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Eurofins Scientific SE
PAR:ERF

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Eurofins Scientific SE
PAR:ERF
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Price: 57.66 EUR 0.66% Market Closed
Updated: May 11, 2024

Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2019-Q2

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Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Eurofins Scientific H1 2019 Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Dr. Gilles Martin, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

Hello, everybody, and thank you for joining us our half year result conference call. So I'm happy to report on robust first half results. Our markets are well orientated. We see a -- we have seen, and we continue to see, very good growth in BioPharma, food testing. Our environmental testing business is doing very well, and also TestAmerica in North America. So things are well orientated. On the report on the cyber-attack, unfortunately, as you are aware, we were attacked by criminals that forced us to shut down our systems early June and to spend a lot of time to screen all those systems and restart and reinstall. And that has unfortunately caused a significant hindrance to doing business in the month of June, which has impacted our results.I am happy to report that after all this work, all labs have restarted, and we can now put this behind us. It's very disruptive. Of course, we have invested more, we'll do even more to protect the security of our systems. Many other companies are attacked, have been attacked, will be attacked. It's an ongoing fight. And of course, we are committed to do what it takes to avoid these types of problems in the future.We could fortunately, on the financial side, catch up some of the lost work in the second half of June since our labs restarted then again. Most of our labs had restarted on the 17th of June. So the damage is not as bad as what it could have been in the financial way. We also should get a good response from our insurance. This will take time to be determined.On the other aspect, the M&A is in line with our objectives. We intend to add about EUR 200 million revenues from acquisitions this year. This is a normal pace that we had indicated at the beginning of a 5-year program from '15-2020. Also on startups, you see we're on a slower pace of startups and we are not stopping completely. Where we are making very good progress is on opening our new -- or expanding our new campuses. We have new expanded campuses in Lancaster, in Hamburg and Vienna. We also built new big labs in Shanghai and Harbin. So we are doing quite well towards this program, so we believe we will be done by the end of 2020 as we plan. The last lab to come online from this program is the one we are building to house the Covance food testing business. In Medicine, it might move in the first quarter of 2021 as it looks like now.So overall, pretty good. Our organic growth is good, and it was even stronger in July. So the outlook for the rest of the year is good. And I will now let Laurent Lebras talk about a little bit more flavor on our financial results and then we'll switch to Q&A.

L
Laurent Lebras
Group Administration & Finance Director

Thank you, Gilles. Good afternoon, everybody. So indeed, we are very happy to report solid results despite the cyber-attack. As you have seen, I mean we estimate the impact of the cyber-attack to be around EUR 60 million on the revenue and around EUR 50 million on the EBITDA. We believe the bulk of the impact is recorded in the June financials. And of course, we believe the net impact after reimbursement from insurance to be lower than this figure.On EBITDA, I mean we have a solid growth of plus-29% year-on-year at EUR 371 million. Of course, the EBITDA is impacted by -- to effect the IFRS 16 impact, which is a positive of EUR 62 million and the cyber impact, which we estimate as a negative of EUR 50 million. If you try to calculate the like-for-like basis, the EBITDA margin was in a slight decrease of 40 basis points, which is mostly due to Boston Heart difficulties and a bit of dilution from TestAmerica compensating for improvement in other areas of the business.We have reduced our spend on CapEx at EUR 121 million and as well as on M&A at EUR 150 million in line with our objective. And we have a strong free cash flow generation in the first half at plus 60%, including IFRS 16, and it was stable versus last year if we exclude IFRS 16, which is quite remarkable despite the cyber-attack.Overall, our net debt has increased mostly due to the IFRS 16 impact and our leverage is at 3.5x, including IFRS 16, which is also in line with our self-imposed limit.And to conclude, we have an adjusted EPS, which is stable at EUR 8.83. So overall, solid results from organic growth, EBITDA and cash generation despite the cyber-attack. So now we can move to Q&A, if you have any questions for us.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We can take our first question.

W
William Kirkness
Equity Analyst

Sorry, it's Will from Jefferies. Just got 3, please, if that's okay. The first one just on CapEx. The run rate looks to be below EUR 300 million, so just wondering whether there's any timing or seasonality there, whether you might come in a little bit below the original guidance. The second one was just on the current portion of the debt. So it's moved up from EUR 391 million at the end of last year to EUR 882 million. There's obviously going to be a portion of IFRS 16. So I wonder if you can let us know how much of that's IFRS 16. And then is the balance just the sort of RCS-style facility that can be rolled over? And the final question is just around the first half revenue growth. If you could give us maybe the FX impact on the contribution from M&A, that would be quite useful.

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

We are not sure on the CapEx. Some of the CapEx, especially in buildings, is very hard to time. So we're staying towards an objective of around EUR 300 million. Also the IFRS 16 has an impact on the CapEx, so it's a little bit also modified by this. On the other 2 questions, I believe we need to look it up.

L
Laurent Lebras
Group Administration & Finance Director

We have provided in the presentation on Slide 78, a detailed balance sheet with the column isolating the IFRS 16 impact. So I think you can find the amount there because we see the impact of IFRS 16 on each line of the balance sheet. And for the effect, I mean we didn't calculate at the end of June because it's uncomparable. The FX impact at the end of May was marginal. I mean we didn't disclose it, but there is a bit of FX impact indeed from the strong appreciation of the dollar.

W
William Kirkness
Equity Analyst

Okay. Yes, I mean I appreciate, for the half it's not comparable because of the cyber-attack, but in terms of -- you must know your contribution from M&A and you must know the FX impact for the half. Is that something you're just not willing to give us?

L
Laurent Lebras
Group Administration & Finance Director

I mean the contribution from the M&A, I mean, we have disclosed it in the financial note, I mean -- but we don't really disclose the May figure because they are not standard. If you want, I mean we disclose on a fuller reporting period. We have made calculations, of course, but we didn't disclose them so far.

Operator

And we'll take our next question.

S
Suhasini Varanasi
Equity Analyst

This is Suhasini from Goldman Sachs. Just one question, please. If you think about the SDIs of EUR 44 million, is it possible to give a breakdown between the cost relating to the cyber-attack, the lab start-up costs and the other restructuring expenses, please?

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

Yes, do we have that, Laurent?

L
Laurent Lebras
Group Administration & Finance Director

Yes, we have it. I mean like we said, I mean, at the end of June, we have almost no cost related to the cyber booked in the P&L. So we just have the drop of revenue and the drop of profit, which is related to this. But we have very little SDIs, which are related to it. And then the [ peak ] of the SDI. I mean obviously startups and the restructuring. I just need a minute to get back to you, I will give you the...

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

Let's take the next question and come back to this one.

Operator

Okay. And we'll move on to our next question.

A
Allen David Wells
Research Analyst

Allen Wells here from Exane BNP. Just maybe following up on Will's question from the start. Looking at the balance sheet, obviously, quite a step up in the short-term borrowings and just looking at that EUR 880 million versus the EUR 300 million of cash on the balance sheet, could you maybe just talk a little bit about your strategy in terms of your ability to finance, refinance these commitments over the next 12 months? I think it's the biggest, at least the biggest step-up that I remember between short-term liabilities and short-term cash. That's the first question, please. And then the second question. Just looking at the FY '19 outlook. I know you've not said a great deal on -- in the statement, but specifically looking at the EUR 350 million of free cash flow target, is the right way for us to think about that, that if we assumed worst case is a EUR 50 million cash hit from cyber profit, albeit slightly to be less than that given the insurance that the free cash flow and your metric shouldn't be any worse than EUR 300 million. And I guess the reason why I ask is that the EUR 49 million inflow ex IFRS 16 feels like there's an awful lot to do in the second half to get to that number, or are there other factors we need to be aware of there?

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

Yes. We -- on the later point, we have a strong seasonality in our business. We've always had it. And I think last year, our free cash flow was 25% in the first half, if I believe, annual free cash flow. And then maybe share to that some contribution from -- or some hit from the cyber-attack, you'll find it. On one point, it wasn't ours, these are objectives for the year. We haven't changed our objectives. The questions of course will be, what part of the cash can we recover that was missed in June and how this will be booked? And -- but if we recover what we believe would be right, all of the lost margin, there's no reason for us to change our objectives. Organic growth is in line with our objectives and our business is doing well. On the short term, when Laurent is looking at the details, what you have to know is our bank lines are maybe booked there, but they are 5-year terms. So we have -- they are actually long commitments. So that's just as an aside. And we committed to flexibilize our cash needs so that we don't have to carry so much cash on our balance sheet on an ongoing basis as we did in the past, which caused us to pay interest for things we don't use. And that's why we will use, on an ongoing basis, some of those bank facilities.

Operator

And we'll move on to our next question.

U
Unknown Analyst

I've got 3 questions, if I may. The first is on the -- trying to assess your operating leverage of that -- of the malware impact and see it was all just the gross profit loss on the sales -- the revenue loss or if there were some extra items to deal with the crisis during June? And also on -- also you saw some client that didn't come back after the restoration of the operation. That would be the first question. Second question is on the tax. Your tax on the P&L seems much lower than the tax paid on the cash flow. Just wondering if you could give us an idea of your guidance for tax this year and when this gap will eventually narrow? And thirdly, on the various businesses in terms of the organic growth trends you -- I think you mentioned, stabilization in clinical diagnostic in France. Could you give us an indication of the progress of clinical diagnostic, especially with Boston Heart still under pressure and see if your pipeline is providing some comfort for 2020?

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

Yes. So as Laurent mentioned, the -- we did have so many direct impact in additional costs in June. The order of EUR 1 million or EUR 2 million or something like that in our SDIs, that's not the major impact. We will have some ongoing cost remediation but they are not like huge. Then we haven't seen issues with clients not coming back. Obviously, this is not pleasing for any client and our teams are really bent over backwards to try to continue to work on the most urgent samples in a more manual way wherever that was possible. Some clients with very urgent work that could not be delayed during that period, then I've sent it somewhere else. And others maybe have delayed some work, some work will never be done. We don't really know. We haven't heard of clients saying, okay, we won't work with you anymore because of that or not in a material way. Anyway, clients come and go from some of our business. On the tax aspect, I think it's very hard to read that, I fear, honestly speaking, we have a lot of onetime effects, so we don't provide a tax guidance, and we do hope that we will have a bit narrower gap between the cash -- the tax paid and the tax booked by the end of the year.And to come back on the question from one person before in terms of SDI out of the EUR 44 million. I mean basically EUR 23 million is linked to start-ups, scopes and EUR 5 million from restructuring scopes and EUR 15 million from integrations and reorganizations.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And now we'll take our next question.

U
Unknown Analyst

I've got a few, please. Can I just clarify one point that Allen made earlier? It sounded like you said that you booked the short-term debt in current liabilities and then said that those are sort of 5-year facilities. So I'm not sure why would they be booked into current liabilities rather than -- not current liabilities. Sorry to dwell on the point. But secondly, on the hybrid, which you have said in the past that you will pay off come the step-up dates in January. Is that still the intention to do that, please? And finally, you -- I think in part, the reason for the results being delayed slightly was for the change of auditor, and I just wonder why at the last half year report, there was an auditor statement at the back of the report. And this half year, there doesn't seem to be one.

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

Thank you. Laurent, do you want to answer the short-term loan question or are you still looking into it?

L
Laurent Lebras
Group Administration & Finance Director

I'm still looking into it. But I can answer the last part of the question on the auditors. I mean the audit works have been completed with Deloitte, and the new opinion is under a quality review, which is a normal process and should be issued probably in the next 2 days.

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

On the hybrid, we -- it's expensive to not reimburse an hybrid, and why we cannot make any commitment on that legally because that give a free lunch to whoever is holding that paper. I don't see why we wouldn't reimburse that hybrid in January, it will make all the things possible. So the -- on the detail of short-term debt, Laurent will come back later. But it hasn't changed so much actually, if I look at what it was last year. So we can take the next question.

Operator

And we're going to take our next question.

M
Murielle Andre-Pinard

Murielle Andre, HSBC. I have 2 questions. First regarding CapEx. I'm a bit surprised to see the restatement of EUR 36 million between CapEx, including IFRS 16 and CapEx before IFRS 16. And I would like to understand what it refers to, the 6 -- EUR 36 million? And my second question is regarding SDI. What we have to expect as SDI level for the full year at this stage, please?

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

Yes. So I guess on the IFRS 16 is when you rent new buildings, you have to account for the -- for whatever the commitment is in the lease as CapEx, and that is probably what happened in the first half. And for the full year, we still have quite a bit of going on and moving into our new campuses, our startups are renting up. We still have more startups. Also, Boston Heart is in this category startup and is losing a lot of money, so that is an impact. The comparable gets better in Q4 for Boston Heart, but we'll still suffer in Q3 from that company. Good news is it's getting much smaller, and in next year, it will be much more negligible.I realize actually I missed one question earlier on the clinical diagnostics. So I'm starting to answer this one. While Boston Heart is continuing to not do well, and as I mentioned, we think it will be pretty negligible in our total group by the end of the year. So that's one thing. The other thing is, on our European clinical diagnostics, the business is not changing very much. It is profitable, generating good cash flow, not growing very fast for the routine part. We are starting to see some traction on the noninvasive prenatal testing. We've got very good growth. I think we're at 10% or 20% organic growth on that segment where we are probably the largest player in Europe on this type of advanced testing in volume. And our new technologies on that, we're making good progress to get the CE marking on the new test that we have that is much more cost effective for 2021 than whatever else is on the market. We'll make an announcement when we get it, but this is becoming -- looking better and better, and that could have a big potential also outside of Europe in markets where maybe not every insurer can pay EUR 200 or EUR 250 for NGS test.In the U.S., outside of Boston Heart, our clinical testing business is doing well, actually quite well. Our -- especially our business around transplant patient, where we are the market leader and there, we have a very good pipeline of tests. And I think at least 1 is getting very close to being reimbursed. And if that reimbursement is good, this could be a huge run for our business in terms of growth and the use benefit for patients because this is a test that can detect subacute rejection before there is any other sign of rejection of kidney, transplanted kidney. And so it can save a lot of biopsies for patients, and this is something where medical benefit is great. We're very happy to cooperate with the scientists who developed it. And then we have another series of tests that are in our pipeline that we can launch right after that and which will add added benefit. Also around birth, we've got a good range of tests. And so I think if I look at 2020 for specialized clinical diagnostic, we have nice things in the pipeline.

L
Laurent Lebras
Group Administration & Finance Director

On the short-term borrowings, to come back on the question that was asked previously. It's mostly due to drawing of RCF lines with a short maturity. This is why it's falling under the short-term borrowings. But most of the lines, like Gilles said, has a 5-year maturity and on a permanent renewal. So this is not something which will [ go away ].

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

All right. So I guess we answered the awkward question. Is there anything -- are there more questions?

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We currently have no questions in the queue. [Operator Instructions] And we do have another question.

U
Unknown Analyst

[indiscernible] Just a really quick question because you mentioned as to cyber-attack, that maybe some work has been delayed or postponed by July and some cannot be [ concerned ]. Given the good organic growth by July, would you be able to maybe speak to the impact of the work that have been postponed from June to July just to try to see what I mean by July to normalize organic growth [indiscernible]?

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

I think not so much has moved to July. It's pretty marginal because the labs that had stock, they pretty much filled down their stock in second half of June, a little bit will be in July or maybe August, but there's some -- not meaningful. In July, we still were -- we still had one lab, one large lab, which was not working. This was our forensic business in the UK, which is -- which was still an hinderance and it has restarted end of July. So yes, I don't think there will be normally, should not be so much ongoing impact after June, which way -- whatever.

Operator

And we have another question.

U
Unknown Analyst

[indiscernible] from Marshall Wace. So I just had a question on the declared organic growth, and in the January to May period of 4.5%, is that comparable to the 3.6% in Q1 or the 4.9% in Q1 trading day adjusted?

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

I think there was no -- pretty much no trading day impact from the period to May. So it is -- there's no significant adjustment on that.

U
Unknown Analyst

Okay. So I should really think of that as being a slightly slower growth in the April to May period compared to the 4.9% in the January to March?

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

Because there was a correction for Boston Heart also in January to March, which I don't have in front of me. And I think I have to look at the press release for March. The main message is, in the year to date, May, we were at 4.5% and that's before the impact of Boston Heart, which is almost 1%. So if you extract Boston Heart from this period, you have something that is above our 5% objective for the year.

L
Laurent Lebras
Group Administration & Finance Director

In Q1, we mentioned that the organic growth, excluding our Boston Heart, was 5.7%. So we're in the scenario today, at the end of May.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And it appears we have no further questions -- my apologies, we do have one more question.

U
Unknown Analyst

[indiscernible] from [ Equity Investment ]. I've got a question concerning your debt mix. And do you intend to change that? And the second thing is, do you intend to get your rating as now you've got a bunch of securities in the market?

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

Yes. I mean long term, we already indicated that we are thinking to getting a rating and maybe 2021 is maybe a time or somewhere '20, anywhere between 2020, 2022 is a point where we should get a rating. First, we want to deleverage a bit. This is something we have put in the press release we haven't talked about here. We pretty much have all the laboratories that we needed. So we have the right footprint, we don't need to do very large acquisitions anymore. We have the right mix of product. As you see now, we -- the things we looked at were more like technologies rather than big laboratories. Although we added some labs in environment in the U.K. and Spain where we were not strong, we were not present there in a meaningful way. So the M&A will be lower for the next few years and it has been in '17 and in '18. Our CapEx also should start to be much less by 2021 because we have built our labs, we have built on this work. We still have startups but EUR 300 million is a lot of room to build labs. And so overall, that should all lead to deleveraging. And then at some point, we should get the benefits of all those investments. Those of you who will visit our labs in -- at our Investor Days in Hamburg and Lancaster will see where all those CapEx went. Our free cash flow after CapEx is not that big but it's not like we're spending the money. We generate a lot of cash and a lot of that cash we invest in buildings that will be there for the next 30 or 50 years. And that will make us even more competitive. Also the IT systems we're investing in are really best-in-class and will give us competitive advantage going forward.And also all the money we spend in SDI to put labs together, consolidate labs, we don't spend it because we love to spend money, we do it because once you have built those big labs and you've moved your business in those big labs, you are much more effective, cost effective, your logistic costs are lower, and we can compete in a better way because we can be faster, offer better service, better [ carriers ] to our employees, we work on a big campus, where they can have a range of different jobs. So all those things should lead, going forward, especially from 2021 when this program is finished to a much better margin. Our teams can more focus on clients and growth than they have been when they were moving labs around. Therefore, all of that should allow us to deleverage. And with a bit of deleverage, we think we should get a good rating, which is what we'll do. And then we'll adapt our debt mix to the circumstances. It's -- we still want to keep a bit of flexibility, so we'll keep some -- using some bank lines, which as I say, are committed for 5 years. So we can -- when they -- the drawings expire, we draw again. It's -- again, it's a committed line. And maybe we reissue some bonds. We'll try to manage our maturities to have always a low maturity for the bulk of our debt and to spread it evenly over time.

Operator

We'll now move to our next question.

U
Unknown Analyst

Just a single one. During your last session, you stated your interest [indiscernible] long-term investors. And you were trying to restate that you are wishing you take if the necessary would apply. And where do you stand today on this point?

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

Sorry, I'm not sure I understood your question. Do you mind repeating it?

U
Unknown Analyst

Yes. During the last meeting, you stated that you were in line with your long-term investors. And that you would -- it would mean that in terms of [indiscernible] stand today.

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

Excuse me, the line didn't -- was not good. I didn't understand at all what you were saying. Can you speak closer to the microphone maybe?

U
Unknown Analyst

Okay, I'll try. During your last session, you stated that you were in line with your long-term investors and you outlined a certain number of steps that could take against short selling or the other type of attacks. And my question is, where do you stand today?

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

Yes, I see. Well, first thing, we try to give all our investors full information about what the company is doing and what our plans are and so that they can make their decisions in the most logical way and not be too, let's say, manipulated by misleading -- potentially misleading information that is being spread around. So that's what's new. And we have some people, they're monitoring this type of potentially misleading rumors and we'll take legal action if required. So that's one aspect.On the short selling, of course we could buy back shares, our cash flow will increase, something we could do. We also mentioned, if at some point, that was not strictly related to short selling, but if at some point, we felt that our debt is too high or that we would like to buy large assets, we don't want to have more debt. We also have a lot of assets that we could dispose of. We could -- we still have a lot of inbound interest on some of our assets. I mean a lot of people have said we shouldn't own Eurofins Clinical Diagnostics, so this hasn't been lost on potential buyers who are calling us all the time saying, when do you sell French clinical diagnostic business? And this is worth a lot of money. So there are a few assets that definitely could attract very high valuations that we could sell if we decided we should put our money elsewhere or we should run with lower leverage.

Operator

Move to our next question.

U
Unknown Analyst

I just wanted to come back to a question on the organic sales growth. In the release, you referred to that in July, the organic sales were sort of above the January to May level. And I just wondered is that above the 5.5% or above the 4.5%?

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

No. It's both. 5.5% is correct for Boston Heart impact and the other one not. It's both and it's also true if we correct for days. Now of course, you should correct for days, just one month, it's getting less and less meaningful. But in July, and in pre-correction, we were at almost -- I mean, I can't say the number, we were way above those numbers.

U
Unknown Analyst

Okay. And when was Boston Heart consolidated? Which month?

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

We've had it since 2015, I believe. But it's -- the reimbursement changed in -- during -- in the middle of Q4 of last year. So that's where we -- when we started to see a very big dip in revenues and hence ongoing losses. For Boston Heart, we see that for Q3 and Q4, the impact will be much less.

Operator

And we'll move to our next question.

U
Unknown Analyst

I had a couple of questions. First, just on the credit, on the debt side. Just trying to follow this move in short-term liabilities, maybe another way to think about it is that I think at the full year, December '18, you had about EUR 900 million of liabilities between bank borrowings and commercial paper. I think that now sits at closer to EUR 800 million. So I'm trying to reconcile that move with the increase in the short-term liability that you mentioned. It's drawing on RCF, but it doesn't seem to be reflected in the numbers I just mentioned. And then alongside that, related to the debt, you mentioned that you -- these RCF lines. Can you please tell us the amount of committed lines you have available? I know you've disclosed that you have a EUR 750 million commercial paper program, of which is now EUR 320 million is drawn. Can you disclose kind of the size of your committed RCF lines, please?

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

I would answer the last question while they look up the numbers. But we have a large amount of additional committed line above the -- whatever we use, and we want to keep it that way to have flexibility. But we don't communicate on this because it's changing all the time also. We get permanently renewed lines, extend lines. So we -- what we can say is we have a large buffer above what we use.

L
Laurent Lebras
Group Administration & Finance Director

Like I said before, I mean the increase of the short-term borrowings is mostly due to drawing of the short-term maturities. That's pretty [ what we expect ] versus the comparative period and to produce early.

U
Unknown Analyst

Okay. And then just a question for clarification. Going back a few calls, I think you changed the auditor for your Luxembourg entity, and I believe it is now going to be audited by PwC. Can you disclose when we should expect to receive those audited financials for the Lux entity? And can you confirm that the auditor for the year just gone by will be PwC?

L
Laurent Lebras
Group Administration & Finance Director

Yes, we can confirm that PwC is auditing all the Lux companies, so all [ deals mostly ]. And these audits are under finalization and they should be filed very shortly now.

U
Unknown Analyst

Okay. So it will be Lux along with the group?

L
Laurent Lebras
Group Administration & Finance Director

No. PwC is not in charge of the group anymore. We have changed for the year 2019 to Deloitte, and PwC is auditing the Lux holdings for the 2018 period that you're referring to, I'm assuming.

J
Jerome Vinerier
Technical Analyst

Yes. I'm just trying to reconcile the comment that you addressed in earlier question that there'll be some audits released in, I think, 2 days. So I'm just trying to see -- check were those you're referring to, the Luxembourg audits, there or not?

L
Laurent Lebras
Group Administration & Finance Director

No. We are referring here to the opinion, I mean the limited review opinion from Deloitte for the first half of 2019.

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

For the consolidated accounts.

L
Laurent Lebras
Group Administration & Finance Director

Yes.

Operator

And at this time, we have no further questions. [Operator Instructions] It appears we have no further questions. So I'll hand the call back to you.

G
Gilles G. Martin
Chairman of the Board & CEO

Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much to all of you for joining our call, for all the questions. We apologize for the complexity of our accounts with this IFRS 16, first application and then the impact of the cyber-attack. This makes our accounts very hard to read. I -- we also apologize, we are not providing -- we have not focused on anything for the full -- half year regarding growth because it's meaningless. And we've done it for the end of May, that's why we try to give you an indication. So we try to give you an indication of how the company is going. We think the trend hasn't changed much after the company recovered from the cyber-attack. We think our objective of 5% organic growth for the year is an objective we can stick to.And of course, we will see the second half of the year, how it pans out. But as far as we can see right now, it looks good. At some point, we'll get this drag by Boston Heart resolved. And definitely next year, it won't be much of an impact anymore. So what should you be looking out for as part -- as far as Eurofins is concerned? We'll be continuing to move our business into those large campuses. We will be continuing to invest in our IT solutions to have the best-in-class and also the best online tools that exist in the industry. We're becoming more and more of an IT company. And this will -- we plan to make very good progress over the next -- this year and next year. We think we'll be there by the end of next year. The company as a whole, we'll do fewer acquisitions, fewer startups. So we'll focus for the next 18 months or 16 months now until 2020 to really get all those labs that we have built to generate good returns and good cash flow, get those startups to profitability. We have very good growth in Asia Pacific, we are entering new markets that are very exciting. We're also positioning, after in 2010, et cetera, we saw that we would hit a very strong market position in Europe. So we decided to look at North America, from 2011, we started to invest in North America. We have a view to get the same market positions there that we had in Europe, and we've achieved that. In the last 7 years, we've become the market leader in pretty much all of our markets in North America as we are in Europe, in very exciting markets that are -- that we see are on a cyclical -- things linked to health with testing of new pharmaceutical products and testing food and testing the environment, also testing -- and some of the clinical tests that we're doing at super-fast growth. Actually, in this context, if you want to stop getting ready for some announcements we may be making in the later part of the year about our new test in clinical diagnostics, you can look at the -- some companies are public and are pure play in there, we have it as part of all our activities. But if you look at companies like Natera or CareDx, they have very similar portfolio to what we are doing and that may help you see a bit what we are planning and why we are investing in clinical diagnostic. We're not only investing in clinical diagnostic to have to report that the routine doesn't grow. We do it because -- and we did the routine because we think it's a good platform to distribute very advanced tests that have very high-growth potential. So maybe if you look at the analyst reports on Natera and CareDx, you'll see a bit -- the type of tests we're working on. And that's just on a few areas.So that's basically the outlook. We think our markets are -- look good, are well oriented, there's a lot of work. And our teams have worked very hard to surmount this cyber-attack. And so now they will be able to focus more on their clients. We are thankful that our clients have stuck with us and -- through the pain and difficulty for those labs that were affected. It is -- has been a very serious event, for which we apologize. Although, it was really criminally caused and they have been very hard to avoid. But we're working hard and our IT teams are working hard to be even more resilient and stronger. But the good thing is now we're big enough that even in an event of that magnitude doesn't rock the boat all that much. So we're continuing and we're continuing to build a great company in very exciting markets.So thanks for all of you for joining this call. Sorry that we could not give you immediately some answers because we haven't focused so much on the [ offshore ] results because they are -- the numbers are a bit meaningless. But if you have any additional question, you know how to reach Victoire and our IR team and we'll try to follow up with specifics. Thank you very much, and have a good day.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.