GÖTTINGEN (dpa-AFX) - After another strong year with substantial sales and earnings growth, pharmaceutical and laboratory equipment supplier Sartorius is preparing to slow down. For 2023, the DAX-listed company is targeting sales revenue growth in the low single digits on a constant currency basis, Sartorius announced in Goettingen, Germany, on Thursday. The background is also a drop in order intake after the Lower Saxony-based company had still benefited exceptionally strongly from demand from vaccine manufacturers during the corona pandemic. Excluding the corona-related business, sales are expected to increase in the upper single-digit percentage range in 2023. The stock was up sharply in premarket trading.

In the morning, the shares gained a good three percent to 420 euros on the Tradegate trading platform compared with the Xetra close. Analyst Odysseas Manesiotis of the private bank Berenberg spoke of solid results and a decent business outlook in relation to market expectations.

In 2022, Sartorius had posted even higher growth. According to preliminary calculations, sales revenue had risen 21 percent year on year to just under 4.2 billion euros; adjusted for exchange rate effects, this was an increase of 15 percent. Despite the challenging environment, Sartorius grew across its entire portfolio and all regions, Group CEO Joachim Kreuzburg said according to the press release. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (adjusted Ebitda) climbed a fifth to a good 1.4 billion euros.

The adjusted operating margin fell slightly to 33.8 percent from 34.1 percent a year earlier. In 2021, however, Sartorius had still benefited on the cost side, for example, from delayed hiring due to the pandemic and fewer business trips; such effects had a stronger impact again in 2022.

Below the line, adjusted net profit reached 655 million euros, up a good 18 percent year on year. The Group plans to present its annual report with the final figures on February 17.

Sartorius had recently responded to rising costs and inflation with price increases - the Group therefore raised its sales revenue target for the period up to 2025 from around 5 to now 5.5 billion euros. The adjusted operating margin (adjusted Ebitda margin) is expected to remain unchanged at around 34 percent.

After two exceptionally strong pandemic-related years, demand has normalized and corona-related business is significantly lower, the Group added. As a result, order intake fell a good 6 percent to about 4 billion euros in 2022. During the pandemic, Sartorius had also benefited from a change in the ordering behavior of customers, who had distributed larger orders right away and ordered further in advance than usual.

Above all, the Biotechnology Division, which is mainly managed under the umbrella of the French subsidiary Sartorius Stedim Biotech, had benefited from the high Corona demand during the pandemic. It was significantly affected by the lower orders. Nevertheless, this division, which offers a broad range of technologies for the manufacture of vaccines and pharmaceutical products, was also able to achieve double-digit percentage growth in both sales revenue and earnings in 2022.

The much smaller laboratory division also flourished - here, order intake picked up in contrast to the larger biotech pillar. According to the figures, business with bioanalytical instruments grew particularly strongly. Kreuzburg's Executive Board expects the Laboratory Division to grow more strongly than the biotechnology business in the new year.

At the same time, the Executive Board expects the corona-related business to be completely eliminated this year, as Kreuzburg explained in a video conference with journalists. In 2021, Sartorius had still generated around half a billion euros in sales revenue from pandemic-related business - last year, revenue from this business already dropped to around 220 million euros./tav/mis/stk