GÖTTINGEN (dpa-AFX) - At laboratory and pharmaceutical supplier Sartorius, the hoped-for upturn is likely to be some time coming. "In the coming quarters, the recovery will take hold only slowly," Group CEO Joachim Kreuzburg said Thursday when presenting final figures. Nevertheless, the Gottingen-based company is confident of being able to return to growth. Thanks to an aging population and the increasing importance of biopharmaceuticals, the Sartorius leader stressed that the long-term outlook is positive. "And we are very, very well positioned to participate in this."

In the first nine months, order intake at the Gottingen-based company had still slumped almost 30 percent to 2.2 billion euros. However, the first signs of recovery were reported in the biotechnology sector in the third quarter. Although orders continued to fall, they were not as strong as in the two previous quarters. According to JPMorgan expert Richard Vosser, the division performed far better than feared. On the stock exchange, this was enough for a price firework.

After their recent slide, the shares stabilized in the morning with an increase of ten percent at times to a good 277 euros. The day before, at 251.50 euros, they had cost less than at any time since May 2020. Since the forecast reduction last Friday, they had lost almost 22 percent. The shares of the French subsidiary Sartorius Stedim Biotech, under whose umbrella a large part of the biotech business of the Dax group runs, now also rose strongly.

Last week, Sartorius had cut its targets for the current year for a second time and now expects declining sales revenue and margins compared with the previous year. After an order boom in the Corona period, the investment mood in the customer industries has now been weakening for longer than originally assumed by management. Many customers are still reducing their inventories, which they had replenished heavily out of concern about supply bottlenecks. In addition, many companies had already invested heavily and ramped up capacities during the Corona boom, which is why they are now reluctant to spend further, said Kreuzburg. This caused problems for Sartorius in the past quarter, especially in the Laboratory Division in China, but demand was also subdued in the USA. "We did not expect it to be like this."

Next year, however, the Group aims to return to profitable growth. Targets, however, will not be available until January, as will the outcome of the already announced review of medium-term targets.

The Group's current medium-term plan runs until 2025. "This is actually already no longer the medium term, and the targets we have defined by then will be influenced by what is happening at the moment," Kreuzburg said. The task now, he said, is to quantify that influence. He also did not rule out an extension of the forecast period. In general, he said, the Group faces the challenge of making forecasts in its market, where fluctuations have increased sharply - for example, due to new technologies, the pandemic, and most recently in view of the tense economic situation.

In the year to date, the Gottingen-based company has therefore had to accept a slump in profits. Net income attributable to shareholders fell by almost two thirds to around 197 million euros in the first nine months. As already announced, sales fell by around 18 percent to a good 2.5 billion euros in this period./tav/ngu/jha/