Most of the excitement will center around Ambu's 2021/2022 financial guidance when it presents its full-year report for 2020/2021 on Tuesday, says Senior Analyst at Sydbank Søren Løntoft Hansen, who is expecting Ambu's Visualization business to go up and Core business to be impacted by logistics challenges. 

In October, Ambu publicized preliminary numbers for the fourth quarter containing an expected revenue of DKK 1027m (USD 160m) and an orgnic growth of 18 percent. In connection with this, the medtech company downgraded its full-year financial guidance for the second time this year.

Those preliminary numbers point to a positive progression within Visualization, whereas Core reported impacts by the challenging global shipping conditions and subsequent logistics challenges.

Visualization pulls up

Ambu has already revealed some fourth quarter numbers for its Visualization business. It reportedky landed on an organic growth of 37 percent in Q4, mainly due to unit sales of endoscopes reaching 390,000 – while revenue amounted to DKK 522m (USD 81m).

In particular, the endoscopes Ascope 4 Cysto and Ascope Rhinolaryngo have pulled the division upward.

"We take note of the announcement of a positive contribution in the form of double-digit growth from Ascope 4 Cysto within cystoscopy as well as Ascope Rhinolaryngo within rhinolaryngoscopy during 2021," Løntoft Hansen writes in the prelude to the financial report, adding that he is also looking forward to news about the launch of Ascope Duodeno 1.5.

The analyst is expecting operating profits of DKK 16m (USD 2.5m), corresponding to a profit margin of 1.6 percent, compared with 3.3 percent in Q4 2019/2020.

Ambu's Core business, including the divisions Anaesthesia and Patient Monitoring & Diagnostics (PMD), have been affected by the logistics challenges with bottlenecking in the shipping industry, the October press release stated.

Delays to customer orders have meant that the financial year ends with an order backlog, and as a consequence, organic growth will land on just 2 percent – pulled down particularly by Anaesthesia, the analyst assesses.

Due to Visualization's progress, Løntoft Hansen expects to see a gross margin of 62.1 percent in Q4, corresponding to a 0.7-percent increase comprared to the same period last year.

On the other hand, rising transportation costs will increase sales and distribution expenses, thus weakening the EBIT (earnings before taxes and interests) and the profit margins.

The Sydbank analyst is also expecting an Ambu 2021/2022 organic growth of 23 percent and EBIT margin of 13.5 percent. This estimate is based on endoscope unit sales reaching 1,953,000.

However, analyst estimates about Ambu's financial figures come with a level of uncertainty, as the medtech company's product portfolio has a great pricing variation on individual endoscopes within the Visualization division.

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