Materialise - Q3 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q3 2024 Materialise Financial Results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Harriet Fried of Alliance Advisors.

Harriet Fried (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you for joining us today for Materialise's quarterly conference call. With us on the call are Brigitte de Vet-Veithen, Chief Executive Officer, and Koen Berges, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call and webcast are being accompanied by a slide presentation that reviews Materialise's strategic, financial, and operational performance for the third quarter of twenty twenty-four. To access the slides, if you have not done so already, please go to the Investor Relations section of the company's website at www.materialise.com. The earnings press release issued earlier today can also be found on that page. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that management may make forward-looking statements regarding the company's plans, expectations, and growth prospects, among other things. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown uncertainties and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations expressed, including competitive dynamics and industry change.

Any forward-looking statements, including those related to the company's future results and activities, represent management's estimates as of today and should not be relied upon as representing their estimates as of any subsequent date. Management disclaims any duty to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or changes in expectations. A more detailed description of the risks and uncertainties and other factors that could impact the company's future business or financial results can be found in the company's most recent annual report on Form 20-F, filed with the SEC. Finally, management will discuss certain non-IFRS measures on today's call. A reconciliation table is contained in the earnings release and at the end of the slide presentation. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Brigitte de Vet-Veithen. Brigitte, go ahead, please.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Good morning and good afternoon, and thank you everyone for joining us today. You can find our agenda on slide three. As always, I want to first summarize the highlights of our financial results for the third quarter in two thousand and twenty-four, then I will take you through some of the progress we've made in realizing our strategic priorities over the last couple of months, and after that, I will pass the floor to Koen, who will go into our third quarter numbers in more detail, finally, I will come back and explain how we view the remainder of twenty twenty-four. When we've completed our prepared remarks, we'll be happy to respond to questions.

Now, looking at our key results for the third quarter, summarized on page four, I am very pleased to report that we performed strongly in all of our business segments, and once more, delivered profitable results this quarter with a strong improvement compared to last year. We realized strong quarterly revenues of 68.7 million EUR, growing more than 14% compared to the third quarter last year, and demonstrating growth in all segments. We realized a gross margin of 57.2% in the third quarter, which is up from the 56% for the comparable period of 2023. This solid performance enabled us to increase our adjusted EBIT to 4.4 million EUR, representing 6.4% of our revenue, without compromising on our continued investments to drive future growth.

This translates into a net profit of EUR 3 million or EUR 0.05 per share. Our net cash position at the end of the third quarter was EUR 63.1 million. Koen will elaborate further on these results in his remarks later in this call. Now, moving now to slide 5, I am very pleased with our progress made on the main strategic priorities. First, in medical, we accelerated our growth, thanks mainly to the progress made in our core markets. For the second time in our company's history, medical was the strongest revenue generator, accounting for 44% of revenue this quarter. Now, this is evidence that our mass personalization strategy is working and that our investments are paying off. Now, what do I mean by mass personalization?

We continuously ask ourselves how we can serve more patients with personalized approaches rather than just benefiting a lucky few. And in the last few years, we've made strategic investments to broaden the population we are reaching. Some examples: Thanks to our U.S. manufacturing plant, we have managed to bring our personalized solutions to trauma patients. Trauma patients are patients that need to have a solution in days, not in weeks. As a reminder, the U.S. facility enables us to deliver parts with much shorter and more reliable lead times. Thanks to this plant and the investment we made there, we managed to triple the number of trauma cases we treated per quarter, compared to the number we treated before the opening of the plant.

We are now delivering solutions faster than any other provider in the U.S. market, and we therefore expect our penetration of this market to continue and generate further growth in the future. Now, as a second example, I would like to point to the investments we are making in our Mimics platform to expand our position in the research and engineering market. In this market, we have traditionally built a strong position with our Mimics Innovation Suite, a software suite that is used by researchers and engineers to segment the medical images of a patient, create a 3D model, and prepare treatment plan on this basis, or design a patient-specific implant or instrument for the patient at hand.

In order to accelerate the adoption of these patient-specific approaches, we need to make this workflow a lot easier and faster, and integrate it with the rest of the healthcare ecosystem. And this is what we are achieving with our cloud-based Mimics platform, called Mimics Flow. Earlier this year, we released the case management capabilities on Mimics Flow. We released it to medical device companies earlier this year after a release to the hospitals end of last year. Among other benefits, this solution enables customers to manage their workflows end-to-end, enforce quality management and impact traceability and reporting, create visibility for all stakeholders on case status, and enable easier collaboration with stakeholders across the ecosystem, for example, to get approvals.

This solution is a valuable extension of our offering for customers that process a large number of personalized cases per year, and need to find ways to efficiently manage these larger volumes. It is seamlessly integrated with Mimics, our market-leading desktop-based segmentation and planning software. Now, since the launch of this solution, we have already managed to contract 10 customers and expect the uptake to continue in the fourth quarter and throughout 2025. In the coming years, we will continue to bring out additional cloud-based functionality that will make it easier and faster for customers to treat personalized cases. Now, turning to software, we made significant progress on multiple fronts. First, we made progress in previously announced partnerships, delivering first results that are truly encouraging.

As an example, in the second quarter, we announced the collaboration with nTop in order to enable the processing of complex and large design and STL files. We announced an early access program at RAPID in June. We have now selected 12 companies for this program from 57 that applied, setting us up for demonstrating the value in additional use cases in the future. Another example, in the first quarter this year, we signed an agreement with DigiFabster, a cloud-based SaaS quoting and e-commerce solution for advanced manufacturing companies. In the third quarter, we signed our first OEM sale, including the DigiFabster solution in the configuration. Second, we also announced new partnerships, for example, with Formlabs and Stratasys.

But most importantly, we made significant progress in Materialise Magics, leveraging our new products to further strengthen our position in key strategic accounts in sectors like aerospace and on-demand manufacturing. As an example, we see increased adoption of our metal support workflows, with more companies migrating to our advanced automated support generation solution, e-Stage for Metal+. e-Stage for Metal+ reduces the time spent on support design by up to 90%, while minimizing human error and build crash risk. I'm also pleased to share that the usage and adoption of our latest version of Magics, Magics 28, is accelerating at a much faster rate compared to previous releases. After the release in June, almost 50% of our active customer base is already using the latest Magics release, while it is still in its early life cycle phase compared to other supported versions.

This version is quickly replacing legacy versions in the market, a clear indicator of how customers are recognizing the improved features, such as the new lattice module or the new nesting modules. This is helping us drive a broader transition, ensuring that our customers stay up-to-date with the latest advances in 3D printing technology. Now, last but certainly not least, I am very pleased with the progress on our next-generation Magics BPs. We released the desktop deployment of our next-generation BPs in the first quarter this year, and have already contracted more than 20 partners. The advanced algorithms of the next-generation BP significantly improve build time and quality, thanks to, for example, its advancement strategies for multi-lasers, and enable a variety of collaboration models, including the possibility for customers to build their own BPs, thanks to the availability of our SDKs.

Turning now to manufacturing, we celebrated the opening of our second plant at ACTech, and we'll ship the first part in the fourth quarter. With this second plant, we are expanding our capacity and enhancing our ability to handle huge and heavy parts. In addition, the extension of our capacity in the new equipment is a critical step to address the market for more complex metal parts and the market for small series. Now, why is this important? First, this strengthens our position in the market that we are traditionally strong in, the automotive market, where the development of electric cars brings the need for more complex cast components for electrical drivetrains and chassis. Second, it opens market opportunities in new segments such as agriculture, mining, construction, and marine vehicles, where parts are typically larger and heavier, and therefore more difficult to handle.

The complexity of parts in these segments is increasing, for example, to achieve better thermodynamic cycles in the engines with maximum fuel efficiency. The combination of high-precision printing and casting and complex post-treatment that we can offer at ACTech is ideal for this, and we are therefore very well positioned to serve this need. It's interesting to note that customers in all of these segments are turning to ACTech for two reasons. First, they are looking for fast and reliable prototyping solutions, but second, what is very exciting is that with the new plant, we are also able to deliver small series. Now, the additional capacity and the new equipment strengthen our position for both types of offerings. We are gradually reorganizing our operational flow in the fourth quarter, and will then ramp up our capacity throughout two thousand and twenty-five and two thousand and twenty-six.

We expect a temporary impact of the operational startup in the fourth quarter. Now, Koen will take you through the detailed financial results by segment.

Koen Berges (CFO)

Thank you, Brigitte. Good morning or good afternoon to all of you on this call. I'll begin with a brief review of our consolidated revenue on slide 6. As a reminder, please note that unless stated otherwise, all comparisons in this call are against our results for the third quarter of 2023. In this year's third quarter, total revenue increased 14% to EUR 68.7 million. We reported growth in all three of our business segments, with strongest increase coming from our medical segment, which grew by more than 24% and posted record high quarterly revenue figures. In spite of the further conversion of our software business model to recurring revenue streams and the continued challenging market conditions that our manufacturing segment faced, also both of these segments grew in the third quarter, more specifically by 3% and 9%, respectively.

As you can see in the graph on the right side of the page, Materialise Medical now accounted for 44%, Materialise Manufacturing for 40%, and Materialise Software for 16% of total revenue. In the third quarter, our medical segment took over the role of largest revenue generator from manufacturing. Year to date, we now generated over EUR 201 million of revenue, which is 5.4% above the same period in 2023. The amount of deferred revenues in our balance sheet related to software license and maintenance fees amounted to EUR 41.1 million at the end of September. Total deferred revenues on our balance sheet were EUR 47.4 million, also at the same moment, at the end of the quarter.

Now, on slide 7, you will see that our consolidated adjusted EBIT and EBITDA numbers for the third quarter of 2024. Consolidated adjusted EBIT increased to 4.4 million EUR, compared to 2.3 million EUR for the corresponding period of 2023. Top-line growth, in combination with continued focus on leveraging scaling effects and cost control, led us to an 89% increase in operational performance, while we continued investing in our future growth businesses. The adjusted EBIT margin for the quarter was 6.4%, compared to 3.9% last year. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter amounted to 9.9 million EUR, increasing from 7.9 million EUR last year. Our adjusted EBITDA margin reached 14.4%, compared to 13.1% the prior year.

Year to date, we have now generated 10.9 million EUR of adjusted EBIT and 27.2 million EUR of adjusted EBITDA. Moving now on to slide eight, you will notice that the quarter's total revenue in our Materialise Medical segment increased, as said, by almost 25%. This strong growth was generated by higher revenue coming from medical devices and services FEops, and by higher revenue from our medical software, which grew respectively by 28% and 16%. Within our medical devices and services activity, we grew both direct and partner FEops. As a result of top-line growth and cost discipline, the adjusted EBITDA with the medical segment grew to 9.9 million EUR, with an adjusted EBITDA margin that increased to 32.8%.

These numbers now also include the impact from FEops, the acquisition that we completed in July, and which in its current development phase, is contributing negatively to our EBIT. Year to date, our medical segment realized EUR 84.5 million of revenue, up by 15% from last year, with an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 26 million, representing almost 31% of adjusted EBITDA margin. Slide 9 summarizes the results of our Materialise Software segment. In the third quarter, software revenue grew by almost 3%. Negative revenue impact of our further transition to a cloud and subscription-based business model was more than offset by strong direct sales in our pre-print segment. Recurring revenue from software maintenance and licenses sales, including CO-AM, increased by 9%. On the other hand, non-recurring revenue decreased by 12%.

The adjusted EBITDA in our software segment increased in the third quarter of this year to almost EUR 2 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 17.8%, while we continued the R&D development efforts in CO-AM, and particularly on the factory management capabilities. Year to date, our software segment realized EUR 32.8 million of revenue and an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 4.4 million, representing 13.5% of adjusted EBITDA margin. Now let's turn to slide 10 for an overview of the performance of our Materialise Manufacturing segment. As in prior quarters, also in Q3, our manufacturing segment faced a challenging market environment, which was mainly reflected in continued weak prototyping demand. Nonetheless, we managed to grow revenue by 9% compared to the third quarter of last year, fueled by growth in ACTech and in certified manufacturing.

Here again, we posted the strongest growth in our strategic aerospace and MedTech focus areas. In spite of the top-line growth and further realization of operational efficiencies, cost pressure and less consulting income led to a lower Adjusted EBITDA of EUR 4.7 million, representing an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 2.6%. Year-to-date, our manufacturing segments realized revenue of EUR 83.8 million, with an Adjusted EBITDA of EUR 4.6 million, representing 5.5% Adjusted EBITDA margin. Slide 11 provides the highlights of our consolidated income statement for the third quarter of this year. Our gross profit increased to EUR 39.3 million, representing a gross profit margin of 57.2%, an increase of 120 basis points compared to the gross profit margin realized in Q3 of last year.

Direct cost increases were offset by efficiency gains and mix effects. Our operating expenses in the quarter increased by EUR 3.8 million, or 11.8% in aggregate, with the largest increase coming again from the higher R&D spend, which grew by 16% compared to last year. R&D investments remained mainly focused in our medical segment on the Mimics platform developments and our medical devices business, and in our software segment on CO-AM developments. Net operating income in the quarter was positive at EUR 4.1 million, compared to EUR 4.7 million of last year. As a result of these elements, the group's operating result in the quarter was positive at EUR 4.3 million, compared to EUR 2.3 million in last year's periods.

Now, in Q3, the net financial result amounted to a negative minus EUR 1.1 million, mainly impacted by unfavorable currency exchange results of minus EUR 1.8 million. The interest income from our cash reserves more than offset the decline in interest expense on our gradually decreasing financial debts. Income tax expenses in the quarter amounted to minus EUR 4.1 million, and all of this resulted once more in net profit for the quarter, equaling EUR 3 million, representing EUR 0.05 per share, compared to a EUR 4 million or EUR 0.07 per share for the same period of last year. Now, please turn to slide 12 for a recap of the key balance sheet and cash flow highlights. Also, in the third quarter of 2024, our balance sheet remained strong.

Our cash reserve at the end of the quarter amounted to EUR 116 million. Loan and lease repayments, totaling almost EUR 5 million over the quarter, reduced our gross debt to EUR 53 million. Since the beginning of this year, we further reduced our gross debt position by EUR 11.5 million. The resulting net cash position at the end of the third quarter was EUR 63.1 million, remaining stable compared to the position at the beginning of this year, although down by EUR 4.4 million from the position at the end of the second quarter. This decrease in the third quarter is mainly the result of increased CapEx investments and of the FEops acquisition that we funded from our own means.

Compared to the end of last year, we reduced our net working capital by EUR 2.6 million, mainly as a result of reduced trade receivables. The total deferred income position amounted to EUR 47 million, of which EUR 41 million was related to deferred revenue from software license and maintenance contracts, as mentioned earlier in the call. As you can see from the graph on the right side of the page, cash flow from operating activities for the third quarter amounted to EUR 6.9 million, slightly below the operational cash flow generated in the third quarter of last year and as a result of working capital movements. Capital expenditures for the quarter, on the other hand, amounted to a high EUR 7.3 million, higher than average, mainly as a result of intensified investments in the new ACTech plants and the acquisition of sales.

As a result of this, our free cash flow over the third quarter of 2024 turned negative by minus EUR 3.1 million. The operational cash flow amounts to EUR 25 million after nine months into 2024, which is up by 26% compared to the same period of last year, while also the year-to-date free cash flow is positive by EUR 4.2 million, in spite of a higher investment volume. As mentioned in our earlier calls, the CapEx investments in our new ACTech facility will continue for some time as we add additional machinery and gradually ramp up throughputs. And with that, I'd like to hand the call back to Brigitte.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Thank you, Koen. Let's now turn to page 13. I'll conclude my remarks with a discussion of our full year 2024 guidance. The consistently strong operational performance of our business segments throughout the first nine months of the year strengthens our confidence that we will land our full year revenue within the earlier communicated range of 265-275 million EUR. We're also maintaining our adjusted EBIT guidance of 11-14 million EUR for 2024. We're taking a conservative stance for the last quarter of 2024, given the weaker prototyping demand that we have seen in recent months. In addition, this guidance reflects the integration cost and further product portfolio investments of our recent FEops acquisition, as well as the startup of the new ACTech plant. Now, this concludes our prepared remarks.

Operator, we are now ready to open the call to questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by. Our first question comes from Troy Jensen from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is now open.

Troy Jensen (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good morning. Good afternoon, thanks for taking my questions. First off-

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Good morning, Troy.

Troy Jensen (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hello, Brigitte. Congrats. I was really impressed. I thought the revenue upside, gross margins, and OpEx being all above plan were pretty impressive, so keep up the good work. To dive into the questions a little bit. A little bit on medical, just thoughts on the sustainability of the growth here and profitability. Like, what do flow-through margins look like, and what could, you know, EBITDA margins look like in the medical business if it continues to grow at this type of a pace?

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

So let me answer this question more qualitatively, because, you know, we're not giving a long-term quantitative guidance, typically. But so to reflect on the medical business going forward, so there's still a lot of potential in the medical sector to adopt personalized solutions. And the example I've given earlier on the trauma population, where now with the U.S. manufacturing plants, we are addressing part of that population. Honestly, we're still scratching the surface of that population. And it's just one example where I do think we can still drive up the adoption of personalized solutions, in many of the different markets, in which we are playing. So there's, in terms of the sustainability of the growth, I think there's still a lot of potential in that segment.

There's no reason why I would see that come, you know, at a different profitability level. If anything, with larger volumes, typically, you know, it gets a little easier to manage, you know, our margins. But there's no reason to believe why the profile would be different going forward.

Troy Jensen (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Right. Well, to that point, Koen, could you confirm what the flow-through margins look like for medical business?

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

When you say flow-through margins, what exactly do you mean?

Troy Jensen (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

It's like an incremental million dollars, how much is going to go to the bottom, right? There's typically the additional million dollars, you know, more accretive than the first million dollars in a quarter, right? So what does the flow-through look like?

Koen Berges (CFO)

I don't know if I understand your question correctly, Troy, but the margins are currently around 30%, in the 30% range, and the EBITDA margins, if that is what you're referring to, and that is, I think, what we see flowing through to our bottom line, EBITDA bottom line in the medical segment.

Troy Jensen (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, understood. I was just trying to get, like, what a forecast could be on EBITDA margins, but, but I'll move on. So now comparing this, you got two businesses that are roughly the same size. You know, medical is extremely profitable, but here we've got, you know, 3% EBITDA margins on the manufacturing business. So just thoughts on what you can do there, Brigitte, to improve profitability. Is scale gonna be the answer, or just some thoughts on that would be great.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

So there's probably a couple of aspects that we need to mention here to answer your question. I mean, scale, obviously, scale will help. That is just, you know, in all of our business lines, you know, scale is a driver that helps us, you know, get to better margins. Now, the second part of the answer I want to give is the shift that we are making, and we need to continue to make away from prototyping more towards end user parts, in the segments where we see that, you know, our proposition, you know, has added value. We've talked about certified manufacturing in the past.

We've talked about, you know, aerospace, the medical segment, et cetera, being segments where the complexity and the requirements are such that our high level of know-how and the fact that based on the long experience that we have, we can, you know, handle these more complex and high-quality requirements. I think they position us well, and, and those are the segments where we need to, well, continue the journey that we're on and continue to increase to get to a healthier position in terms of margins.

Troy Jensen (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah. All right. Understood. Last question, then I'll cede the floor. But, just on OpEx going forward, you guys did a nice job here. It looks like it was down sequentially. I guess I always assume OpEx is gonna grow modestly on a sequential basis, on an absolute basis. But, just thoughts on kind of where OpEx is gonna trend for the next few quarters.

Koen Berges (CFO)

As you indicated, Troy, a large part of our OpEx is related to staff costs and personnel costs.

So there is continuous pressure on that, where we see salaries gradually going up. So indeed, that is something we certainly focus on to keep that under control. Same with third party spend, where the larger we get, the more negotiation power we have, of course, on these kind of expenses. But indeed, there is the cost pressure that we try to mitigate by closely following up the costs that we are making.

Troy Jensen (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

So to be more specific, just like on an absolute basis for Q4, do you expect total expenses to be up, flat or down sequentially?

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

In absolute or percentage?

Troy Jensen (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Absolutely. In absolute basis, yeah. I mean, you're not going through any cost, it seems like a lot of people in the industry now are going through cost cutting, right? So OpEx is shrinking on a quarterly basis, but I don't think you guys are so much.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

I don't see a particular reason why they would go down. So, in terms of absolute number, now there's one element that, you know, when it comes to OpEx, and I'm talking more relative, so more percentage wise, I mean, you referred to scale earlier. Our percentage wise, our OpEx, our revenue number is gonna drive the, you know, OpEx percentage, to a large extent. So scaling will help. And now specifically for the fourth quarter, you've heard us being relatively conservative on the fourth quarter. So, you know, that is mainly on the revenue side, and therefore, you know, the OpEx percentage in the fourth quarter will take a slightly different profile than we have this quarter. Maybe that helps-

Troy Jensen (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

In terms of some-

Troy Jensen (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

That helps. We'll follow up to you in here in a little bit, but, congrats and keep up the good work.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you so much. Our next question comes from Alexander Cremers, from Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is now open.

Alexander Cremers (Equity Research Analyst)

Hey. Hello, Alexander from Kepler Cheuvreux here. Congrats on the nice set of results, also from our side. Just, I have three questions on the ACTech plant. First one would be, you mentioned that the ramp-up will still weigh on the manufacturing segment in terms of OpEx, but maybe could you specify that number? Second question would be, couldn't you mention that you expect some CapEx for this plant going forward, as you are planning some additional machinery, et cetera? Maybe you could clarify how much CapEx you still budget and what's the timing of this? So we can also get a bit of a grasp on the expansion CapEx going forward.

And then, yeah, how do we need to see this in terms of additional revenues next year? So that's the three questions on the ACTech plant, specifically. Then I do have some other questions. It maybe one would be to, actually coming back to a question of Troy, before, I think he was more asking about the gross margins, just to get a bit the sense of the operational leverage in that medical segment. If you could maybe give us some granularity in that respect, and, as I assume that the cost of goods sold is relatively stable in this segment. And then maybe the last question, yeah, I think the new partnerships in software, how do you see that evolving in terms of the top line next year? Thank you.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Let me try to answer some of your questions. I hope I can remember all of them, Alexander.

Alexander Cremers (Equity Research Analyst)

Maybe I'll start with just on the ACTech plant.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Yeah, yeah.

Alexander Cremers (Equity Research Analyst)

A bit of revenues.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Yes, yeah, absolutely. And maybe just, you know, as a general comment, so I just want to say we're not giving guidance on next year yet. So I'll stay away from that. And the second is we're not giving guidance for the specific business lines.

Alexander Cremers (Equity Research Analyst)

But it should be up now.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

So that's a bit more difficult. Now let me maybe give you a bit more color by what we expect in the fourth quarter on the ACTech plant, and why. So we expect an impact on the fourth quarter. Mainly, that is a revenue impact by the fact that we operationally get the second plant ready, which also involves transferring some of the equipment and the machines from one plant to the other, which, you know, obviously limits our capacity for a while, and that's why we do expect that impact. Now, I know you asked for quantifying that impact, but you know, I can't do that.

But it is an impact that leads us to be more conservative with our guidance. So, you can draw a conclusion a little from there, if I can point you in that direction. Now, I'll let Koen answer the question, the CapEx.

Koen Berges (CFO)

Yeah. To come back to the CapEx, as Brigitte mentioned, that we have started up the plants in the third quarter, which basically means that the investments on the building itself, to a large extent, have been completed. What remains and what will continue over some time is additional investments in machinery. And we have post-processing machinery already in place, and we will be gradually adding additional machinery as time goes by. Taking into account that the delivery times on these machines are quite long, that will mean that also the CapEx tail off of this project will take us, I would say, at least a year, a year and a half to up to two years before the full investment program has been completed.

Where we are today, to give you an idea, we have always indicated the total investment volume to be north of between 30 and 40 million EUR, and we have, at this stage, invested about 65%-70% of the total investment volume. But the rest will come. We see the peak now, that will still continue a bit in the fourth quarter, as there is also payment terms on the invoices from suppliers that provides the goods that we include as investments. But the biggest peak will then gradually come down in the coming quarters. Hope that answers your question.

Alexander Cremers (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you. Yes.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

And then maybe switching to your question on the growth margins for on medical. I think you do see our growth margins on

Koen Berges (CFO)

Total.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Okay, on total. Yeah.

Koen Berges (CFO)

Yeah.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

So you know, just qualifying comment on the growth margins. So our growth margins on medical, well, relatively comparable to you know, what typically you would expect in the medical device business. Now, the scaling effect drives further efficiencies there, more so on the longer term than on the shorter term. So the profile is gonna stay relatively similar on the shorter term, and certainly when we talk about the next quarter or two.

Alexander Cremers (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, that's very clear. Thanks. And then, yeah, the last question was just a small add-on on the software segment.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Yeah, so you asked around the new partnerships. Now the-

Alexander Cremers (Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

What was your specific question on the new partnerships?

Alexander Cremers (Equity Research Analyst)

I mean, you've announced a lot of new partnerships and deals in the software segment. I was just wondering because, I mean, the segment has been a bit under pressure lately. And

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Yeah

Alexander Cremers (Equity Research Analyst)

Of course, you have growth, but in terms of profitability, et cetera. So I'm just asking more specifically towards the growth of next year. Of course, you don't give guidance, but at least we get a bit of a sense of what these deals look like.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Yeah. And maybe I give you, you know, a bit of view on what these partnerships do for us. And so two comments.

Alexander Cremers (Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Yeah. One is, so we have indeed announced some new partnerships. Now, I've also reflected back on some of the partnerships that we closed earlier this year. And I thought that was important to do, because at the end of the day, we can all announce partnerships, but if they don't lead to results, then what are they really doing? So you know, I think what is important to note that in the third quarter, we actually had real results on these partnerships that were previously announced. And I've given the example of the nTop partnership and the DigiFabster partnership to illustrate that we see good traction there. Now, second comment I wanna make is that, why is this so important for us?

Why are, you know, do I see these partnerships as an important element? Why is that, you know, a good foundation for future growth next year and the years after? At the end of the day, our customers need an end-to-end solution. Rather than building end-to-end solutions with all the capabilities ourselves, I believe in a model of collaboration. We've talked about that, you know, a number of times in the previous calls as well. I believe in collaboration, and these partnerships illustrate that, you know, we can collaborate with others to bring that end-to-end solution, a complete solution, without doing the R&D investments ourselves.

Having that end-to-end solution is, I believe, an important element for our customers and will drive further adoption of these software solutions in the future. Does that make sense?

Alexander Cremers (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you so much. Our next question comes from Jacob Stephan, from Lake Street Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Jacob Stephan (Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. I'll add my congratulations to the results here.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Thank you, Jacob

Jacob Stephan (Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah, absolutely. I was just kind of wondering, you know, on the medical segment, obviously, like Troy mentioned too, EBITDA margins have continued to impress. But, I guess, can you help us kind of get a sense for, you know, at the new Michigan facility? I know trauma and, you know, personalized solutions are the kind of main, you know, things produced there, but maybe help us get a sense on the overall capacity at the new facility itself.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

First clarification, maybe. Our U.S. manufacturing plant is indeed fully dedicated to the medical business. You know, all we ship out of there are personalized devices, instrumentation or implants. The capacity is driven by two things. One is obviously the number of machines and resources we have there, and the second is the space. At this point in time, we're not at the capacity limits. Let me put it that way. I can't give you a specific number on, you know, what percentage of the capacity we are at, but there's room for adding capacity and extending that in the future.

Jacob Stephan (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay, and you made a comment that, you know, essentially you treated three times the number of trauma patients compared to kind of before the plant was up and running. But maybe help us understand, you know, is there room to, you know, ten X that, twenty X that? Any color there would be helpful.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Yeah. So I, you know, without mentioning a specific number, I also made a comment previously, you know, earlier in this call that I said, we are only scratching the surface. So that's more kind of the relations that we need to look at. So it's not only we have potential to further double or triple, so the potential is effectively large here.

Jacob Stephan (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. And, last one for me, just on kind of the software segment. Did I hear that correctly, you signed your first CO-AM customer?

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

No. So, I'm maybe I wasn't super clear here. So we have you know signed you know a whole range of CO-AM customers. I don't have the exact number, but you know, there's a lot of CO-AM customers already since we launched the solutions a couple of years back. We now signed the first customer that also has the DigiFabster solution. And so my point was more to illustrate that the partnership that we announced earlier this year, we now have actual sales coming out of this. And again, you know, as I said earlier, it's nice to announce the partnership, but what it really matters is you know, what kind of growth that will drive for us with that partner.

Jacob Stephan (Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. And I guess just kind of to follow up on that, any kind of sense on, you know, when we can see the last kind of perpetual customers roll off and, you know, essentially be 100% SaaS?

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Yeah. So that's gonna take a very long time, because, you know, the very last one. So I'm not saying that, you know, the significant amount of our business will stay perpetual, because we're really pushing hard and making very good progress in that switchover. But I do expect that there will be, you know, some customer segments, market segments that remain on perpetual for quite a while.

Jacob Stephan (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Got it. Appreciate the color. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you so much. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to Brigitte for closing remarks.

Brigitte de Vet-Veithen (CEO)

Thank you again for joining us today, and we look forward to continuing our dialogue with you, obviously, through our investor conferences or one-on-one meetings, or calls. We obviously hope to see many of you during the upcoming Formnext in November. Please reach out to us if you have any further questions. For now, thank you and goodbye.

Operator (participant)

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.