In the second half of the year, we expect a strengthening profile, driven by an increasing number of strategic partnerships and a market recovery. Looking at the segments, Just-Evotec Biologics is expected to maintain a strong underlying growth, recognizing the nonrepeat of the EUR 65 million Sandoz license payment in the fourth quarter of 2025. Non-Sandoz and non-DoW activities are expected to grow by about 40% for the full year of 2026. This more than offset the expected continued decline in the DoW-related revenues following the announced budget cuts and foreign exchange headwinds. In D&PD, we expect soft stand-alone revenues in the first half of the year, with a recovery to low single-digit growth in the second half. In addition, we expect our strategic technology-driven partnerships, to contribute more visibly in the second half, creating incremental commercial opportunities supported by our differentiated platforms. Taken together, these effects are expected to bring full year D&PD revenues into the low to mid-single-digit growth range. For the full year 2026, foreign exchange is expected to represent approximately 3.5% headwind to group revenues. Beyond revenues, operational improvements resulting from the Horizon transformation are expected to become increasingly visible in the second half of 2026, with roughly 20% to 30% of the EUR 75 million in structural run rate savings expected to materialize in the second half of 2026. In addition, removal of the cost drag from the sale of the [ Just-Toulouse Site ] will benefit our Just-Evotec Biologics business contributing an estimated EUR 20 million year-on-year improvement in segment earnings. Having discussed our full year 2026 guidance, let me now broaden the time horizon. And on Slide 15, briefly remind you of our new midrange framework through to 2030, which we announced in March 2026. This framework reflects the phased trajectory from 2026 to 2030 and is designed to align the timing of Horizon transformation measures with the expected evolution of the revenue mix across our two business segments. Within our multi-stage horizon transformation journey, focusing on commercial excellence, operational simplification and technology leadership, we expect group revenues to grow to more than EUR 1 billion for 2030, with an adjusted EBITDA margin expected to reach 20% by 2028 and exceed that level by 2030. The midterm margin progression is supported by a combination of external recovery and internal structural improvements. Externally, we expect the early-stage discovery market to continue normalizing as industry innovations rebound. Internally, the trajectory is driven by the recurring structural savings from Horizon, a continued shift towards higher margin and more capital-efficient revenue streams and increasing operating leverage as growth and productivity resume. The key drivers and building blocks that underpin the anticipated midterm margin expansion are illustrated on Slide 16. We see the D&PD segment growing at high single digits from 2026. This reflects both the stabilization of early-stage drug discovery market and the transition into the realization phase of our BMS collaboration, which will contribute approximately 50% of the expected D&PD earnings growth between 2026 and 2028 as jointly developed assets progress into and through the clinic. The Horizon cost reductions across our operating capacity, footprint and SG&A are expected to contribute 9 percentage points of margin expansion. As previously noted, we expect to reach the full run rate effect of these savings by the end of 2027. In the Just business, the continued expansion of our customer base, together with new revenue streams from the proprietary platform components such as our cell line, cell culture media as well as license opportunities support ongoing margin expansion. These building blocks take us to the expected 20% adjusted EBITDA margin by 2028. Further margin expansion is then projected to come from improved levels of automation and productivity, notably in our D&PD operations, post 2028 margin expansion in the Just-Evotec business is additionally reflecting royalties for the commercialization of the 10 biosimilars under the recent Sandoz transaction. With this, let me hand the call back to Christian.

Before we sum up today's presentation, I would like to share an important governance update. Evotec's Supervisory Board has proposed Dieter Weinand for election as new Chairman at our new Annual General Meeting on June 11, 2026. Dieter is a highly respected industry veteran with more than 3 decades of global pharmaceutical experience. He has held senior executive roles at companies including Bayer, Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb and Sanofi and most recently served as President, CEO and Chairman of Bayer Pharmaceuticals. He brings deep commercial expertise, a strong track record of driving performance and disciplined execution as well as extensive board and governance experience. This makes him very well positioned to support Evotec in its new phase, particularly as we sharpen our focus on [indiscernible] and profitability. At the same time, I would very much like to express our sincere gratitude to Professor Dr. Iris Low-Friedrich for outstanding leadership and long-standing commitment as Chairwoman of the Supervisory Board, and for the important role she has played in shaping Evotec's strategic development. Before we turn to your questions on Slide 18, let me briefly summarize the key takeaways from today's presentation. 2025 demonstrated that Evotec can deliver with discipline closing the year at the high end of guidance through strong execution, cost control and CapEx discipline even in a challenging environment. At the same time, Horizon provides a clear and actionable path towards sustainable profitable growth through 2030 with structural optimization and a more focused operating model. As part of this transformation, we have strengthened our commercial organization and will accelerate execution under new leadership. While the D&PD environment has remained challenging, the headwinds are actively managed and expected to fade. With improving market conditions, we see the basis for a recovery building into the second half of 2026. Taken together, we are actively transforming our business model towards higher quality, more capital-efficient growth with Just-Evotec Biologics playing an increasingly important role. These developments position Evotec to deliver profitable growth and sustainable value creation. With this, I would like to open the call for your questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Christian Ehmann, Berenberg.

I'll start with 3 and would like to get back into the queue. So first of all, I very much appreciate the 40% year-over-year growth figure for non-Sandoz, non-DoW business in the JEB segment. Could you give us a little bit more detail on the starting point in 2025? So how much of your revenues in the segment were from non-Sandoz, non-DoW sources? The second one would be in regards to the future nature of the BMS. So I think in the past, it was mainly FTE rates and also revenues for working packages that had to be finished. Can we assume going forward that this will now shift to more of a royalty milestone-based remuneration plan? And the third question for this time would be, can you remind us about the current clinical plans BMS has for the other asset in Phase I? I think it was called back in the day, Evotec or EVT8683.

All right. Shall we start with the first one, the Sandoz topic, Paul?

So yes, you're correct, non-DoW, non-Sandoz revenue growing 40%. We would expect to see that by the end of '26 that the non-Sandoz, non-DoW revenue is about 50% of the overall Just business at this point in time. And that is a significant growth since 2024 when we were approximately 25%. And I believe in 2025, we're approximately 30%, to give you a little bit of a frame.

And I will hand over the third question to Cord, although Christian manage a bit the expectations typically, it should not be us talking about the intentions of the clinical assets of BMS, but maybe Cord can shed some light on that. On the second topic, the whole program was always constructed in a way that at some point in time, there will be an increasing amount of milestones and ultimately also royalty payments through this collaboration. So yes, by design, you're right. Cord, is there anything you can add on the clinical plans?

Not really, but maybe just to try and give a little color on this. I mean, we remain excited on the program. We cannot comment on exact plans from the BMS side to move this asset, EVT8683 forward. But as you can imagine, I mean, entering Phase II clinical trials in Alzheimer's, that's a very significant step. And so I think a more thorough Phase I is usually warranted in this regard. And I think that's currently what's going on. But we have every reason to believe that this will be moving forward.

Our next question comes from Charles Weston, RBC.

Mine are all a little bit more near-term focused specifically on 2026. First of all, you've indicated for the second half that you're expecting a market recovery. And I was just wondering if you could help give us some color in terms of your assumptions or your confidence around market recovery versus your own sort of self-help from your new commercial efforts. Secondly, I wonder if I could ask for a bit of guidance on BMS for 2026. You've indicated that 2026 will be a trough and I think the number was EUR 139 million in 2025. So how much of a headwind ballpark could we expect in 2026 from BMS? And I guess the same question for [ brand of defense ]. And then just last one, please. For 2026 milestone payments, I think in March, you've got a $10 million payment from BMS. In your Horizon presentation, it looked like up to EUR 150 million could theoretically be payable this year. And you've said that you're expecting two more assets to move into Phase II this year. So how much milestone should we be thinking about in total for 2026?

All right. Charles, thanks for the questions. Near term 2026. Yes, obviously, two elements. One is our own doing. You're right. The other is the funding situation in biotech. Now in our view, the funding situation has mildly improved. Also when you look at the executed deals, this money will have to flow back into biotech. It's very difficult to split the increase in proposal and deal activities into what's market and what is our doing, Charles, as probably you will appreciate. We've seen the activities going up steeply. We don't believe it's just our doing. We also believe that it's -- part of that is the market. When it comes to the second question, 2026 trough and impact BMS.

Yes. Charles, directionally on BMS, as you rightly say, we expect the trough to be in 2026. Relative to what you see in 2025, we would expect a high single-digit decline relative to 2025, solely for the BMS segment. I think your third question was assumptions around milestones related to BMS. And you're right, a couple of things here. Firstly, the $10 million that was noted in the recent press release will be recognized in the first quarter as income. And as we think about future milestones, income-related milestones, we would expect somewhere around the same in the second half. The EUR 100 million that you referred to, I think, also reflects the cash payment associated with deals rather than the income-related element associated with those deals as that cash is -- or the income is recognized over a period of time.

Okay. Sorry, can I just clarify, when you say high single digit, do you mean as a percentage or as a euro number?

Sorry. Yes. It's as a percentage.

Our next question comes from Swayampakula Ramakanth from H.C. Wainwright.

A couple of quick questions. One is on the Horizon implementation, with an expectation of 800 positions being cut and consolidation to 10 sites. Just trying to understand what could be the risk of customer disruption, especially from the talent loss? How are you managing some of the project continuity, especially with key partnerships like BMS. And the second question is, post the Toulouse site sale, can you help us quantify the expected development revenues, milestones and the timing of the royalty stream from the 10 biosimilar molecules? And when could we expect the first biosimilar to reach the market?

Okay. All right. First topic, Horizon, you probably appreciate this was top of our minds and one of our most important criteria when we made decisions not to disrupt the business and particularly ensure that the customer relationships amongst the new partnerships will not be implemented -- will not be impacted. As I mentioned in my speech, we don't think that there is any material risk. We've been around that time and since then in constant dialogue with our customers. And I can tell you at this point in time, there was also no negative feedback from the customer side. So it's all well appreciated. By the way, one of the feedbacks that most people were actually telling us, look, the whole market has gone through a similar exercise. So we're not the only player in the market who is resetting. So we handled it with a lot of care. We spent a lot of time in preparing this move. We know exactly what we're doing. We think this is a contained risk. Paul, on the Toulouse site?

Yes, I think the question was around timing of the royalty streams post the sale and post the transaction with Sandoz. To give a little bit more context and color on that one, so we would see a ramp-up of both new products and licenses and new products, I mean, cell culture media, cell lines and indeed licenses between now and 2028. So by 2028, that's in the range of around 10% of the Just revenue and growing. And then beyond 2028 is when royalties kick in, and these are linked to the LOE dates of the drugs coming off patent that have been disclosed in our 9-month update, and I think on Sandoz' own update as well.

The next question comes from Brendan Smith TD Cowen.

Maybe just a bit higher level question for me, if I could. I appreciate all the color on kind of the near-term growth drivers for this year. We started to hear from some of your peers about pharma and biotech kind of deploying AI internally, actually driving some stronger order patterns for some tools companies as a lot of pharma and biotech are looking to validate their models and outsource new protein manufacturing and analysis. I just wanted to ask, if you started to see anything similar from your customers and partners and whether that might be an opportunity for the JEB business in any capacity moving forward? Just trying to kind of understand what some of the pushes and pulls there could be.

Thanks, Brendan. AI and recognize maybe we have not been so vocal about that in the past, but it's an integral part of our drug discovery platforms. Cord in the Q3 call also explained that, for example, our BMS collaboration has extensively utilized those AI platforms. Moreover, it's not just pharma and biotech, Brendan, it's also the AI companies who make use of the services of Evotec. So we definitely see AI as an important tool in future when you look at toxicology, DMPK, ADME-Tox prediction, there's probably a view for the next 5, 6, 7, 8, maybe 10 years, there is a coexistence, which could even drive volume up. So we see that. We also hear that we not only see this from biopharma, but we also see it from AI companies coming to us. I hope that helps.

Our next question comes from Alexa Chan, Bank of America.

This is Mike Ryskin today. I want to follow up on a couple of earlier questions -- earlier comments you made in terms of D&PD in 2026. You talked about second half low single-digit growth and sort of what's supporting that in the market. I just want to clarify, is that -- are you seeing orders already? The orders you're seeing, is that already sufficient to justify that? Or are you assuming further order improvement? The comments you have made about orders in the second half of '25 being a little bit firmer. Is that -- do you expect that to continue? Sort of if you could expand a little bit on what's underpinning that, if that's more biotech or pharma and sort of where that's coming from? And then a separate question is going to be on the pacing of Horizon going forward, looking at what you presented in Slide 11 in terms of that time line, site closures, workforce reductions taking off in 3Q, 4Q this year, whether there's any opportunity to move that up a little bit or accelerate that? Just sort of what are some of the constraints on that? You alluded to limitations of local law and things like that. Is that more tied to that or just the decisions haven't been made yet?

Thank you for the question. Maybe I'll start with the second one. When you think about the usual processes around site closures in Europe, there's obviously legal and regulatory requirements. We expect the workers council negotiations which have actually started in the first quarter to continue through Q2 and Q3 with site closures then basically starting in the fourth quarter, workforce reductions starting in the third quarter, all of that subject to agreements with local workers councils. And yes, there is a [ phasing ] and wherever we can be faster, we are and we will be. One of the sites, obviously, is in the U.S. where there are different requirements. And that's also why it's on a different time horizon. But you're right, the limiting factor here is the consultation process. All the other work, the preparation work has been done. So we're not awaiting anything else. With regard to the D&PD business, second half, low single digit when you think about components of that, that's obviously the stand-alone business, the integrated business and strategic deals. We haven't seen a lot of traction on larger integrated deals that we expect, given that our funnel on strategic deals have significantly improved in the last couple of months that there will be an uptick also or a contribution -- a stronger contribution from new strategic deals. The prospects that increased in 2025 have led to better sales order trajectory compared to mid of last year. But I think it's fair to say that it's going to be a mix between this plus the strategic deals that we see coming. Paul, anything you would like to add?

No. I think Christian articulated it well. And again, I just refer to the slide where we see that strategic D&PD partnerships coming in, in the second half and cautious on this low single-digit growth in the second half, but we'd see first half remaining challenging for the stand-alone business.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is a follow-up question from Charles Weston, RBC.

The Tubulis upfront is obviously very considerable for Evotec. And I just wondered if you could comment whether you see other meaningful stakes in your portfolio of companies with clinical stage assets which we should keep an eye on that could lead to some upside in the future in particular.

Charles, we've got about 29, 30 companies left as of December 2025. We definitely believe that there are a couple of really interesting assets. As always, when you have a portfolio, some are more progressed, some are less advanced that we clearly see some of them on a very good path. Now as you can imagine, those are digital events, right? Either you have a buyer, you don't have a buyer like what happened this week. It was fantastic. We do expect that there will be further opportunities in the future. But as I said, for us, this is upside. For us, this is a cash-generating upside going forward. So yes, our portfolio remains interesting. Yes, we believe that there is upside going forward. Quantifying it and timing it, don't ask me, please.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Sarah Fakih for closing remarks.

Thank you. With this, we would like to conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. And please feel free to reach out to the Investor Relations team should you have any further questions. Thank you, and goodbye.

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