Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Evotec SE Half Year Report 2025 Conference Call. I am Mathilde, the Chorus Call operator. The conference is being recorded. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Volker Braun, Head of IR and ESG. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Mathilde, and good morning, good afternoon to everyone in the call. Thank you for joining us today. Today, we will cover our first half 2025 results, and we will discuss the progress we have made in the execution of our strategy as well as the key operational and external developments. We will, of course, also provide an update on the evolution of the Just - Evotec Biologics business, of which the planned Sandoz deal is part of. However, because of the running process, we will not dwell in the details as such. We appreciate your understanding. Before we start, the usual 30 seconds on housekeeping items. On Page 2, we share the cautionary language with you. Some statements will be future-looking based on information available today, and they might be subject to change in future. But now let me hand over to the CEO of Evotec, Dr. Christian Wojczewski.

Good afternoon, and welcome to our H1 call. In April this year, we unveiled a new strategy, a strategy that sharpens our focus on pioneering drug discovery and development, with a plan to center our business around its core technology and scientific strength to cultivate operational excellence and to place us on the path to sustainable profitable growth. As we reflect on the first half of 2025, we can say with confidence that we've made meaningful progress on our journey. Our transformation efforts are on track and delivering tangible gains. Just – Evotec Biologics remains on a strong growth path, driven by our unrelenting focus on technology leadership in biologics. In other areas, we're actively managing continuing market challenges. We will talk about all of this today. To be in a position to sustainably shape the future, we are following a structured and disciplined process, and we're delivering on it. We took immediate action in 2024 when resetting priorities was essential, and we're ahead of plan in achieving our cost saving targets. Paul will elaborate on this later. In Q3 2024, we announced the launch of an in-depth strategic review, which we completed according to plan. The retooling of Evotec is starting to materialize. We're strengthening our competitive position in the field of drug discovery by focused investments into our technology platforms. A great example is the expansion of our molecular patient database. And we are further evolving our business model at Just - Evotec Biologics. Next on our agenda, we're now aligning the organization with our strategy. This work is currently underway, and we expect it to be completed before the end of the year, ensuring we are all well positioned to compete and perform even more effectively in the years ahead. The core element of our new strategy is to sharpen our offer and reduce complexity. Furthermore, we're upgrading our commercial model, providing stand-alone services, integrated drug discovery and strategic partnerships. The business segmentation and terminology of our reporting should reflect our new setup. Consequently, going forward, we will have 2 core business segments reported as Discovery & Preclinical Development, D&PD, and Just - Evotec Biologics, JEB. D&PD covers our discovery and development activities for small molecules and new modalities from target identification to IND. Just - Evotec Biologics is covering our large molecules business. Our vision unites both business segments. We are unleashing innovation to enable our partners to develop life-changing medicines. Pioneering drug discovery and development for us means leveraging cutting-edge technology, disruptive science, and AI-driven innovation to drastically accelerate the journey from concept to cure. Let me now share with you some observations on the developments during the first 6 months of the year. H1 has not been without its challenges. We saw a revenue decline in our Discovery & Preclinical Development segment of 11%. A large part of that is related to a temporary effect in our BMS collaboration. The remainder is driven by continued softness in the early drug discovery market. In the first half, we've seen a higher negative change orders compared to the previous period. Most of these change orders are related to scientific reasons, and the impact can be volatile. In the start of the second half this year, we are back to normalized levels of change orders. Furthermore, since the beginning of Q2, we are seeing a steady increase in number and value of proposals going out to customers. We continue to progress well in both of our collaborations with BMS in neurology and oncology. In Q2, we further expanded the scope of our molecular patient database by joining the NURTuRE consortium. I will share the strategic rationale with you later in the call. We've initiated the rollout of a new operating model to align our organization with our strategy to simplify our segment structure, reduce management complexity and layers, most importantly, to increase accountability for results in all parts of the organization. This isn't just a reorganization, it's a reorientation towards both operational and science excellence. Just - Evotec Biologics continues to outperform. With 16% revenue growth year-over-year, JEB is not only enjoying high demand and delivering strong results above our expectations, it is validating our vision, a vision where we shape a new segment in the biologics manufacturing market with differentiated and scalable technology. We remain bullish about the prospects of our JEB business. At the end of July, we announced the planned sale of our Toulouse site to Sandoz. This is a natural progression in the J.POD life cycle, and it marks a major milestone in our strategy to lean into JEB's capabilities as a scalable technology provider with an asset-lighter model. Now let me spend a few words on the relevant market environment we are operating in. We're navigating a complex funding landscape in biotech. While venture capital inflows are stabilizing at pre-pandemic levels, the distribution remains uneven. Early-stage investments such as seed and Series A rounds, which typically support companies with projects in discovery or preclinical phases, continue to lag behind later-stage funding. The funding equilibrium between discovery and preclinical on one side and clinical stage companies on the other has yet to be achieved. We continue to observe a cautious spending behavior in earlier-stage R&D. In contrast, clinical programs, many of which originated during the well-funded pandemic years, benefit from more robust financial backing and spending. Our customer base in biotech is mostly focused on discovery and preclinical research. Funding for this sector is still behind normal pre-pandemic levels and spending behavior, therefore, is more careful. Signs of a modest recovery in funding are emerging. Over the coming quarters, we expect a more normalized distribution of funding and project flow to take shape. Let me now hand over to Paul Hitchin, our CFO, to guide you through the H1 financials. Paul, please?

Thank you, Christian, and a warm welcome from my side. Now let me guide you through the first half results in more detail. Our first half 2025 group revenues reached EUR 371 million, a 5% decrease versus the first half of 2024, which has been impacted by 2 counterbalancing effects. Firstly, our D&PD revenues declined by 11% to EUR 269 million in a persisting soft market, as Christian alluded to during his introduction. Included in this result is the expected temporary decline in BMS revenues in 2025. Excluding the expected BMS revenue decline, there is a normalized year-on-year decline of 6% in the D&PD segment. As I mentioned in our last call, looking forward for BMS, we have strong work packages and an excellent asset pipeline. In contrast, Just - Evotec Biologics has continued to grow strongly in the first half of 2025, reaching EUR 102.2 million of revenue, which is up 16% versus the first half of 2024. The majority of the year-on-year growth is driven by the excellent growth of our business with non-Sandoz and DOD customers as we broaden our customer base. Our first half 2025 Sandoz business grew low single digits on a strong 2024 comparative, and our partnership with the DOD saw some low value decline in revenues. Our remaining business showed an excellent growth in the first half with 87% growth versus prior year, underlying our very positive outlook for the Just - Evotec Biologics business. It's worth noting that amongst our growing Just customer base, we have 3 major pharma companies who meaningfully contributed to our first half growth performance. Our R&D spending has reduced by 35% versus prior year from EUR 29.3 million in the first half of '24 to EUR 19 million in the first half of 2025 as we direct our investments to those most relevant for our partners. Our spending is broadly in line with our new expected run rate for the year as we continue to focus our R&D activities. Adjusted group EBITDA reached negative EUR 1.9 million, driven by stronger-than-expected contribution of EUR 7.5 million from the Just - Evotec Biologics business, helped by positive operating leverage despite the Just organization build-out that we articulated in our April call. The strong contribution of our Just - Evotec Biologics business helped offset the lower operational leverage from the soft revenues in the D&PD segment. Despite the lower revenues in our D&PD segment, we have only seen a moderate impact on profitability. We are executing operationally with rigor. Our cost-out initiatives are progressing well with the initial target for the disciplined spending and hiring activities already being reached and the external spend management progressing as expected. In addition, we have added a further recurring cost reductions with an additional 2025 impact of around EUR 10 million in the D&PD business. This takes our 2025 cost reduction plans to over EUR 60 million, including the EUR 30 million full year impact of the Priority Reset program. Our additional measures are focused on lower external spending, higher restrictions across all of our sites. In summary, we have now reached an FTE reduction of 600 since March 2024, which is 200 FTE above the original Priority Reset target, and we've already realized about 50% of our updated cost-out target of EUR 30 million. Continuing with our cash flows. In line with our expectations, operating cash flow further improved in the second quarter, including the expected receipts of the BMS completed work packages that we announced previously. Investing cash flow in the second quarter of 2025 is in line with our Q1 figures and is largely driven by our CapEx spending of EUR 19 million in the second quarter of 2025. Our first half 2025 CapEx saw a 50% decline to our 2024 levels as we move towards the new CapEx base level I mentioned in the April update. Overall, our liquidity has been developing as we expected with a decrease of EUR 23 million to EUR 348 million, driven by regular lease and scheduled debt payments of EUR 18 million and a negative FX difference of EUR 7.5 million, both partially compensated by positive net inflow from operating and investing activities. We have stable financing and proactive liquidity management. And following our decision to cancel our unutilized and not currently required RCF facility, our financing is no longer restricted by covenants. Now let me hand back to Christian, who will provide an update on some of our strategic developments.

Thank you, Paul. Let us now dive deeper into strategically important developments in both segments, D&PD and JEB. Our commitment to technology and science leadership remains unwavering. The continued development of our molecular patient data platform, E.MPD, underscores our dedication to precision medicine. Most recently, the platform was expanded to include the NURTuRE cohort comprising approximately 3,000 patients with acute kidney injury. It's our conviction that a deep understanding of molecular mechanisms based on real patient data is fundamental to accelerate the drug discovery journey and to better support target identification and validation. What sets Evotec's MPD apart is the unparalleled breadth and depth of its patient-related data, encompassing both high-quality clinical information and a wide range of omics data. This level of quality, depth, and consistency clearly differentiates it from publicly available data sets. With data from over 27,000 patients across chronic kidney disease, immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, and metabolic disorders, we're reinforcing our leadership in these therapeutic areas. But our ambition goes further. Our molecular patient database has now reached critical mass, enabling us to explore disease areas beyond our initial focus. As is often the case, many patients suffer from multiple comorbidities, opening new avenues for discovery. For example, we're now identifying and validating novel targets in women's health. Another area that has reached critical mass is obesity, one of the most active research fields in biopharma these days. And we're committed to systematically expanding our database to deepen disease understanding where there is both medical need and commercial opportunity. Our industry-leading kidney franchise exemplifies how scientific and technological leadership in drug discovery opens up business opportunities that go far beyond traditional CRO services. It expands our addressable market and significantly enhances value creation. Evotec not only earns revenue through service fees but also participates meaningfully in the success of partnered programs via milestones and royalties. High throughput omics alone would usually not qualify for substantial commercial upside. The true value lies in the ability to translate data into actionable insights. This is the essence of our model, empowering others to discover and develop innovative treatments. In chronic kidney disease, we've repeatedly demonstrated our ability to scale the platform, as illustrated here in this chart. And we're applying the same capabilities to diseases driven by inflammatory and immunologic mechanisms. As our patient database continues to grow, it will serve as a catalyst for new strategic collaborations. Moving over to our large molecular business. With regard to Just - Evotec Biologics, back in April, I explained that the potential of this asset is not yet fully exploited and that we're considering ways to better monetize our technology. We're planning to further strengthen our intellectual property and leadership position in continuous manufacturing process technology in cell lines and other areas. This will allow us to enlarge our addressable market, providing access to new revenue streams and growth. We also announced that we are pivoting towards a CapEx lighter business model, and we are not contemplating to invest into a network of J.PODs. The new strategy will significantly improve our return on investment through a better revenue mix with higher-margin business and reduced demand for capital. Today, a few months after announcement, this strategy is already starting to get in shape. At Just - Evotec Biologics, we are entering into a new area of biomanufacturing, one defined by agility and scalability. We think that narrowing down this business model as simply a manufacturing and capacity play does not give it justice. Just like we're developing the next-generation technology platform for small molecules in our D&PD business, we're now also shaping the next-generation CDMO model for biologics. Our customers are excited about the cutting-edge features of our technology and the new degrees of freedom it offers them to manufacture biologics. Our goal is to enable them to bring the next generation of medicines to market faster, smarter, and more sustainably, achieving top quality and unrivaled efficiency, regardless if with Evotec-owned manufacturing capacity or indirectly through our technology. Our U.S. operations have always been and will remain the center of excellence for biologics discovery, process development, and manufacturing, and that is where we will continue to innovate. In light of a deep funnel of projects with originators, we see ample opportunities to grow while we pivot towards an asset-lighter business model, leading to a high return on investment. Within the classic CDMO market for biologics, which is characterized by robust double-digit market growth, Just is shaping the subsegment for continuous manufacturing. Technology advantages will allow this new segment to gain share over the next couple of years. Beyond the manufacturing market, Evotec will now be able to also tap into adjacent opportunities, such as the market for cell lines and serum-free media, both expected to grow at healthy rates. Those product classes are developed in-house at Just - Evotec Biologics. They are today important components of an integrated or stand-alone offering together with our process technology. Given the industry-leading performance of our cell lines and media, we're able to elevate the output and efficiency of biologics manufacturing to the next level. We're, therefore, comfortable that we will be able to create exciting new business opportunities beyond the classic capital-intensive CDMO play. To the extent possible, let me now briefly address the recently announced agreement with our partner, Sandoz. On July 30, Evotec and Sandoz announced the signing of a non-binding agreement regarding the potential sale of Just - Evotec Biologics EU, which owns the J.POD Biologics manufacturing facility in Toulouse, France, and to grant access to its proprietary platform for integrated development and advanced continuous manufacturing of biologics via a technology license. The agreement is a testament to our world-class continuous manufacturing technology and reflects the successful progression of our strategy to leverage our capabilities in a more capital-efficient way. This step marks the natural evolution of our partnership. The site in Toulouse has been dedicated entirely to Sandoz since July 2024. We're now progressing to the next phase in which we will hand over the site to Sandoz, while our partnership will move towards enabling Sandoz to manufacture on site and to a new revenue model. The planned transaction perfectly matches our strategy to move toward an asset-lighter, higher-margin business model, one that leverages our proprietary technology, scales through partnerships, removes the capacity ceiling for growth and delivers superior returns. Through the planned transfer of our J.POD Toulouse facility to Sandoz, we're monetizing a world-class asset while retaining the core IP, the platform capabilities, and the strategic upside. It's a deployment of our technology at scale through a trusted partner in a way that accelerates both impact and profitability. It comprises economic benefits in the short, medium, and long term, including around USD 300 million consideration for the site, plus technology license fees, multi-year development revenues, milestones, and royalties. What are the next steps? We have entered a phase of trustful discussions with the works council representatives. Closing of the planned transaction remains subject to completion of the relevant information and consultation processes with employees and their representatives, final contractual agreements, and meeting regulatory requirements expected in the fourth quarter. The planned transaction would immediately improve Evotec's revenue mix, profit margins, and capital efficiency. I'm aware this call will not answer all your questions. We are informing the markets based on the release you saw on July 30 and because of the advanced stage and the materiality of the transaction. More details will follow once we have concluded the process. Hence, we will not go into further content of the deal today. After having adjusted our revenue guidance and keeping our EBITDA guidance unchanged in July, we confidently confirm our full year 2025 guidance. Whilst foreign currency fluctuation has had an immaterial impact in the first half, we see a higher impact in the second half, which will be offset by improved business mix. The main drivers of our full year adjusted EBITDA profile reflect improved cost performance and changing revenue mix with a higher share of high-margin revenues. With regard to the midterm outlook, the key message is we are on track. Levers for midterm value creation remain the same, and for 2 out of the 4, we can already share that we are making remarkable progress. As discussed, we've received validation for Just's continuous manufacturing technology and made significant progress to a more capital-efficient model that better leverages our technology. And we're ahead of plan in our implementation of operational excellence with further productivity improvements anticipated in the near term. Structural changes and mix remain within the boundaries of our midterm outlook. Our asset pipeline is on track with an unchanged number of 6 programs in clinical trial stage. It is encouraging to see that discussions with customers translate into tangible results. Once the transaction with Sandoz is signed, we can confidently state that the visibility towards our midterm goals will improve substantially. Therefore, our 2028 aspiration remains bold but grounded, 8% to 12% revenue CAGR and greater than 20% EBITDA margin. These are not just numbers. They are reflections of our strategic conviction. With differentiated offerings, operating leverage, and continued innovation, we're poised for long-term growth. Evotec is on track. We're moving quickly towards a simpler, more focused organization. The team is energized, strategy is clear. We will continue to shape the future of drug discovery and development. Let's now take your questions. Thank you. Back to the operator.

The first question comes from Charles Weston from RBC Europe.

I have 3, please. I'll just take them one at a time. The first is in terms of your guidance for this year. You say you expect a recovery in the balance between early stage and late-stage funding. How much of that recovery is built into the guidance for 2025, please?

So the statement was referring to recovery of the VC funding. We don't expect that this is translating into second half impact...

Paul, considering the guidance for the year regarding the D&PD business, we anticipate the same dynamics in the second half as we experienced in the first half.

Perfect. Secondly, you've divided your R&D business into transactional integrated and large pharma. Could you give us kind of a breakdown proportionately of the revenues there? And you've given a little bit of color in terms of what the growth would have been or the smaller contraction that would have been for the first half, excluding BMS. But could you perhaps touch on in terms of those 3 buckets, what the proportions are by revenue and what the current growth rates are, please?

Charles, we're not breaking this into details and not reporting. But if you recall the last meeting, the last analyst call, I mentioned that the dynamics is such that the transactional part is shrinking relative to the integrated and large partnership portion. So the latter part, the integrated and the strategic partnerships, have been growing in size relative to the transactional over the last couple of years. We expect this to continue also in our strategic planning. That said, I also mentioned that we want to have a more bespoke commercial setup because we feel that we actually can also do better on the transactional side.

Okay. And just the last question. I appreciate you've been clear you're not going to provide concrete numbers on the impact of the Sandoz deal. But can you give us some insight on how we should be thinking about the value transfer from Evotec to Sandoz in relation to the EUR 300 million? Looking ahead over the next few years, how should I consider the potential EBITDA contribution from this deal after it is finalized compared to before, understanding that these are difficult figures to estimate?

All right. Let me start with a few statements. I believe Paul will soon mention that we can't discuss certain details. However, I want to provide some context, as I expect similar questions will arise later, including from you, Charles. First, we are executing our strategy from a strong position. We have established world-class technology at Just - Evotec Biologics, and our customers are enthusiastic about the exceptional performance of our cell lines, media, processes, and development capabilities. We're experiencing rapid growth outside of our Sandoz and DOD business, as reflected in the 87% growth noted by Paul in the first half of the year. We believe that a significant portion of our business's value lies in our technology capabilities and intellectual property. Earlier this year, we stated our intention to better monetize this value, discussing potential licensing fees and royalties. We also aim to enable our partners to utilize the technology, leading to ongoing revenue flows and milestone payments. Additionally, we are selling a site with a consideration of about $300 million. Think of this as a long-standing partnership where we are adjusting the parameters to align with our strategy and ensure it makes economic sense. Paul?

I think, Christian, you pretty much covered what we can say at this point in time. As Christian rightly says, the consideration of $300 million reflects the value of the site. In addition, technology consideration, future development revenues, milestones, and product royalties will be part of our ongoing revenue streams.

The next question comes from the line of Brendan Smith from TD Cowen.

I wanted to actually ask a bit more about the D&PD segment. I understand some of the spending uncertainty from pharma makes sense given everything going on. I'm actually wondering if you can speak just a bit more to what you're hearing in conversations there, and even broad strokes, what some of the trends are in driving those decisions? I guess does it seem to you that customers are shifting spend toward lower-risk indications or away from high-risk innovation? Just kind of wondering if there's anything consistent there to help us understand what could turn that around in the coming months.

Did you say large pharma or biotech? Sorry.

Both, if you're able to provide it.

Well, it's probably not a secret that right now biotech is pretty much down, especially when you think about U.S. biotech and particularly East Coast U.S., where there's a lot of business. So that has been going on since quite a while. And I think we've been all talking quarter-by-quarter about the tipping point. We don't see this. We've actually provided you today with a little bit of data and statistics to underpin maybe what has been a bit more anecdotal in the last couple of calls, but those 2 match. So what we see in the funding profile that the early-stage biotech is currently not yet spending the same amount of money that it has been clearly not during the pandemic, but also not before the pandemic seems to be a fact. But it's also anecdotally what we hear from our customers, much more cautious decision behavior. And frankly, we also see that in academics, because as you probably know, we've got an arm, which we call BRIDGE, where we help small businesses that come from universities to connect with pharma companies, where we basically do the work for them in early research. It's the same pattern here, much more careful decision-making and spending. When you go to pharma, I think it's not such that you basically have one story to tell. It's not much less homogeneous. Every company is in a different stage of its life cycle. We have partners and customers who are restructuring. We've got others who are forcefully looking into new indications and new target identification. So that picture is a bit more mixed. I hope that helps a little bit.

Okay, got you. Yes, yes, understood. And then if I could just really quickly. Actually, as it relates to your AI capabilities, I know you spoke a little bit to some of the proprietary data sets you've got. I'm actually just wondering if there's been any renewed interest in leveraging, either internally or from your partners just kind of given FDA's recent push, towards more of these computational modeling technologies. I'm just trying to understand maybe your strategy or applications and how it's evolved recently.

Absolutely. And thanks for the question, an important topic for us. I hand this over to Cord.

Yes, there's definitely an increased interest in integrating AI and machine learning technologies into the drug discovery process. This interest extends beyond safety assessments, as mentioned by the FDA, to earlier stages such as target identification and validation and the design of new molecules for further development. Currently, there isn't a significant push specifically for safety profiling, as there's still insufficient data to adequately support safety predictions in many areas. However, we see companies making efforts to address this gap by generating large datasets to create predictive tools. Evotec is well-positioned for this due to our platform focused on omics-driven drug discovery, which quantifies biological data. We are confident in our capabilities not only through our omics efforts but also thanks to our advanced in-house assay systems and other tools we are developing.

Thanks, Cord. I should mention we don't talk too much about it, but the computational chemistry is obviously since long an important component of our business anyway. So it's happening. It's not like something fancy in the future.

We now have a question from the line of Michael Ryskin from Bank of America.

I was wondering if you could comment on the pricing environment you're seeing among your customers. Are they becoming more price sensitive? Is there increasing competition due to the softer demand environment? I imagine more CROs and research partners are competing for some of the same bids and proposals.

And as I mentioned already during the last call, we have to disaggregate a little bit the business here. Obviously, there's a portion that is more transactional stand-alone services. There's another portion of our business where we have integrated deals and long-term strategic partnerships. As you probably will appreciate, the latter part is less of a price composition here. It's about the value that we bring to the partner through our platforms. And given that there's a lot of IP and also technology leadership around this, it's hard to compete because it's not a service that you put on the shelf of a supermarket. And the more transactional side, obviously, in an environment where the market is more soft, it would be inappropriate to say that this is not happening. We do see that price negotiations are different than they had been maybe 2 years ago. But as I said earlier, the exposure probably on our side compared to CRO players who are 100% in that segment is a bit less.

Okay. Okay. And I was wondering if you could comment a little bit on geographic, if you're seeing anything different from your partners and customers in Europe versus the U.S. versus Asia Pacific. If there are some parts of the world that are a little bit more cautious or maybe a little bit further along in their recovery path.

I think it's fair to say that right now there is still a lot of traction in the market in East Asia, China as opposed to, I would say, the other extreme, which is probably U.S., Europe in the middle somewhere, broad picture. So yes, geographically, there is different behavior, different market dynamics right now. Our exposure, as you know, is geared towards Europe and U.S., and so probably right now not benefiting from the trends that we see in China. But we also believe that if the market is actually returning, that we should then over-proportionately benefit from the geographic recovery.

The next question comes from the line of Fynn Scherzler from Deutsche Bank.

I have a couple of questions on the JEB business. I understand you cannot speak about the deal specifically. But maybe you can help us understand the mix of the JEB business as it stands now. So how much of the revenue in this segment is drug production in your own J.PODs at the moment versus actually already high-margin licensing revenue? And you spoke about the high growth with non-Sandoz customers. Can we assume this is mostly licensing revenue? Or is this potentially production revenue in the Redmond side? And I would have actually thought that the Sandoz ramp-up would by now be the majority of the growth. Will this be more meaningful in the second half of the year? Or how should we think about the Sandoz ramp-up contribution for this year? And then sorry, just a last confirmation. For the J.POD, I think the Toulouse one, you had indicated in the past that the revenue number when it would be fully utilized would probably be around EUR 300 million or around the CapEx that you spend for it. If you could just confirm that for us.

On the mix, the question around drug product versus licensing, the deals that we do are not today like you either buy a license or you buy the product. It's a package today, and that's also how we do our contracts and deals. So you get access to the license through the contracts that we have with our partners. And as part of that, there is development and, where needed, also production. So we're not splitting this out. So right now, there is not a product line for tech licensing and a product line for the product as such. I guess what you've heard me saying is that we want to give more weight into the individual components going forward. And that's the right thing to do because we believe we can sell both as an integrated offer; we can sell it both as a stand-alone. But we have not fully explored it in the past. So I can't give you a number, but there will be more emphasis going forward on the individual parts. With regard to the number pace, Paul, do you want to...

Yes. Just a couple of follow-ups there, Fynn. So as Christian said, in terms of the mix, existing package today, we're looking to monetize our assets fully. So we see an improving mix as we look forward for the business. When you think about the non-Sandoz customers and the growth that we've seen in the first half, I think it's fair to assume that it's predominantly development and production revenue versus a sizable license element at this point in time. And then as I look out, as your question pertains to my comments on Sandoz in the first half, well, as you know, we have some level of variability with each of our customers as we progress milestones, and I would expect the same going forward as part of our normal business.

Yes. What I would say is when we think about the consideration that we've got for the site, based on current book value, we would expect that to exceed current book value.

We now have a question from the line of Christian Ehmann from Warburg Research.

I'm following up on my colleague's question. Can you explain the reasoning behind considering a sale of the J.POD 2 in Toulouse at this time, particularly after you've completed the construction of the asset? I'm interested in understanding the detailed rationale for this sale.

And apologies if I may be repeating a couple of messages here, but it's just exactly following our strategy. We've reviewed where we want Just to be in the future. We've communicated this in April, and we're now executing. So it is exactly the right timing, and there's actually not more to say about it.

The next question comes from the line of Joseph Hedden from Rx Securities.

Just interested to dig in a little on your efforts on enhancing the D&PD offering for kidney diseases and perhaps some metrics. So it would be helpful to understand what proportion of current revenues come from projects in the kidney disease space? And where do you expect that to be around the time of your midterm outlook in 2028?

This goes straight to Cord as well.

At Evotec, we believe that crucial decisions in the drug discovery process are primarily made in the preclinical stage. One of the key decisions is identifying a target relevant to a specific disease and its progression in patients. This area is gaining increasing attention across the industry, especially with the rise of omics technologies. I'm referring not only to genome analysis and sequencing but particularly to profiling disease-relevant tissues at the single-cell resolution. Utilizing transcriptomics provides us with a deeper understanding of the mechanisms driving disease processes, helping us to identify new targets that have the potential to significantly alter disease progression and potentially lead to a cure. We continue to invest in this domain, and our previous investments in deep profiling of kidney disease patients have led to valuable partnerships in chronic kidney disease with leading pharmaceutical companies like Bayer, Lilly, Novo, and Novartis. We are now expanding our strategy to include not only chronic kidney diseases but also acute kidney injury, and we have previously announced interests in obesity and immune-inflammatory conditions. This ongoing strategy is something we intend to pursue going forward, and we believe these insights into molecular disease mechanisms will aid in identifying targets and tracking drug candidates from preclinical stages into clinical trials. Currently, the most advanced molecule from these efforts is in Phase I trials with Bayer, and we are very enthusiastic about this program, expecting future developments and additional projects to follow this trajectory. Overall, we view this as a high-value strategy for Evotec, showcasing our strength in conducting integrated drug discovery programs as pharmaceutical industry partners. Our commitment includes integrating AI-driven drug discovery and other methodologies into these programs.

Yes. And perhaps if I could just have one more related to the questions and comments that we've already had on Just, and specifically, the broadening of the customer base. I'm just interested in what types of customers are you seeing. Are these foundations, biotechs, large pharma? And are these all development work packages that you previously spoke of? Or some perhaps a bit closer to commercial stage? Any color there would help.

Yes. So all sorts of from small to big. And I think we also said that a majority or a big chunk of the growth that we've seen in the first half is actually derived from 3 large pharma companies. So you actually see that it is cutting across the whole chain from biotech to pharma. Given the current nature, this is not late-stage clinical. It's earlier.

We now have a question from the line of David Floren from DSF Capital.

I wanted to ask or just say it's good to hear, Christian, that you mentioned that you're negotiating this deal from a position of strength because it does feel like selling your crown asset near cost and selling and presumably most of your backlog alongside of that. I know you guys aren't commenting on it, but I really do hope that from your position of strength that the tail economics, the milestones, the royalties are not just going to be IRR positive, but are also going to be close to NPV positive because you've already made this big investment, the balance sheet is not in bad shape, and you've done almost all the hard work here. So are you also thinking about it from an NPV basis?

David, if that's a question, we can say yes to it.

That's great. This significant change in strategy seems to highlight the attractive aspects of Just, particularly your ability to handle small batches, which positions you well for FIH work. I understood the strategy to involve partnering early with biotechs and eventually some pharma companies, as once these programs begin their journey towards commercial launch, switching costs become very high. Therefore, if you secure these partnerships early on and they succeed, you retain them for the long term. However, this pivot raises some concerns for me regarding your approach to biotech partnerships. Many biotechs are financially constrained and may be unwilling to invest heavily in manufacturing capacity. If you're looking to engage them later or get them to agree to your asset-light strategy, it could be too late in their development stages, and they might not want to switch to your model later. I'm curious if this asset-light approach primarily suits generics and large pharma, and whether there's been a shift away from securing early-stage biotech partnerships.

And you probably will assume we've thought this through well. You are right, FIH is important and it will remain important. The technology works well with complex molecules and it works well with high-density need. So we know that we have an excellent sweet spot for certain types of products. And obviously, the CapEx-light model doesn't mean that we cannot provide capacity for those biotech companies. Keep in mind, we've shown a picture with a large facility in the U.S., which is a facility where we can continue to provide manufacturing capacity to this biotech. We can expand, and we can find alternative models to provide capacity. So this is definitely not a change in our strategy, and it definitely does not hamper our ability to bring also this part of the business to Evotec.

All right. Great. It seems that Redmond is not maintaining its capacity, which I initially thought could support a couple of trains. I wasn’t sure if growth was still an option there. I was curious if there might be a possibility of selling Toulouse, but we could end up needing to add another J.POD and potentially shift back to a combination of asset-light and asset-heavy models.

That's definitely not a plan.

Thank you for the update on the three large pharmaceutical companies. I had anticipated that one of them would be at a late stage, especially since you have a customer conducting a couple of Phase III trials with Povei. It's encouraging to hear that you are engaging in early-stage projects that could lead to larger-scale work with these three large pharmas, which is contributing significantly to your current success.

David, I would really like to discuss the customer deals more. As soon as our partner is comfortable with it, we will share that information. However, at this point, we are quite restricted on this topic.

All right. And the last thing, the booking slide that you guys have included in the last few conference calls, is that going to come back? I know it's anecdotal, and it seems to be longer duration than it had been historically, but it was nice to see the progress in discovery bookings.

Thanks for the hint. It's a bit complex, so we've tried to provide you with some leading indicators today regarding VC funding. There is a time gap between the funding, the spending, the booking, and the revenues. However, we will certainly take a closer look at this and follow up on the topic.

We have a follow-up question from Charles Weston from RBC Europe.

So a couple of quick ones. First of all, we're now halfway through Q3. So Paul, I was wondering if you could give us a sense of what the Q3, Q4 phasing might be in DPD, which I think tends to be more Q4 weighted, and also Biologics?

Yes. So as I said earlier, the revenue profile for the full year for DPD is pretty consistent with the first half dynamics. So we see that for DPD in the second half to look a little bit like the first half from a growth profile. That said, from the Just business, we see a significant step-up in the second half from the 16% growth rate that we've seen in the first half. And then when you think about the phasing, I would expect our overall profile to be consistent with what we saw in 2024 with a significant contribution in the fourth quarter.

I have a final question about the Sandoz deal. Previously, when you established this deal, you mentioned that it included supply components, as well as technology licenses, milestones, and royalties. Is that structure remaining the same while you are selling the asset, or is the entire deal being renegotiated?

I think you should think about the Sandoz arrangement to be a holistic arrangement as we move to a new chapter in our relationship. So it will be...

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Volker Braun, Head of IR and ESG, for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Mathilde. And we would like to thank all attendees in today's call and hope to see as many of you as possible at the various conferences in September and October, and look forward to catch up in our next regular result call on the 5th of November. Until then, I hope you can enjoy the rest of the summer. And thank you. Goodbye.

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