2023-09-05 21:05:20
It has an Italian heart and supplies more than 10 billion containers to the pharmaceutical world every year, from 16 plants in 9 countries, working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Stevanato Group is described by its top management as “a company born in Italy , which will remain in Italy for the next few decades, with a focus on opening up capital to finance growth”. Listed on Wall Street from 2021, the company called an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting for 4 October to resolve on granting the Board of Directors the power to increase the share capital, up to a maximum of 350 million euros (by issuing shares in one or more tranche, within the limit of 10% of the total number of company shares currently existing).
The aim is to maintain the balance between two souls: that of a “historic company of Italian origins” and that of a reality that “works in a global context, with strong people in line with our values”. The meaning of what will be discussed on 4 October is “to be able to have flexibility for the next few months or years, in order to be ready if we want to make a collection to recapitalize the company based on the opportunities that present themselves”, he clarified to the time.news Salute Franco Stevanato, president of Stevanato Group. A long time has passed since grandfather Giovanni began this story of Venetian entrepreneurship, which has its roots in Mestre and in glass, and today this story continues to be written in the headquarters in Piombino Dese (Padua). “We have been in the area for 75 years – he recalls – the last 50 of which have been spent serving the pharmaceutical industry”. At the beginning of the 2000s, the globalization of customers gave the group the push to become global.
More than 20 years have passed since then and there has also been the listing of “12% of the company” on the New York Stock Exchange, which has allowed Stevanato Group to make a “raising of approximately 700 million dollars. 70% of this collection has been reinvested, because we have received an ever-increasing demand for new products that are anchored in syringes, cartridges, bottles and special devices”, pre-filled pens (“where we do everything, from the glass heart to the plastic parts that we assemble with our own technology”). Acquisitions “at the moment are not planned – says Stevanato – because we are very focused on starting up two new plants, in Indianapolis (USA) and the new module in Cisterna (Latina). Today we are pressing the accelerator on building production capacity of high value products, a need driven by market demand. And these are very important investments from the point of view of capital. We are also accelerating on research and development”. Only behind the pre-filled pens, to give an idea, is a world hidden, ranging from insulin to drugs of the moment: Glp-1 analogues, antidiabetic drugs also used for weight loss (semaglutide and others) .
The group had 2022 revenues up 17% to 983.7 million euros and expects 2023 revenues to be between 1.085 and 1.115 billion euros. Another key word for Stevanato’s growth was: mRna, a field in development for years, known by the general public on the wave of Covid vaccines and launching towards more scientific directions that go beyond Sars-CoV-2. For those who work with this platform, the group has developed a technology that responds to some particular needs, from a special silicone coating system to the need to guarantee a process – that of mRNA – which undergoes large changes in temperature.
“Our customers are in the vaccines, anticancer, biotechnology, diabetes, heparin, Glp-1 sectors,” lists Stevanato. “We – he continues – have tried to diversify the risk, to be present in Europe, Asia, the USA and in every therapeutic area in order to compensate for every ‘up’ and ‘down’. With mRna, Glp-1, monoclonal antibodies and biosimilars we have good tail winds that make us grow”.
If you look at the photograph of August-September 2023, explains Franco Stevanato, “we have the new Latina plant in start-up, it will start producing at the end of the year. The bigger one in Indianapolis”, an investment made by 2026 equal to 500 million dollars , “is doing validations and receiving customer visits and will start production from January. We are executing our ten-year vision”. The drivers who have guided and guide the growth of the group? “Research and development, globalization and targeted acquisitions in Germany, Denmark, California, of skills that we did not have within the group, especially in the field of high precision plastics or advanced engineering”, lists Stevanato.
“We have worked a lot on research and development – he explains – to move from being pure contractors to having more and more products in our portfolio with our intellectual property. Today we have a research center here” in Piombino Dese, “and one in Boston. There are several thousand molecules in phase 1, 2 or 3 of development, to which pharmaceutical companies or research centers and universities work. We get in touch with these realities to develop glass, plastic or advanced engineering products and immediately become partners of choice”.
What has happened in recent years is that “the pharmaceutical sector is growing between 6 and 8% and there are very strong drivers worldwide – observes the president Stevanato – On the chronic disease front, we are developing advanced platforms for drug delivery systems or wearable devices that make the slow release of the drug”. Then there is “the tendency of the pharmaceutical company to outsource parts of their production chain to suppliers or partners like Stevanato: washing, silicone coating, all the pre-assembly. And therefore we have equipped all our production centers for this. This the market has liked it, from the customer from the large American biologics company to the biosimilars company in Asia”.
The important part of turnover is obviously “that of products”, biopharmaceutical and diagnostic solutions represented around 80% of revenues in 2022, “but engineering is a strategic axis – assures the president of Stevanato Group – One of our points strength is that we supply the product, which is also processed with our machines and we enter the most complete intimacy of what is the company’s supply chain for injectable products.In the next 5-10 years we will continue to work on this, by increasingly strengthening our processes, to become a holistic partner of the pharmaceutical company. Our expectations? Are to maintain organic growth in the range between high single digits and low double digits”.
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