STAAR Surgical Company

Greetings, and welcome to the Star Surgical first quarter 2026 results call and webcast. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. I would now like to turn the call over to Connie Johnson, Director of Investor Relations.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. On the call today are Warren Faust, Interim Co-CEO, President, and Chief Operating Officer of Star Surgical. and Deborah Andrews, Interim Co-CEO and Chief Financial Officer of Star Surgical. Earlier today, we reported a first quarter 2026 results via press release and Form 8K. We posted our results release and shareholder letter to our investor website at investors.star.com. Today's call is scheduled for one hour and will include Q&A for publishing analysts. Webcast participants can also send questions for today's Q&A session to ir.star.com. Before we get started, I want to remind you that during today's call, we will be making forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. I encourage you to read the disclosures in today's release as well as disclosures in our filings with the SEC. Except as required by law, STAR assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or actual outcomes. In addition, during today's discussion, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA and constant currency sales. Please refer to today's release for definitions and reconciliations of non-GAAP metrics. For brevity, unless otherwise specified, all comparisons on today's call will be on a year-over-year basis versus the relevant period. Finally, a quick reminder. We intend to use our website as a means of disclosing material, non-public information, and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. Such disclosures will be included on our website in the investor relations section. Accordingly, investors should monitor our investor website in addition to following our press releases, SEC filings, and public conference calls and webcasts. And with that, I would like to turn the presentation over to Interim Co-CEO, Warren Faust. Warren?

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Deborah and I are excited to be with you once again and to update you on the progress that we have made in our first 100 or so days since we began leading the company as interim co-CEOs. I'm really happy to talk about Q1 of 2026, as we have now largely moved past many of the challenges that we faced in 2025. Significant disruption stemming from the potential Alcon merger process, elevated channel inventory in our largest market, and risks of rising tariffs, to name a few. Those issues are behind us. Now, turning to Q1, we see that we're off to a very positive start as reflected in our first quarter results. I would point to solid execution across the business and continued momentum broadly across our key markets. We made substantial advancements in pursuit of our core objectives, in particular relative to revenue growth and expansion of our profitability. We remain focused on these efforts, as well as working to strengthen our product portfolio and developing our next generation pipeline. In the first quarter, we delivered strong net sales growth, both sequentially and year over year. We also delivered a meaningful improvement in profitability in the quarter, with adjusted EBITDA turning positive. This performance was driven primarily by strong results in China, our first greater than $6 million quarter in the United States, and solid growth from each of our three regions. We were also excited to reach a significant milestone, surpassing 4 million ICLs sold globally. I'm proud of our committed teams and distribution partners around the world who are driving revenue growth. At the same time, we are maintaining spending discipline and improving profitability through focused execution. I believe that our results are an early indication that our approach is beginning to work. Beyond the financial results, the quarter also included several important business milestones that reinforce our confidence in Star's long-term opportunity. First, we made further advancements in the launch of EVO Plus ICL in China and began shipping meaningful volumes into the market. Second, we entered Q1 with inventory levels in China normalized and aligned with our contractual targets, and we were able to grow sales while maintaining and even slightly reducing inventory levels during the quarter. Third, our Nidal Switzerland manufacturing facility continues to scale and has planned in 2026 to supply 100% of the EVO and EVO Plus lenses shipped to China without import tariffs. And finally, we are progressing through the rollout of our new Oracle ERP system with limited business disruption to date and expected benefits in visibility, coordination, and scalability over time. Together, these milestones are important because they support both our near-term execution and our longer-term ability to scale the business more efficiently. Let me now provide more context on China, which was the primary driver of our first quarter and remains a key focus area for STAR. In China, our first quarter performance reflected continued share gains in premium lens-based refractive surgery. The key messages were clear, continued strength in EVO ICLs, strong early demand for EVO Plus ICLs, normalized inventory levels, better downstream visibility, and a more stable market environment. Refractive market conditions in China were more stable in the first quarter than during the volatile period from 2022 to 2024. The macro environment remains mixed, but based on what we are seeing and hearing from customers, refractive procedure demand continues to grow at a moderate pace. We are encouraged by our team's performance in Q1 and the early response to EvoPlus, an important step in our innovation strategy where strong surgeon adoption and clinical differentiation have already required higher output from our Swiss manufacturing site. Moving forward, we remain focused on disciplined execution and sustaining this momentum over the course of the year while carefully monitoring macroeconomic factors in the market. Now, as we look at the United States, we are encouraged by our first quarter sales that exceeded $6 million, and we continue to view this market as an important long-term growth opportunity for STAR. We also received FDA approval expanding the EVO-ICL indication to patients aged 45 to 60, further increasing our addressable market. Net sales grew 22% year over year against a backdrop of continued sluggishness of laser vision correction procedures that require removal of corneal tissue. The continued adoption of EVO-ICL reinforces our belief that the future of refractive surgery is largely lens-based. We believe our performance reflects increased surgeon adoption, improved commercial execution, and a more focused marketing strategy around customers who are incorporating EVO-ICL more meaningfully into their refractive offerings. The U.S. remains underpenetrated relative to more mature ICL markets, which is why we continue to view it as an important long-term growth opportunity. Outside China and the US, several markets experienced geopolitical and trade-related disruption during the quarter, particularly in parts of the Middle East. The impact on net sales was limited to less than $2 million. We continue to monitor these developments closely, along with the broader macro uncertainty in Europe and in parts of Asia. We also continue to see attractive long-term opportunities in markets such as India, even though near-term price sensitivity and macro volatility require a measured approach. More broadly, as we pursue global growth opportunities, we are being disciplined in how we allocate capital and resources. We are prioritizing markets and commercial programs where we see the strongest potential while continuing to benefit from the cost reduction efforts we initiated in 2025. As sales grow, we expect this approach to support operating leverage going forward. Overall, our view is unchanged. The global shift toward lens-based refractive surgery remains a meaningful long-term growth driver for STAR. Taken together, these updates reflect the progress we are making commercially and operationally while maintaining the discipline needed to build more consistent performance over time. With that, I'll turn the call over to Deborah to walk through the financials in more detail. Deborah?