Brigitte de Vet
Analyst · Lake Street Capital Markets. Your line is now open
Good morning and good afternoon, and thank you everyone for joining us today. I’m very pleased to present our quarter four and full year 2023 results today. You can find the agenda for our call on slide three. Now, as you know, I took over the role of the CEO of Materialise on January 1st. So before we go into the official agenda, I actually will start sharing my first observations six weeks into this role. I will then summarize the highlights of our financial results for the fourth quarter and the full year 2023 and I will dive deeper into some key achievements we realized in the past year. Then I will pass the floor to Koen, who will go in more detail through our fourth quarter numbers. Finally, I will come back and explain what we expect 2024 to bring. When we’ve completed our prepared remarks, we’d be happy to respond to questions. So to start with, over the last couple of weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time listening and learning from customers, partners, industry stakeholders and our employees at Materialise. First, let me reflect on what I heard about the market for additives manufacturing. As you know, 2023, and in particular Q4, has been a challenging year for many players in this market. Rising geopolitical instability in combination with increased economic uncertainties and high interest rates made companies more hesitant to invest in new technologies, while R&D efforts were often also reduced, resulting in less prototyping demand. That being said, the fundamentals of the market are sound, driven by the demand for flexible, sustainable and cost-effective production methods. AM is the go-to technology for prototyping and this market is very mature. At the same time, the shift from prototyping to end-use product is well underway and additives manufacturing is being adopted in more and more sectors and applications. So this shift is especially clear in end-use parts that are customized, such as the personalized products for Medical applications, and as the adoption of personalization increases, this market will continue to grow. Next to this, we are also seeing an increased adoption of additives manufacturing for serial end-use parts. We can clearly see this, for example, in the aerospace sector. Aerospace is a good example where leading companies have adopted 3D printing as a critical competence to maintain their competitive edge in the industry, enabling the production of parts that could not be traditionally manufactured. AM allows for the creation of more robust, reliable structures that are both cost and weight efficient, and it speeds up the design and manufacturing process. Moreover, AM aligns with the commitment of leading players in this segment to sustainability by using less energy and resources, creating fewer emissions and allowing for easier recycling and reuse of waste materials. And as the technology matures, we will see more and more meaningful applications of AM and we believe this market is bound to continue to grow. Now, talking to many customers, partners and industry stakeholders, it is clear that Materialise is a leading player in this AM industry. We are strategically well-positioned with our deep knowhow, the thorough understanding of the customer needs and the unique combination of Software, Hardware and Mindware. We are well-placed to drive and benefit from the market trends that I just described. First, as additive manufacturing is increasingly used for serial end-use parts, I believe we are well-placed to benefit with our Software suite, enabling efficient, high quality AM operations at scale and with our differentiating printing services, enabling companies making the shift to end-use parts. And second, as the adoption of personalized end-use products increases, we will see growth in our Medical and Wearable business. Now, looking specifically at our results for 2023, summarized on page four, we can see this potential reflected in our 2023 numbers. Despite the difficult market conditions that I referred to, we grew our revenue over the year by 10% with growth across all segments. Our total revenue increased 10.4% to €256.1 million. Our adjusted EBITDA increased 65% to €31.4 million from €19 million in 2022. Net results turned into a net profit of €6.7 million from a net loss of €2.2 million in 2022. And our cash position as of year-end was €127.6 million. Now, for the fourth quarter specifically, our revenue increased 4.1% to €65.3 million. Deferred revenue for maintenance and licenses fees grew to €44.9 million and adjusted EBITDA almost doubled to €8.5 million or 13% of revenue. Net loss was minus €0.5 million or minus €0.01 per share, including the impact from impairments on goodwill, tangible and intangible assets of minus €4.2 million. Koen will elaborate further on these results in his remarks later in this call. Moving to slide five, I would now like to share some specific highlights per segment, starting with our Software segment. Our Software suite is an essential toolkit in the AM industry and with the additions and improvements made in 2023, we are helping to accelerate the shift to end-use products that I described. Our CO-AM platform plays a particularly critical role in this shift, as it enables companies to run AM production at scale. Throughout 2023, we have continued to onboard partners and add functionality to CO-AM. In the fourth quarter alone, we announced important partnerships with HP and Ansys, and we added functionality that helps monitoring production and ensures the quality of parts. Also for Magics, we have released new functionality specifically targeted at metal production, which obviously plays a critical role in the production for end-use parts. And last but not least, we released the next-generation of our Build Processors, massively increasing machine performance and ultimately reducing cost of parts, critical in the adoption of AM in the production of end-use parts. This continued investment in the Software segment strengthens our future position in the market for end-use parts even further and while the topline growth in 2023 was soft due to the general economic uncertainty, we feel well-positioned for the moment when the market recovers. Continuing now with our Manufacturing segment, our AM services are a well-established provider of prototyping services and we continue to perform well in this market despite a very challenging environment due to the macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. At the same time, AM services can help customers make first steps into AM for end-use parts, and this market is growing in selected segments such as aerospace, medical equipment and wearables. Realizing that there’s a growth opportunity for us in this market, we have established our certified manufacturing services, offering customers documented and validated parts production, which clearly differentiates us in the market. As one of the largest and most complete AM facilities in Europe, we are well-versed in scaling production to the next level for our customers. With a comprehensive range of production-grade materials and technologies, a team that knows how to use them, polymer and metal competence centers, and more, we can fully support customers that want to embrace AM for end-use products. And while the second half of 2003 [ph] was challenging, given the market circumstances, we are proud to have made progress in some of the key market segments, such as the aerospace segment, where we announced a number of important partnerships. For example, with GKN Aerospace, a leading multi-technology Tier 1 aerospace supplier, and later in the year, a three-year partnership -- a three-party partnership with Proponent, a large independent aerospace distributor, and Stirling Dynamics, a certified aerospace design organization. In those partnerships, we will leverage the combined expertise to enhance the adoption of 3D printing for finer parts in the aerospace industry. We also continue to make investments in our Motion and Eyewear business, positioning us for revenue growth in the future in the wearable segment. Last but not least, I want to talk about some highlights of our Medical segment. As Koen will show in the numbers, we continue to see very healthy growth in our Medical segment. We have now surpassed the threshold of €100 million revenue and while we felt the impact of the difficult economic climate in the software sales towards medical device companies, as they reduced their R&D programs and postponed investment in additional software licenses, we continued to grow the number of cases delivered to patients around the world and managed to increase revenue by almost 20% for the full year. In addition, we made progress in some of our strategic programs, positioning us very well for the future growth. In particular, I would like to highlight the opening of our metal manufacturing plant in the U.S. This is a significant milestone, as it will enable us to further reduce our lead times to deliver cases, opening up new markets, such as the use of personalized products for trauma patients. These patients cannot afford to wait for weeks to have the product delivered. I would also like to highlight the limited launch of Mimics Flow, a case management solution now offered to hospitals to streamline and organize their point-of-care 3D printing labs. As the adoption of 3D printing in hospitals at the point-of-care increases, customers need a tool to handle this increased amount of cases in an efficient way to collaborate in an easier way between clinicians, 3D lab leaders and engineers and to enforce quality management within their 3D workflows. This is what Mimics Flow does, thereby enabling and accelerating the increased adoption of personalization. It is an extension of our offering and will provide growth opportunities in the future. It is a limited launch, as we will take the year 2024 to learn more about the potential of Mimics Flow and expand the launch to other segments in 2025. In summary, our Medical segment illustrates the potential of a smart combination of Hardware and Software with the thorough understanding of the customer’s needs. Now over to Koen for more details on our financial results.