Agfa's Two-Speed Story: Growth Engines Fire as Legacy Units Drag

MORTSEL, BELGIUM – March 11, 2026 – Agfa-Gevaert Group presented a tale of two companies in its 2025 annual results, showcasing a robust fourth-quarter performance driven by its modern growth engines, even as the full-year figures were pulled down by the persistent decline of its traditional film businesses. The results paint a vivid picture of a legacy industrial giant in the midst of a high-stakes strategic pivot, aggressively investing in digital healthcare and green hydrogen while restructuring its once-dominant imaging divisions.

While the Group’s full-year adjusted EBITDA fell to 59 million euro from 70 million in 2024, a strong Q4 finish, with adjusted EBITDA climbing to 39 million euro, signaled that its strategic initiatives are beginning to bear fruit. The company's leadership is betting that this momentum, combined with a major organizational overhaul effective this year, will redefine Agfa for a new era.

“This year confirmed that the strategy we designed for our growth engines is the right one,” said Pascal Juéry, President and CEO of the Agfa-Gevaert Group, in a statement. “At the same time, persistent pressure in medical film markets meant we had to move faster on savings, which directly supported our Q4 performance. These market challenges will continue, and we will navigate them with strict cost and cash discipline as we enter 2026.”

Digital Health and Green Tech Provide a Glimpse of the Future

The brightest spots in Agfa’s portfolio were its HealthCare IT and Digital Print & Chemicals divisions, which demonstrated significant progress. The HealthCare IT division is successfully navigating a crucial transition to a cloud-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, particularly in its core North American market. Full-year order intake surged by 14% to 187 million euro, with orders for cloud solutions rocketing up by 38%. In the fourth quarter, an impressive 58% of all new orders were for cloud technology, a clear indicator of accelerating market adoption.

This is not just internal optimism; the market is validating Agfa’s strategy. The company has earned multiple “Best in KLAS” awards for 2026, a prestigious industry recognition based on customer feedback. Its Enterprise Imaging platform was ranked #1 in the U.S. for its PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System), Universal Viewer, and VNA (Vendor Neutral Archive) solutions. This industry acclaim underscores growing customer confidence and is helping Agfa gain market share in the fiercely competitive enterprise imaging market, which is projected to grow to over USD 4 billion by 2030.

Equally impressive was the performance of the Digital Print & Chemicals division, which saw its adjusted EBITDA jump by 37.5% to 42.3 million euro for the year. A standout performer within this segment is the Green Hydrogen Solutions business. Despite a slow start to the year, sales of its ZIRFON membranes for green hydrogen production grew, culminating in a record-breaking fourth quarter with 22.1% top-line growth. These membranes are a critical component for alkaline water electrolysis, a key technology for producing carbon-free hydrogen.

With global policies like Europe’s REDIII directive and the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act fueling massive investment, the green hydrogen market is forecast to expand at a compound annual growth rate of over 50% through 2032. Agfa has positioned itself to capture this growth, recently inaugurating a new state-of-the-art ZIRFON production facility to meet burgeoning demand from electrolyzer manufacturers worldwide.

The Heavy Weight of Legacy Film

In stark contrast to the dynamism of its growth divisions, Agfa’s Radiology Solutions segment continues to face severe headwinds. The division’s revenue plummeted by 17.1% in 2025, a decline that erased the gains made elsewhere and was the primary cause of the Group’s overall drop in annual profitability. The performance was heavily impacted by the accelerating decline of the traditional medical film market, particularly in China, as hospitals and clinics worldwide complete their transition to faster and more efficient digital imaging workflows.

Agfa’s management has responded with decisive action, accelerating and expanding its restructuring programs to slash costs in the film business. These efforts, which include a go-to-market review and workforce adjustments, began to materialize in the second half of 2025, contributing to the stronger Q4 group performance. The company realized 36 million euro in annualized savings by the end of the year and has already negotiated further measures that will be implemented through 2026 and 2027.

While the company’s Direct Radiography (DR) business showed relative resilience, outperforming a contracting market, the overarching story for the division remains one of managing a difficult but necessary decline.

A New Blueprint for a Transformed Company

To better execute its two-speed strategy, Agfa has fundamentally reorganized its operations. As of January 1, 2026, the company operates under a new three-segment structure designed to provide greater focus and allocate resources more effectively.

1. HealthCare IT: A standalone segment dedicated to capturing the growth in cloud-based enterprise imaging.
2. Industrial Solutions: Combining the high-potential Digital Printing Solutions and Green Hydrogen Solutions businesses.
3. Imaging and Chemicals: Consolidating the traditional medical film, specialty films, and digital radiology hardware businesses to be managed for efficiency and cash generation.

This new structure formalizes the company’s strategic direction, creating a clear separation between the high-growth, investment-heavy businesses of the future and the legacy units being streamlined. It allows management to pursue distinct strategies for each segment, fostering agility in its growth engines while enforcing strict discipline in its traditional markets.

This transformation, however, comes at a significant near-term cost. While Agfa generated a positive free cash flow of 35 million euro in 2025, thanks to disciplined working capital management and a one-off arbitration payment, it is forecasting a negative free cash flow for 2026. This is attributed to the substantial cash outflows required to fund the extensive restructuring and transformation plans. Despite this, the company has shored up its financial position, reducing its net financial debt and securing a new three-year revolving credit facility to ensure it has the liquidity to navigate this pivotal period of investment.