Lonza Group AG (SWX:LONN) is seeking mergers and acquisitions. During the company's full year results 2022 investor and analyst conference call and live webcast, Mr. Pierre-Alain Ruffieux, Chief Executive Officer, said that ‘Finally, following the divestment of our Specialty Ingredients business, we have committed to return to pre-divestment leverage. We are continuing our focus on organic investment and attractive bolt-on M&A'.

Philippe Deecke, Chief Financial Officer, said that ‘Turning to leverage. Versus prior year, we see a slight increase from minus 0.6 to minus 0.1. The balance sheet provides significant headroom for organic growth investments, bolt-on acquisitions and the return of excess capital. We will come back to this in a moment'.

‘Our strong balance sheet and confidence in the cash generation outlook also supports our planned share buyback program mentioned earlier by Pierre-Alain. Let me give you some more details. Today's announced share buyback will allow us to return excess capital to shareholders and return to our target leverage faster.

The share buyback is not changing our priorities in our capital allocation strategy. Our foremost priority remains our accelerated organic investment plans, followed by the acquisition of attractive bolt-ons'.