Conference Transcript - STVN 2026-06-02

Operator

thank you Evan for joining us very pleased to have Stevanotto group here with us and the chairman and CEO Franco Stevanotto joining us today so always nice of you to come over and visit us here in Chicago two quick things for the group the first is the breakout is going to be in Burnham A upstairs if you'd like to join us and the second is for a complete list of our research disclosures or conflicts of interest please visit williamblair.com so again very happy to have Stevanotto group here today and Franco you can take the mic

Franco Stevanato, Chairman

from here thank you thank you thank you good morning good afternoon every everyone and thanks to to william blair to host in this very special event i have the chance to introduce stevenato group for someone who don't know you is a company that started in 1949 was founded by my grandfather we started after the second world war to produce glass container for the industry but in the last decades, we have tried to specialise Stevanato Group in what is related to the glass container for the pharmaceutical industry. Now I'll pass through the history of Stevanato, just to see at the higher level. We, Stevanato Group, we play a mission-critical role for what is so-called the biopharmaceutical industry. We try to build a value proposition orderly to serve at the best our pharma customer worldwide. We have also a long history of success. We We've been in business since more than 70 years and over the last year, Sternato Group was always able to deliver steady double-digit growth. Just to give some number, at the beginning of 2000, we were 18 million euro company. Before the IPO, we were approximately half a billion euro company and this year we guided us to be close to 1.3 billion euro company. So we grow together with our pharmaceutical company in the last years. In 2025, we delivered 1,186,000,000 euro revenue and we grow 13% from 2019 to today. Even more, we have delivered more than 25% of EBITDA. This is practically the goal really to continue to grow in our high-value product and further increase our marginality. We are also market leader in several products because our goal is to be focused to be the partner of the biologic industry even more to be always number one number two in what we do we are market leader worldwide on cartridges we are market leader worldwide on via ready to use it also we have the second play worldwide into the syringe space i mentioned these three products because our three products are growing double digits thanks to the growth of the biologic industry. We serve several hundred customers worldwide, but our big focus today is really to be partnered with the top 25 big pharmaceutical companies worldwide, and this is why we have a wide global footprint in Europe, in the United States, in Asia. Global leading provider of mission-critical solutions is a very important sentence, but what is behind? The glass, the primary packaging that we sell to our pharmaceutical customer, together with the container closure, are the only one that is going to be in contact with the drugs. So this is going to require very high sophisticated quality and scientific requirement in terms of sterility, in terms of siliconization, plasma coating, and accuracy of the product. Because if there is any deviation on the quality of the glass, automatically this can compromise the drugs for the patient. This is going to require a lot of scientific competitive advantages, but even more is going to give the benefit to Stenato Group to be filed from the very beginning into the FDA or the pharmaceutical company. That is a big competitive advantage. In Stenato Group, we try to build a very sophisticated value proposition in the last decades. So we don't want to sell single product, can be cartridges, arranges, drug delivery system and gingering product. We try to serve to our pharmaceutical company what we call end-to-end value proposition because our customer is looking for a partner, a very stable supplier that can provide very high quality from their primary packaging, but even more, we are able more and more to serve what is so-called the drug delivery system, and thanks to our engineering individual, we can serve what is the inspection machine on the assembly technology in order really to truly enter in the intimacy of the product. Our pharma customer today is looking for very few reliable partners that have this global footprint are able to serve billions of products in order to not make any risk in their filling process, maybe more to their patients when they are going to deliver to the customer. In fact, just to explain, starting from the left, we have a full set of primary package on glass that we are more and more converting through our high value product, our platform, easy fill syringes cartridges and and via where we are market leader today more and more we are developing our product portfolio on drug delivery system both into out injector and pen why because more and more we see the gross demand on biologic is moving through injection and through self-medication so this is why we go to our customer in order really to have the full part platform on the top of this we have our engineering segment that is providing the special machine mostly is providing assembly technology but on the top of this the big strengths and competitive advantage of our engineering individual is the division that is providing the technology for the group that is giving us both more flexibility and more productivity all the technology that we have in our operation in terms of glass syringes cartridges and via are developed by the internal company You see also analytical service. We developed in the last 10 years true strong tech center. One is in Italy and the second one is in Boston. Why? Because more and more we want to partner with our pharmaceutical biopharma customer at the very early stage when it's in phase two and phase three in order to build a tailor-made product, process and service for the pharma customer. Today we have a very rich pipeline in order really to partner at the very beginning but when the product is moving from phase two phase three and go commercial automatically together with our customer we build the supply chain through our operation all around the world history i will be a little bit longer in the history in order to explain the journey of stevenanto group we have a long history success we have been in business like i mentioned to you that more than 70 years we can say more than 75 years today but in the last decade we have focus more and more our competence our people into the pharmaceutical industry one big milestone that you can see in the slide that in 1971 we decide to develop the technology for internally why very simple in europe there were 200 competitors and only in italy were more than 60 competitors and we were not really able to build a competitive advantage in term of productivity quality and speed to market so we decide to develop the technology in order really to be faster if there was an opportunity with the pharma company immediately we were customizing we start with via then we change our technology into the cartridges and then when we had the chance to enter into syringes immediately we develop that technology and now more and more to our ND center we have we have upgraded to what do we call easy fill technology and this is the work today if you look in the industry on syringes there are two three player worldwide on vial there are two three player worldwide on cartridges they are two to three players worldwide. So this formula has helped Stevanato to be always in front line and to win more business. And this competitive advantage is continuing to be strong. Make an example. Today there is a big increased demand of cartridges to fill. We have developed internally a patent, a special process, in order to serve this increase in demand of multi-hundred million cartridges to fill. The fact that we developed the technology in-house helped us to faster and to build a process that is able to run 24 hours every working day with a high level of performance so then what happened in the last 20 years our pharmaceutical company went global so what we have done we started to open many greenfield plants all over the world we started to open a greenfield plant in slovakia then we move into mexico then we move into china and that we open in Brazil. And now we open a big greenfield plants in Fisher, Indiana, in order to become the domestic partner of the pharmaceutical company. Practically, we have mirror the supply chain of our customers. Because our customers want to have one quality, no matter where they are, and they want to have a very stable supply that can serve several billion of product for their patient. Then another element that we have developed strongly is the research and development, Because during 1970, 1980, we were strong and developed the technology for the process. More and more, we have built an R&D in order really to evolve our product. So we have a full set of IP around our EasyFill platform in terms of via cartagin syringer with sophisticated technology around our coating, plasma coating. Also, we have our portfolio product on autoinjector and pen. Why? Because we want more and more to serve the product in order that have the pharma company, the biocustomer focus on the molecule is our responsibility to build the full product portfolio and also we have performed some particular m a fully dedicated to particular competence lastly in 2021 we have decided to list the company in new york why because our customer were giving us a lot of opportunity to invest to increase capacity and we have decided to list the company we raise more than 1.1 1.2 billion dollars in order to reinvest and to invest in a huge capacity in europe even more here in the united states here you are rapidly we have a global diversified manufacturing footprint we are present through 13 sites in nine different countries but one important not negotiable role that we have in strato group there is no compromise in quality and in terms of technology. All our plants have the same quality system and the same technology in order really to enhance that our pharma customer can buy from one plant to another one without any particular difference. Today the focus of Stavranto Group, after in particular the APO, is to building our new facility in Fisher, Indiana. It's an investment at more than half a billion dollars in order to become domestic with the full capability in United States for our U.S. customer. We continue to expand our capacity in Italy, in Latina, in particular for syringes and cartridges, and we are building up capacity for our drug delivery system into our plant in Germany and also our plant in Fisher. All these demand that we're putting are all in high value product and are driven by a strong demand from our pharmaceutical customer just to capture what is the industry that that we are serving is extremely healthy and is growing driven also by some macro tailwinds I can summarize today in fact the demand more and more for injection and self medication is increasing year by year in double digit one macro trend is the aging population the increasing prevalence of chronic disease expanding the access to the healthcare all around the world and alongside this there is more and more growth in biologic biosimilar. And this pharmaceutical company they have the tendency more and more to outsource big portion of the supply chain like washing, siliconization, crippling, assembly in order really to find strong partners that are able to provide this type of service. It's where Stevanato is putting all our effort today in order to provide what we call our high value product through our plants. Here we are. The market, the environmental biologic, is growing, is growing double digit. In order to capitalize as much as we can, this opportunity in the market, what we have done? We continue to expand in huge operation in Europe, United States, in order to build a huge capacity for our pharmaceutical customer. Today, the fact that we have built these greenfield plants in 2021 in Fisher is, for example, is our top 30 big U.S. customers who have challenged Estevanato to become domestic in the United States in order to deliver easy-filled product and also the drug delivery system. And also we continue to increase capacity in Europe because the demand of our international customers continues to grow. We continue to increase our research and development because more and more we see in the biologic space increasing demand of sophisticated coating, large-volume syringes, large-volume cartridges, particular auto-injector up to 3 ml or pen up to 3 to 5 ml. This is where our R&D centers continue to serve to increase our portfolio. Lastly, we continue to expand our capability to our tech center in Italy and Boston. Why? Because it's the best way to enter in contact with our biocustomer at the early stage. It's where really we can be filing the FDA and automatically develop the best product for them. All of this is going to be a continuous improvement because we are filing, filling hundreds of new programs that will represent commercial revenue in the next year to go. The goal in Stevanato, in the BDS segment, is to continue to grow in double digits like we were able to do to deliver in the last years. Let's go to the main investment that we've done in the last five years. And this is why we have decided to list the company in New York, because we were approaching a huge opportunity with our customers, and together with our customers, we have decided to build these greenfield plants. was in Europe, in Italy in particular, and the second biggest investment in the history of Stevanato Group is in Fisher, Indiana. Why? Because our customers show a very important opportunity in the future, but they want, first of all, Stevanato to be even bigger in order to have heavy capacity worldwide in order to support their growth and to secure the supply chain, but even more to have Stevanato becoming domestic. This formula was a little brave at the beginning, but it works because this is helping more and more to be recognized as a partner for our biopharma customer latina is up and running is delivery very strong marginality also we are more or less in full potential with syringes we will add capacity for syringes in the future maybe more we are going to start to introduce this new increase in demand what we call cartridges to fill in fisher even more is a much complex green field plants because we are starting to add capacity for syringes in the range of several hundred million products we are adding capacity for wire to fill we are building up a huge department for our one of our biggest u.s clients for producing and serving auto injector and also we are starting to to to introduce capacity for alba technology the goal in fisher is to build a campus able to serve all the competence and capability that the u.s market is requiring what i you hear from me telling many many times high value product what is the high value product what is the real benefit to our customer around a high value product with the benefit for stevanato like i mentioned to you the pharmaceutical company is more and more looking to outsource the supply chain in order to reduce their total cost of ownership to have superior quality because we are going to serve a product with a washing siliconization assembly pre-clip and sterile and ready to fill it and we are going to make their supply chain much more flexible for stevanato what is the beauty we can have a better partnership stronger contract we have we have few competitors when we sell easyfield product automatically our marginality is much more creative we are between 40 to 70 percent of marginality where we deliver this high value product is where we are more and more investing since 2021 the majority of investment that we are doing stanto group are going this direction In fact, if you look, in 2019, the percentage of revenue around high-value products were approximately 17%. Today, we are already between 47% to 48% of our total revenue. Why? Also, the benefit of this high-value product, which is the requirement of the biologic space. Today, this pipeline of our customers, no matter how far the originator or the biosimilar, they are going to have more sophisticated molecules where they're going to require much more sophisticated glass product sterilized condition coating or plasma coating in particular larger volume product between syringes and cartridges automatically what we see if you look at the trend of biologic space there are several thousand of molecules that are launching the pharmaceutical company on the market more than 60 percent of this molecule they will be submitted to the patient through injection or self-medication is exactly the product portfolio that we are serving to the customer so we are developing sophisticated product because it's the market the biologic space that is asking more and more this type of product also if you look at the trend our by the revenue that we have in stranato group from 2021 the year of apo today they move from more than 20 percent up to 41 percent of growth where inside of this 41 percent we have both the GLP-1 growth, that is representing a very strong tailwind for Stenato Group, and also this diversified GLP-1 pipeline. Here we are. We started 2026 with also strong momentum. The BDS segment will deliver a double-digit growth, so we're talking about 30 percent or 60 percent of constant currencies basis. Why? Because the demand of Biologic and also the demand of GLP-1 is stronger and robust. It will be robust also in the next year, in particular for syringes, cartridges, and via A2F. So all these three critical products are really growing and more and more we are investing capacity in order to be able to be in double digit in the next year to come. Also the high value products have represented a big growth. We are 47% so we grow 22% compared to last year. So the signal that we are sharing to you that the strategy that we present in 2021 where we invest a lot of money is going to give the the good result thanks also to these green field plants. A couple of words about the engineering. If you know we have the engineering inside the Stato Group represent approximately 12 percent of the revenue. We have founded the engineering division in 1970 in order to build a competitive advantage. In 2022-2023 we have delivered a record high in term of growth in term of marginality. Now we are passing through a sort of period of consolidation and optimization in order really to reassess the engineering division, in order really to be able to support the next future of growth. So we have done a strong program of optimization plan, and this is starting to translate good results. In fact, in Q1 of this year, we have delivered a big increase of marginality inside of the engineering division. Lastly, I would like to just to summarize a little bit, because I tried to compress 75 years in eight slides. So, it's a company that was founded 75 years ago. We have decided to focalize in the biologic space without having any type of distraction. We have to have a solid performance in the BDS segment where we see our core, we are putting most of our investment. But even more, what we see, the strategy that we present during the IPO to become the partner of the pharmaceutical company is going to be through this solid execution to transform into result. The goal is to be able to double the value of Stratogroup every five, six years, like we were able to do in the last 20 years. The organization laser focus really to become more and more the number one, number two partner when there is a new molecule through an injection or self-medication, want to be the partner of the pharmaceutical company. This is our humble goal in order to really serve the pharma company in the next 10 years. Thank you.

Operator

Thanks, Freika. we have a couple minutes here which maybe i'll run through a couple questions before we head upstairs um you know the first would be um on glps which has become a big growth driver for you maybe speak a little bit how how long seven hours been working with companies sort of in the glp or the bc space broadly how much of a growth driver that's been and maybe the conversations you have with customers around visibility long term because obviously i think investors are focused on uh the oral govi and fondale launches but of course there's a big pipeline

Franco Stevanato, Chairman

glps um more broadly yes we we have the opportunity to serve our insulin clients at three major insulin clients at the beginning of 2000 and two out of these three they engaged stevenato group to our tech center approximately eight years ago in order to file in particular force ranges now cartridges our product in their new gel p1 product and we we have succeeded because today we are growing together with our two big originator we are serving more and more ranges next and we are entering also in the process to serve a cartridge rate to fill after many years of hard work together with our customer and building up capacity we can say with a big level of satisfaction that the stevanato the revenue stevanato around jlp1 in 2026 representing the first quarter approximately 21% of our total revenue So we have done a very good job. Now what we are doing on JLP1? JLP1 today is at the beginning of the journey. The potential addressable patient worldwide in the next 5-10 years is approximately a population of more than 1.5 billion patients worldwide. Today the penetration is between 6-8% worldwide. So the goal is to maximize our validation to our originator in term of syringes ready to fill, cartridges ready to fill out injector, but also work extremely hard because at potential 30 other biosimilar in the market between United States, Europe, Asia, Latin America, the goal of Stevanato is to be validated everywhere when there is a syringes, a cartridge out injector to be in. We want to approach the same strategy that we have done during insulin, anesthetic, vaccine market. So we want to maximize the penetration to originator, but to balance the biosimilar in order really to capture these therapeutic drugs as much as we can. In our strategy, we think that thanks to strangers ready to fill, cartridges ready to fill, and other devices, we'll be able to enhance in GLP-1 a double-digit growth in the next year to come. because it's a phenomenal opportunity and there is a lot of demand on the market. But I want also to compensate the real reason, the real strategy of Stevanato, where we see the big ocean of growth opportunities on the biologic, because GLP-1 is a therapeutic area where in the next 5-10 years we're going to benefit between US, Asia and Europe. But where we really want to focus and put our know-how and our operation is in this huge opportunity in Biologic. Today there are 10,000 molecules worldwide. All of these are phase 2 and phase 3 that will be through injection self-medication. Through the top 25 customers and 700 of programs. The goal of Stevanato, through our tech center, through our operation, to be in all of these molecules starting from the new blockbuster of the future. this is where we want to continue to enhance the growth to diversify the portfolio

Operator

that's great and then so uh you know bds revenue is sort of in the 1.1 million dollar billion dollar range today you referenced with the ipo um you you took that and really invested in latina and in fishers and added a lot of capacity could you talk a little bit about just sort of the dollar amount of capacity that's been added where you stand from a capacity standpoint today and i think historically you've given some metrics around uh you know return on capital ir for some of these investments as well when we've done the ipo and this is why we have

Franco Stevanato, Chairman

done the apos because we were facing this huge opportunity the customer was very clear say stevenanto we want you to increase heavily capacity in europe and united states we went to the board in 2020 we showed the opportunity say okay let's go but you need to find money so we have decided to list the company we have done the first APO in 2021 after two years we have raised money we raised approximately 1.2 billion dollar and 70 percent of this we have injected in the company why because we face some extraordinary capital cycle in order to build this huge capacity in fact the level of investment compared to our revenue at certain point arrived arrived more than 25 percent over total revenue today where we are we have passed the big the bigger like when you go on bicycle into the mountain. Now we are at 2,000 meters, starting to be flat at a certain point. We will go down in order to generate free cash flow because it's nice to build plants. But all of us, including myself, we love the free cash flow. So the goal is now to maximize. We have space to grow in Latina. We have space to grow in Germany for devices. We have space to grow in the next year in Fisher until 20, 28, 29. But the goal now is to start to remodel our cap expenditure in the next two, three years to go back to a range of 10, 12 percent. That is the normal ratio for a company that wants to serve a pharmaceutical company. In parallel, it started from 20 to 27 to deliver a real cash flow, free cash flow.

Operator

Good. And then you spoke about biologics as a category and the whole industry went through destocking over the last couple of years. for you you experienced it more on the vial side yet frankly stevenato grew through most of that continued to grow pretty strongly um can you maybe talk about how some of the investments you've made both footprint and capabilities are are changing your competitive position and where there are opportunities for seven not to continue to gain share so during the po we were in the middle of

Franco Stevanato, Chairman

covid and there was this opportunity for vial practically what we had done in stevenato we put particular capacity on vial bulk and also capacity for vial rate to fill. Then, unfortunately, the COVID expired very rapidly, and we find that there was some excess capacity for vial bulk. Now what we have done? We have stopped the investment in vial bulk because we call non-high-value product, and we continue to invest in capacity for vial rate to fill because it's much more accretive in terms of marginality. In the meantime, through our greenfield plants in Italy, And even more in Fisher, we were starting to prepare a huge capacity for syringes and cartridges, because the real demand between GLP-1 and now biosimilar, it will be not anymore on VIA. VIA is going to continue to grow, but this is a little bit mature product. The big growth, the biggest star in the future to be syringes from 1ml to 25ml, 3ml, 5ml, and the same is for cartridges, is where stevanato is extremely active. An important element to share with you is that the investment we are doing on syringes and cartridges is also a little bit flexible. Syringes can turn into cartridges, cartridges can turn into syringes, in order also to maintain the flexibility if this biologic space is moving right or left.

Operator

to engineering that was an area that you you've done an acquisition you grew a lot during covert you took on quite a bit of of larger projects complex work um and it's been as you alluded to consolidate in the last couple of years but the 10-year cager is still kind of in the high single digit range that's still an area that you believe is an attractive growth area for seven auto and do you feel that the issues you've had to deal with the last couple of years generally are behind

Franco Stevanato, Chairman

the company or is there more you know work to do like i mentioned 22 23 we receive a record high of order inspection machine assembly technology the mistake that i've done during kovi that was more focalized in the plant of danmark i was not sufficiently proactive to convince the customer to use also italian side so this is increased complexity because we multiplied the revenue up to 2.3 times and it was really a big complexity this have caused some delay into delivery to the customer. It's true that we were in the middle of COVID. There was a shortage of electronic component but the result was that we make some delay and we have caused some slowing down our revenue and delay to the customer. Now what we have done? We have passed through this what we call optimization plan in order really to prepare the engineering revision for the next growth because the engineering division is serving the same pharma customer that our BDS division. So the The BDS segment, thanks to the easy field product, high value product, is a segment that can remain easily in double-digit growth in the next years. For what is related to the engineering, our goal in 27 and beyond is to be in a high single-digit growth and to fly with a gross margin between 20-22%. But I want always to remember, we're talking about 10-12% of the total revenue of the company, but the big goal of the engineering is to truly help us to enter the intimacy of the customer and to make our internal BDS segment very productive.

Operator

Thank you very much and again for those who want to join us for the breakout please please come upstairs so thank you Franco. Grazie, thank you.