Bourse et Valeurs - Guillaume Bouhours - bioMérieux du 30/03/19

Thank you. Let's recall that bioMérieux is a specialist in in vitro diagnostics. Exactly, more precisely, we specialize in the diagnosis of infectious diseases. Certainly, we develop both the machines, equipment, and reagents that allow analysis laboratories, hospitals, or private diagnostic labs to detect bacteria and viruses in samples. That's 80% of our activity for the medical part, and 20% of our activity is using the same technologies for industrial quality control for clients in the food industry or pharmaceuticals. So that's 20% of revenue, the industrial segment. Coming back to your year 2018, a very good record year. We had 2.4 billion euros in revenue, organic growth of 10% at an excellent level, and our operating profit reached nearly 15% of revenue. And then we will also give the net profit, which increased very strongly by around 30%, so it's a very good result.

France represents 9% of bioMérieux's revenue, and 90% outside France. A very international company that still has a very strong anchor in the Lyon region. It is listed but also controlled by the Mérieux family, Alexandre Mérieux, the CEO of bioMérieux. So a Lyon and Rhône-Alpes anchor that remains very strong. Out of 11,000 employees, 3,500 are in France, about 3,000 in the Rhône-Alpes region. The geographic breakdown: the United States is the group's first market. The Americas region represents more than 40% of the group's revenue. We had very good growth last year of more than 12% in the Americas, driven by a new technology called syndromic molecular technology, which is quite revolutionary because it allows testing for 25 viruses and bacteria, up to 30, in one hour in a single test. So this technology is a great success. And also a presence in Asia and China. China is becoming our second market. The Asia-Pacific region is growing very strongly, 12% last year, with China growing strongly, also India, Southeast Asia. We even made an acquisition in 2018, the takeover of a private company called I-Biome in immunoassays in China, which allows us to strengthen ourselves a bit more on the Chinese market.

So when we talk about investments, it's both on industrial investments, which represent 9.5% of the group's revenue in future capacities of our factories, especially the large factories in France and the United States. But we also invest a good 100 million euros. Clearly, we had more than 100 million euros. We also invest a lot in R&D, 13% of the group's revenue, which is a bit above the sector average. But it is a desire of bioMérieux and the Mérieux family to invest in innovation, internal innovation in the long term, and in our products and their improvement, with a global mission of bioMérieux which is a public health mission. Let's say a word about an acquisition made at the beginning of the year: Visible Sentinel. Visible Sentinel is an American startup with €9 million in revenue that we acquired. It has a very nice molecular technology that is very popular with industrial clients, allowing us to enter quality control segments in beer, especially craft beer, and wine. And also an agreement, a partnership with Baxter very recently. Yes, indeed, very recent. Baxter is a global champion or world leader in dialysis, specialized in the kidney. And we are looking to develop in partnership with them a new marker for acute kidney injuries.

Yes, exactly. For 2019 perspectives, we announced a growth target of between 7% and 8.5% organic growth, so always on the same dimensions, and a very good dynamic. And we remain positioned on the good public health issues, especially antibiotic resistance. bioMérieux is one of the specialists in septic shock and food control. And the dividend amount, our dividend, is €40 million next year.