FamiCord AG (V3V.DE) Earnings Call Transcript
August 27, 2025
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
[Audio Gap] English with a great company, FamiCord, formerly VITA 34, and I'm very happy that Jakub, the CEO; and Thomas CFO, are here to present the company in the usual manner, 20 minutes, roughly, presentation, and then we have enough time for Q&A session. So Jakub, please, stage is yours.
Good morning, still morning, everybody. So we'll short represent the company and also comment on H1 results we published today in the morning. So FamiCord is a stem cell bank collecting cells from newborns and these cells are kept for future use to treat either child or family members. And we operate in several countries. We have, by far, the largest European player the #3 in the world. We control 55% of European market, and we have more than 1 million of biological samples stored. As you can see, there are maybe too small numbers, but usually in the country where we are in the country, we are #1. But definitely, we are among top 3 players everywhere, #1 in Germany, #1 in Poland, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal. So maybe I will talk about exceptions. So it's Romania, we are #3 in U.K., where we are #2 and Emirates where we are #2. And we have pretty diversified laboratory structure across Europe. Most of our competitors, they have one central laboratory in our strategy is different. We have used the local laboratory in the country because, for some reasons, we believe it brings value to our clients. So how the service looks like. Simply, when the family or couples are pregnant, they may consider storing of biological material, which could be collected after the babies already delivered. And that material is later used for -- for potential treatment. How we do that? So we have to get the access to the family first, right? So we have sales and marketing activities. We are operating through the medical representatives, visiting doctors, midwives and hospitals as well as we have call center activity, calling potential clients or so-called leads to convert them become our clients. So we are obviously participating in medical congresses babyfurs, we are giving lectures and pregnancy schools. We are using social media, all possible channels to get to the pregnant capital. And then the family may order the service. It could be done in various ways. That also depends on the country and the local regulations, which are different in different countries. So when the contract is finally signed we ship so-called collection kits to the family and then they have to take it to the hospital when the child is born, give it to the staff of the hospital. We trained the staff at the hospital, so they are aware of that. And then courier is taking up the sample. The sample is shipped to one of our laboratories and then its process test and kept for possible treatment in the future. That market is very different in Europe overall. You cannot say about European market. You can see here, we say about called penetration, yes, this is the amount of percentage of families buying that kind of therapy. So you can see countries with relatively high penetration, 5% is Portugal, Hungary, Romania, and we have countries with relative low penetration or something in the middle. Germany is below 1%, right? Why it is so? There are several reasons. First of all, it's a behavior of the society. I mean, importance of the family, the way the families are taking decisions medical environment, awareness of the service, the way you can conduct marketing or sales activity so that there are some countries which much -- where it is much easier, some with limitations. And also scientific and medical background of the given country. Yes, in some countries, stem cell therapies are simply much more popular than the others in the others. So on average, Europe is around 2%. And comparing to U.S., which is 3% to 4%, this is still place to grow and selected Asian countries, they have more than 10%. It's Korea, for example, Taiwan. And I mentioned about certain issues in Europe, and it's difficult for Europe not only for our industry. I mean, we are overregulated, yes. And we spent, for example, supporting 1 family, 7 years at the court in Spain. And after a final ruling of Supreme Court, we can collect [indiscernible] in all territory of Spain. Before, it was not possible. So we have still places we can simply improve the penetration. And one of the key countries we believe in is Germany. There are certain things we cannot really influence, yes. number of new boards in Europe is going down and will continue going down. That's an issue of all developed countries. Should we take care of that? Not really because we cannot change it. So we should just find countermeasures to prevent that topic to influence us too much negatively yes. COVID 2020, it happened. Can we change it? No. Obviously, there are consequences. We had limitations in access to hospitals, but it's gone. Okay, COVID is there, but it's part of the daily routine and it's not influencing us anymore. But that hit us at the time, and that took us 2 years to recover. Our former European competitor bankrupted, which really hit trust to the industry. If you store material for 20 years, you expect it's like in the bank, yes, it is safe. Our competitor bankrupt. But we protected the samples, belonging to 300,000 families year from 50 countries in Europe and Asia. So -- but that was 2019, so the trust is already rebuilding. So these are things we cannot really change. So you can name them black swans, but we are not really focusing on them at the moment. Russian war in Ukraine, yes, we cannot change it. Obviously, that triggered issues in several European economies. But on the other side, yes, I think that we can we can improve our results and Thomas will now comment shortly on interesting things, yes.
[Foreign Language] I mentioned before about -- you saw them up, but it's more about where we can grow. At the moment, what we can see is really a strong recovery in Eastern Europe understood as Poland, Hungary, Romania, and we believe also, and this is why we conducted that acquisition in Slovakia and Czech Republic that the growth also will be there. We see, let's say, mixed picture in Central Europe. We are facing issues in Germany. And South of Europe is -- depends, again, I mean, we have countries doing pretty well and countries which are underperforming. So Spain is doing pretty well. Overall, Portugal is not doing that well. So it's a mixed picture. But overall, ultimately, I believe that we are able to grow this, let's say, penetration ratio further. At the moment, if you look at our historical numbers, we are rather increasing market share than being able to grow penetration with some exceptions, yes. exception is Poland for sure. We faced similar problems like in Germany after all these black swans we dropped sales, 40% actually, and we recovered already half of that, yes. And we are -- this year, growth in Poland in terms of new units is more than 20%, yes, year-over-year. So I think it's really good. So we only believe that if economy gets more stabilized, we will have really tough to grow. And also, we have a new member of our Board. She joined us 1.5 years ago. And also, we established a position of Medical Director, which altogether should simply bring us to better numbers, and we are simply trying to take our best from the countries we are really doing well to the countries we are not really happy with the results yet. Competition is something which are actually lacking because we understand that competitions are helping. It's a paradox. We have monopoly in Germany, monopoly. In Poland, we have 90% of market share. On average, we have roughly 70% of market share. This is a problem because this is so new service that if there are less companies marketing it, there is smaller awareness, this is a niche product. Yes, we will never reach of penetration of the service. So we see why Romania, you know that Romania is the largest market in Europe, not percentage-wise, in number of collected samples. Why? Because there are 11 companies. So banking is trending. There are private networks of hospitals having own core blood banks. So it is simply pumping up the interest. So competition helps. So if you have a company which has no competitors ask also a question, especially in consumer market. I think in B2B is different, yes. But in consumer market, competition helps in growing the awareness. So -- so -- but we see -- I mean, if you compare what it was '22, and we can -- really '22 was a very, very bad year and then we started slow recovery in H2 2023, and we continue 2024 and 2025 is looking good, and perspectives are looking pretty good as well. So we continue with -- so we confirm our outlook after first half of the year is published today in the morning. We've been in talks with the Czech and Slovakian companies at the time. So this is why one of the reasons we had this guidelines pretty broad, that we rather assume we will be in upper range because we knew that, that acquisition will sooner or later happen. As we are not -- in H1, we did not consolidate results of Czech Republic and Slovakia at all. And because it will do it in since H2. So summarizing, I mean, we continue improving our results. We're already think the tenth quarter in a row. Some markets are really doing 3 well. Placenta will help us. And maybe that was not told. Placenta is recognized in many countries as a source of life. And why core blood is -- what is core blood, Nobody knows, but everybody knows what is placenta. And we can see that it's more naturally accepted by doctors, midwives, also patents. Why it was not before? Because of the science, development of therapies, experimental therapies from stem cells, from placenta is after core blood and after core tissue. 10 years ago, we got the first license for placenta banking in Poland. And our sales team rejected to sell it because there was not enough evidence it makes sense. So it's strange, yes. team, they always like new things. No. Now we have enough science behind, so we decided to roll it out, and we can see positive outcome in several countries. And we continue investments, particularly in social marketing in Germany and Poland because these are 2 biggest countries in our group, and we'd like simply to grow them because the gain is the biggest there. So I think that's...
That's it.
That's it. Thank you. If you have any questions, yes.
Jakub, thank you, Thomas. So yes, we're open for questions. I would start with the first one. I think it's for you, Thomas. If we look at the guidance, you're already halfway there. And you just said you will be consolidating some additional, yes, some additional EBITDA in the second half. So is there anything we have to factor in for the second half of the year? Or is it a very conservative outlook judging from today?
I would rather say it's a realistic one. You're comfortable to achieve our guidance. So yes.
I mean, we corrected guidelines in our history up. Yes. So I think it's better to stay on this -- I mean, today, the economic environment is fragile. Everything may happen, yes. So it's -- we believe it's better to rather become more on the safe side and correct it up rather than correcting down, yes.
Maybe a quick follow-up. In your report today, you mentioned that you will be focusing more on the core and that the EBITDA is sort of the continued operations. Is there -- what is the figure for the discontinued operations? And maybe you can just shed a bit more light on that topic, yes, what that sort of means?
What I can say. So we had -- we have the company, which is called FamiCord Therapeutics, which was established in 2020 and with the aim of development of, let's say, CAR-T product -- on CAR-T product. At the time, completely different times. We had money for new investments and also CAR-T was a very hot topic. It's still a hot topic, but we realized after 5 years that actually we are too small probably to develop that product by ourselves. So that will cost us too much. So you invest in new things to get return in a reasonable period of time. So after, let's say, verification of a couple of years, we got to the conclusion it's simply is too risky. So we have good results. We started clinical trial. Patients were there, and they were cured with our CAR-T, but simply, we will go further, we'll need money. And at the same time, as said before, we should focus on core business because we see better returns and faster returns. In terms of money, is how much -- we've been burning between EUR 1 million to EUR 2 million per year in this company. So not that much for a biotech project. But the reason is that we got a grant from National Agency of medicine in Poland of EUR 10 million, roughly 50% reimbursement ratio. So we are burning more, but that was compensated by that grant. That grant is still there, yes. So you may say that we are improving our results by between EUR 1 million to EUR 2 million if you compare to last 3, 4 years depending on the year of comparison. And the company will continue. Minority shareholders declare that they will support it. Yes, they would raise capital likely in Q4, and we will drop with our shareholding, but not to 0, but below 20%, and we will continue simply as you may name it a financial investor.
So thank you very much for the presentation. And I wanted to understand better, is there anything which could drive the demand for putting blood or placenta or any other biological means into a database beyond the current levels I mean because looking at the scale, right, the more you scale, the more viable your business model will become. What is your vision for demand going forward, 5 years plus?
I mean as I mentioned, we have 2 changes in the Board, right? So first of all, we established the position of Chief Medical Officer, right? And Thomas who used to lead commercial parties now in that plays a medical doctor. And the reason we established that is not artificial. I mean we have to trigger more therapies in Europe. But we are not talking about, let's say, full-scale clinical trials, which requires billions actual or hundreds of millions to get the registered drug with the chance of 5%, it will be simply successful. We found out that the major issue we have in terms of particularly in Germany, is that if the family is aware of the service is asking friends, fellows, doctors and midwives. But who is the doctor they ask, gynecologists, there are almost no applications of stem cells in gynecology. So then gynecologists are referring to those other doctors who may say a word, hematologists, transplantologists, neurologists. And here in Germany, in particular, is very limited use of stem cells besides use of bone marrow. Bone marrow or peripheral blood is used, but nobody thinks -- these are stem cells. These are stem cells, but you say bone marrow. So we realize that there are plenty of doctors in several countries interested in doing something, but they don't know how to do it. And at the same time, there is enormous amount of money in grants from European Union available also in Germany in other countries, but they don't have time to prepare this grant. So we like to replicate what we did in Poland that we are helping the doctors. We write the grant. 80% of the content and then hospital University ask for money. The chance of getting is this 20%, 30% is high. So if you request, I don't know, 10 grants asking for EUR 150 million. The hospital will get out of that something, yes, statistically, and then these doctors are starting using stem cells in treatment. And then awareness is built. That will take time. But in Poland, when we have now opened and say, "Oh, stem cell is gone. That was a story 20 years ago." We have allies. Sorry, I'm a professor, I'm using stem cells in my clinic. Don't tell me. Maybe you are not using. So we don't have it in Germany. We like to have it is here in the U.K. and Spain because these are the countries. Okay. U.K. is the most developed biotech market in Europe, right? And Spain is also in biologics really very well cell and gene therapies. They are very well. We need to build it up. And then indirectly, we will influence the demand for banking because I can tell you that from our clients' perspective, it does not matter whether this is core blood or tissue cell placenta stem cells should treat people today, not scientifically, yes, not paper. So that, we believe, will bring results, but that will take time, and we need to change the attitude. And if you compare to what's going on in Taiwan and Korea, it's completely different, yes.
One question. Could you explain how public banking compares to your penetration rate?
Very well. First of all, we are also running public banks, yes, in some countries, yes, that we are accepting donations and then we can -- these samples are registered in the global registry. So there is no competition between public and travel banks. Why? I mean if someone -- it is like, okay, you are using public transport, but at the same time, people are using cars. You can do it if you can afford it. The difference between public and Travel bank is obviously that if you donate the sample, you lose it forever because you cannot take out the donation. So it might be that you need your sample, but it's not available and more because someone else took it. The problem of public banks is they lost financing because health care systems now in the world are under big pressure. The new therapies are more and more expensive. Also, the medical doctors are -- and medical staff are requiring more money and so on and so. So there are restrictions in, let's say, funding of public banks. And also the way public banks are -- we should understand how the procedure of use of stem cells is constructed in most of European countries. If you need stem cell for routine therapy today, there is a price that health care insurance system is paying to the hospital. So there is a fixed budget, let's say, EUR 150,000, all the procedure, everything. Public Bank when releases the sample charges the hospital between EUR 250,000 to EUR 50,000 per sample. So the hospital prefers bone marrow or peripheral blood because the price is EUR 5,000 or EUR 6,000. So it's not using the sample from public bank because they have samples available from living donors. So this is the problem why public banks are suffering. Why they are charging EUR 25,000 to EUR 50,000 because they are too small to offer this -- this core blood for a lower price. You need to scale. If you take the blood from private bank, you pay nothing because it was paid by the parents. So there are pluses and minuses involved. And I think that actually, everybody should bank even publicly, but there is obviously no money because the system does not have money for that. So there is a lot of discussion -- there are a lot of discussions how to improve the entire system, but there is no easy answer. I mean there was a trial in Qatar. They wanted to collect from all the patients to keep it and then they design because of economic reasons, yes. So I don't see competition, yes, honestly speaking. Public banks are not happy with private banks. Why? Because when public bank is collecting the samples, they are throwing away 80% of the samples. Why? Because they like to have the best samples why they like to have the best samples? You think that this is for the patient? No. This is because they have a high chance to sell that. If the sample is too small, the other public bank we offered at better quality. So they are destroying good samples to be able to sell. They are competing each other. There are 2 winners, Barcelona Stem Cell Bank and Antonella from U.K., they are massively best in Europe, yes. because they reach the scale. And therefore, in Germany, public banks are gone. They don't have money. The largest industrial door, no more collections, yes. Coscareras, no more collections. Money [indiscernible] through.
And I have a question about the electricity costs in your business. I think it's one of the main portions or main cost drivers. As we have the situation in Europe that the acuity prices are still at a high level in comparison to the pre-crisis level. What would you say is the percentage in your average product is the first question. The second question is are you allowed to transfer placenta or stem cell samples from one to the other country?
Second question is easier. With the exception of Germany, it's pretty easy. I mean, in some countries, although there's a freedom of flow of goods, you need a permit within European Union, but to obtain that permit is rather easy. So we have examples even with Switzerland, which is not European Union. So overall, after certain bureaucrats, you can easily transport samples across European countries. Germany is different, okay? In practice, it's very difficult to get -- to operate in Germany, for example, with outside laboratory. I mean there is no one doing that actually. This is a barrier we think is in our favor because if you like to get to Germany, in fact, you have to invest in Germany to establish entire structure in here, which is good for us as a monopolist, obviously. But from a practical point of view, obviously, it is not helping because sometimes maybe we may be considering to have too many laboratories, yes. But it does not matter whether it's placenta, core blood or core tissue. Here, regulations are more of the same with the exception of Germany, which is much more strict. Regarding costs, I mean there are 2 things. I mean, I will first start with the prices for the clients. So we have completely different price structure depending on the country, because we are simply selling at the price which should be affordable for the society. And obviously, if there is more competition, competition is also setting the prices. So -- and then obviously, it's a cost question. What happened with the cost over the last 5 years. One thing which definitely is challenging for us is growing demand for salary increases, yes. And cost of people in our case is important, yes. We are a services business, yes. So we have pressure for salaries, particular in Eastern economies because average salaries are growing 7%, 8% per year. And we are not fully able to compensate the growth of salaries with the growth of our services. So we are growing the practice of our services, but not in line with growth of our personnel costs. Fortunately, Administrative costs are rather fixed. The cost of goods are more or less in line of inflation. I don't know whether I answered the question fully.
Electricity, but maybe we can follow up on...
Electricity is not a problem. It's a minor cost. Electricity is...
Thank you Thomas. Thank you, Jakub. And the next presentation here will be dynamic. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Read the full transcript via the API
You're viewing the first half of this call. Get the complete FamiCord AG transcript - plus 251,000+ transcripts from 12,000+ companies, speaker segments and full-text search - through the EarningsAPI REST API or hosted MCP server.
Get an API key View API docs →For developers and AI pipelines
Programmatic access to FamiCord AG earnings transcripts and 251,000+ others is available through the
EarningsAPI REST API and the hosted MCP server.
Quarterly plans from $105 - full transcripts, speaker segments, full-text search,
and the /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.