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Butterfly Network, Inc.
2/26/2026
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the Butterfly Network Inc. Q4 and FY 2025 Earnings School. My name is Gabrielle, and I will be coordinating your poll today. During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to your host, John Doherty. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks to all of you for joining our call today. Earlier, Butterfly released financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31st, 2025. We also provided a business update. The release, which includes a reconciliation of management's use of non-GAAP financial measures compared to the most applicable GAAP measures, are currently available on the Investors section of the company's website at ir.butterflynetwork.com. I, John Daugherty, Chief Financial Officer of Butterfly, along with Joseph DeVivo, Butterfly's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, will host the call this morning. During the call, we will be making certain forward-looking statements. These statements may include, among other things, expectations with respect to financial results, future performance, development and commercialization of products and services, potential regulatory approvals, revenue attributable to embedded collaboration through revenue share, CHIP purchases or otherwise, and the size and potential growth of current or future markets for our products and services. These forward-looking statements are based on current information, assumptions, and expectations that are subject to change and involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. These and other risks are described in our filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Your caution not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, and the company disclaims any obligation to update such statements. As a reminder, this call is being webcast live and recorded. To access the webcast, please visit the events section of our investor website. A replay of the event will also be available on this page following the call. I would now like to turn the call over to Joe.
Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter and full year 2025 conference call. I'm pleased to announce that our fourth quarter revenues came in at $31.5 million, growing 41% year over year. It's also the first quarter in our history where we realized positive operating cash flow, driven by upfront payments from our mid-journey deal. We are now nearly two years into our strategic growth plan that we introduced in early 2024. The message then was clear, execute with focus and financial discipline, strengthen our core franchise, and unlock the full value of our semiconductor ultrasound platform beyond handheld devices. We're doing just that, and we now have material contribution outside of our core POCUS business. So earlier this month, Jim Cramer was asked a question about Butterfly Network on MadMoney. And he said, I quote, it's a very competitive market, and I don't want to be in that part of the medical device group. Too hard for this guy, just too hard. Well, you know, I'm a big fan of Jim Cramer, and like you, watch CNBC every day. And he's right about one thing. Traditional medical devices are a tough sector. But Butterfly is not a traditional medical device company. We were never just a handheld company shaken at the knees of big ultrasounds. We are David, faithful and committed to our cause, not backing down regardless of how large our opponent is. We are the disruptor. We are playing our own game with our own rules and our own playbook. We are digital eating analogs lunch and plan to revolutionize imaging with digital ultrasound everywhere and images taken. Goliath just doesn't know it yet. So we are changing ultrasound imaging with our differentiated chip platform while deploying secure cloud software, AI tools, and mobile applications, and are the only healthcare company in the world over the last seven years to receive an Apple Design Award. We are not a medical device company alone. We are a transformative semiconductor-based ultrasound company. As you're all aware, the strategy we introduced has three core tenets. accelerate our core focus business with an enterprise-ready cloud-connected imaging solution, execute strategic initiatives to reach new care settings, and enable entirely new applications, namely home care and ultrasound-on-chip co-development. And then lastly, deliver an R&D roadmap that sharpens our technology edge with next-generation chips and new form factors getting more and more powerful and capable. So let me walk you through the progress in each of these. In core POCUS, revenue grew 15% year over year, on top of a 35% growth in the fourth quarter of last year, which, as you recall, was a record product launch year. We closed a second large system-wide enterprise deal in the fourth quarter of 25 and continue to deepen medical school and enterprise relationships. So I'll let John cover the financials in more detail, but we feel much better about macro trends and the deal cycle than earlier in the year and expect to carry that momentum into 2026. The fourth quarter Compass AI launch is a big tailwind for our enterprise strategy. Enhancing our enterprise solution helped refresh existing accounts, continue attracting new customers, and drove more than 50% growth in our enterprise pipeline since launch. At the same time, we've been building what we believe is one of the most secure cloud infrastructures in healthcare. In the U.S., we most recently achieved GovRamp and TexRamp, and FedRamp is anticipated in the coming months, meaning we'll soon be even more qualified for cloud deployments in now the world's largest government market. Internationally, we see meaningful opportunities in 2026 as we open markets in South America and continue expanding across Middle East and Asia, alongside a renewed momentum in global health. We've surpassed 1,000 NGO partners worldwide, and many expect to increase activity in 2026. We also continue to make progress in our Butterfly Garden partners. And as you know, Heart Focus became the first FDA-cleared app in 2025, and we expect additional partners to reach that clinical milestone in 2026. We announced plans to release our proprietary beam steering API in the first half of this year. The API will open 3D imaging capabilities that have been reserved for butterfly products only. Because our beam steering is fully digital on a semiconductor chip and not mechanically driven like other legacy systems, we can uniquely extend those capabilities to partners. The goal is to advance what they can build. expand the AI ecosystem, and help accelerate ease of use. We're excited about the new opportunities this welcomes. So, moving to the strategic growth engines. We've built a home business determined to accelerate the use of POCUS devices where the patient is, expanding the reach and empowering nurses and other clinicians to perform scans using AI tools. I believe we will reach a commercial agreement in 26 allowing home care to enter its commercial phase. This is a powerful new channel that reduces hospital readmissions, lowers costs, and expands Butterfly's reach beyond the hospital. Home care is a reality, and we think it can be a real growth driver starting to add revenue in late 26 and into 27. We also ventured out to develop a new business to make our core ultrasound chip available to companies with large new market opportunities that are not competitive with Butterfly's focused business. That was previously known as Octave. Well, to start the new year, we've officially sunset the Octave name and have centralized our semiconductor platform strategy under Butterfly Embedded, reminiscent of the Intel inside model. What began as an adjacent effort is now emerging as a foundational business, enabling other category-defining innovators to build entirely new application on Butterfly's ultrasound on-chip technology. The big news for the fourth quarter, though, was signing Midjourney deal in November. And as you can see today, it contributed $6.8 million of revenue in the quarter and was a key driver of our 41% year-over-year growth. Midjourney is an independent research lab pushing the boundaries of generative AI and human imagination. Their scientists have envisioned a breakthrough new application for ultrasound that we believe the world will be learning about very soon. This partnership combines Butterfly's core ultrasound chip technology and imaging software with Midjourney's generative AI compute power to do something very special with ultrasound. So this deal is more than revenue, it is validation. It's a foundational step towards Butterfly's reinvention into a platform company. The initial partnership and revenue contribution is pre-commercial. So based on the plan that Midjourney has shared with us, once commercial, we believe there is meaningful additional revenue opportunity for Butterfly in the form of chip sales and revenue share on top of the licensing fees that will continue through the deal. We expect this to happen in the outer years of our five-year plan, and if it occurs, could represent meaningful progress towards our goal of reaching $500 million in annual revenue by 2030. Beyond Mid-Journey, we signed an additional Butterfly Embedded Research Tier partner this quarter and expect another one shortly, while managing an active pipeline of some of the largest technology and healthcare companies in the world. So before I look ahead to our R&D roadmap initiatives, I'll turn it over to John to discuss the financials.
John? Thanks, Joe. I'm very excited to have joined Joe and the talented team here at Butterfly, which includes Megan Carlson. Megan, who you all know, did a great job in the interim CFO role and has been an awesome partner to work with, along with the rest of the leadership team. With about three months behind me, I want to open with a few comments and my thoughts on Butterfly overall. I joined Butterfly because I was excited by the incredible potential this company has going forward to provide a valuable and meaningful experience to our customers, as well as to create value for our shareholders. I was also impressed by the strength of the leadership team and the passion and commitment demonstrated by employees across the company. This is a company I am proud to be a part of. Butterfly certainly navigated a few challenges in its early years as a public company. However, the company has made the necessary difficult adjustments, including improving its operating efficiency, choosing the markets it can win in, selecting the best ways to leverage its IP and technology advantage, and allocating its resources towards higher ROI opportunities and markets. No doubt, based on these actions, Butterfly is a stronger, more agile company today. With continued steady execution, the company has the potential for significant core growth in an incredibly meaningful domain, through its POCUS and related COCUS AI software in Butterfly Garden Business, and we are well positioned to gain outsized share in the markets that we compete in. We also have a significant opportunity to leverage our core platform of ultrasound on-ship into other nascent and disruptive markets consistent with our strategy through Butterfly Embedded, as the Mid-Journey Partnership demonstrates. With that, let's move on to a few highlights for the fourth quarter, including a record level of revenue for the quarter, and exceeding the high end of our total revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance ranges, a record level of quarterly probe sales, significant improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin, driven by our revenue performance and continued financial discipline, the lowest annual cash used in the company's history, and we generated positive free cash flow in the quarter, and the execution of the mid-journey contract, which helps to solidify and amplify all of our efforts to drive a new wave of ultrasound-enabled platforms and use cases through Butterfly Embedded. Now, let me move on to our results. We had a strong fourth quarter of 2025 with revenue of $31.5 million, the highest quarterly result in the company's history. This represents a 41% increase year-over-year for the quarter. The increase is driven by increased revenue from Butterfly Embedded as well as a 27% increase in year-over-year volume in our core focus business, with continued penetration of the IQ3 in all markets. The 41% year-over-year growth is significantly higher than the at least 17% year-over-year growth that we put out in January. We did better in the core business and realized more revenue from Butterfly and Betty, given the work we had already performed relative to the mid-journey contracts. This was the primary reason we used the at least language at the time, as we were still finalizing the accounting treatment. Our results and the guidance I'll provide later in the call for first quarter and full year 2026 all include updated financial expectations from this contract. Breaking things down between the U.S. and international channels, during the quarter, U.S. revenue was $26.8 million, which was 55% higher year over year, driven by revenue from embedded as well as strong demand in the core business, with unit sales up 44%. Total international revenue decreased by 6% year-over-year to $4.7 million in the fourth quarter. While sales of the IT III in the quarter were up 42% year-over-year, sales of the IT Plus were down 79%. Breaking our revenue down between product and software and other services, product revenue was $18.1 million, an increase of 23% versus the fourth quarter of 2024. This increase was driven primarily through growth and volume across all channels with U.S. health systems, ECOM, and VET leading the way, as well as higher average selling prices in international markets with the higher mix of IQ3 sales. Software and other services revenue was $13.4 million in the fourth quarter, up 76% year-over-year. Software and other services mix was 43% of revenue, increasing from 34% in Q4 2024. This increase can be attributed to the significant step up in revenue contribution from Butterfly Embedded in the quarter related primarily to the Mid-Journey Partnership. I'll talk more about this as well when I come to guidance for the first quarter and full year 2026. When looking at the full year 2025 versus 2024, total revenue increased 19% to $97.6 million. This was driven by two areas. First, growth in our core focus business with both increased volume and a higher average selling price, driven by an increased mix in the sales of the IQ3 and strong performance by U.S. sales, our vet channel, and international distributor channels. And second, growth in our emerging butterfly embedded business, primarily from the execution of the mid-journey contract in November of last year. Moving on to gross profit. Gross profit was $21.2 million in Q4 2025, a 55% increase as compared to the prior year adjusted gross profit of $13.7 million. Gross profit margin percentage increased to 67% from 61% in the prior year period. Gross margin percentage was positively impacted by the higher margin butterfly embedded revenue and lower software amortization. Moving to EBITDA and cash. For the fourth quarter of 2025, adjusted EBITDA loss was $3.2 million, compared with a loss of $9.1 million for the same period in 2024, an improvement of 65%. For the full year 2025, adjusted EBITDA loss was $26.5 million compared to $38.9 million for 2024, an improvement of 32%. The improvement in adjusted EBITDA loss for both the fourth quarter and full year was driven by contribution from higher margin revenue and continued financial discipline reflected in our lower year-over-year payroll costs for the quarter and full year. This improvement in adjusted EBITDA and continued financial discipline has led to a cash and cash equivalent balance, including restricted cash at year end, of $154.5 million and the use of cash in 2025 of $19.4 million, excluding the funds from our offering last year. This compares to a use of cash of $45.9 million in 2024, an improvement of $26.4 million. We also had positive cash flow of $6.3 million in the fourth quarter. These results demonstrate that we are very well positioned as we move forward to continue to invest in the business areas where we see significant opportunities for additional growth and disruption, including expanding our core POCUS business and penetration of COMPASS AI as a core operating system for health systems, continuing to enable third parties to build tailored ultrasound AI solutions in Butterfly Garden to provide deeper and expanded access to our platform, expanding our home care business following the execution of our anticipated first commercial agreement, which we believe could be finalized in the first half of 2026, as Joe mentioned earlier, enabling a new wave of ultrasound-on-a-chip-enabled technologies through Butterfly Embedded, and continued AI and semiconductor innovation with the development of our fourth-generation chip. Before turning to guidance, I want to update you on the general macroeconomic environment relative to Butterfly. While there were some concerns in 2025 relative to the government shutdown and impact on the FDA's processing of fee-based submissions, regulatory processing delays, and delays in customer purchasing decisions, we have managed through this, and it is very much behind us. Our fourth quarter results are indicative of that, and we were able to close some of the larger deals in the pipeline and still have a number that are active. I would now like to turn to our outlook for the first quarter of 2026 and for the calendar year ending December 31st, 2026. In the first quarter, we expect revenue in the range of $24 million to $28 million, as we ended the fourth quarter somewhat higher than expected, and the first quarter is typically a slower quarter for the company due to seasonality. As is typical for Q1, adjusted EBITDA is impacted from expenses related to payroll tax and 401 reset. as well as our national sales meeting in POCUS form, which took place in January. As a result, we expect slightly higher expenses and higher adjusted EBITDA loss in the first quarter relative to the remainder of the year in the range of $8 million to $10 million. For the full year 2026, we expect revenues to be between $117 million and $121 million, an increase of approximately 20% to 24%. We expect our adjusted EBITDA loss to be between $21 million and $25 million. Our guidance for adjusted EBITDA includes investment in key areas to support continued innovation, as well as our emerging embedded business, as well as the impact from tariffs initiated in 2025. In summary, we had a great quarter, a record quarter. We closed the year out strong. We exceeded expectations for revenue in adjusted EBITDA, and we are very well positioned going forward. As our 2026 full-year guidance indicates, we look forward to continued growth this year and beyond, and our overall outlook on the business is brighter with this past quarter reinforcing our view. In 2025, we believe the company enhanced its position in the core focus markets and can continue to gain share in 2026 through deeper penetration of existing customers, new customers, and applications. We also amplify our ultrasound on-chip platform and the potential of Butterfly Embedded with the licensing partnership with Midjourney. We did all of this while continuing our intense focus on driving operating efficiency across the business and return on investment. As I said up front, I'm excited to have joined Butterfly late last year, and I'm excited about what is ahead for the company in 2026 and beyond. Now let me hand it back to Joe for some closing comments.
Thanks, John. It's an exciting time for Butterfly. We're in a strong position and are delivering on all fronts. The future is even brighter. So before closing, I'll touch briefly on R&D. We recently spent two days with 60 leading POCUS thought leaders at our annual POCUS Innovations Forum, and the alignment was unmistakable. The goals, needs, and future state vision shared was directly in line with where we are taking our portfolio. That level of synergy only strengthened our conviction that we have a path to enable every doctor and nurse with powerful, affordable, compact imaging and can meaningfully unlock enterprise adoption. As I mentioned on the last call, our fifth generation P5.1 chip was moved to production by year end. We're excited and achieving harmonics and delivering a new level of imaging for handheld ultrasound. This will open additional subspecialties and support our enterprise selling efforts in 2027 and beyond. And then next up on our chip roadmap is Apollo. This new chip architecture is now receiving the full attention of our engineers and will deliver 20 times the current data rate and compute performance, ushering in a new era of digital imaging and AI. We are already working with several Butterfly embedded partners based on the capabilities of this platform. Now, I'd like to close by sharing exactly why I'm so excited about Butterfly's current chapter. We are pioneering semiconductor-based digital ultrasound everywhere it's needed. In the traditional ultrasound market, that means continuing to lead in point of care solutions that truly meet the demands in and out of the hospital. empowering doctors, nurses, and caregivers, expanding new subspecialties, strengthening our enterprise roadmap, moving imaging to the bedside and beyond it. But it's also bigger than that. Ultrasound is being researched and deployed in brain therapy, continuous monitoring, robotics, organ preservation, and the list goes on. If you do a simple search of ultrasound, In the magazine Nature, just this month alone shows applications in neuromodulation, ablation, antiviral therapy, and soft robotics. The real inflection point comes when ultrasound in these use cases move to silicone. When it becomes programmable, power efficient, AI native, scalable, that's the common thread. Whether it's a butterfly handheld in a clinician's pocket, a new form factor on our roadmap driving enterprise or home adoption, or a partner building something novel with our technology that we can never do ourselves, it's the same core technology, the same architectural advantage. We are not just building devices. We are opening markets. We are enabling a new age of digital ultrasound imaging and sensing. all in one strategy. This is Butterfly. We're not just a medical device company. We're a true disruptor building the ultrasonic backbone of the AI era and one of the most exciting technology growth stories in healthcare and technology today. So with that, operator, please open it up for questions.
Thank you, Joe. To ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask a question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question is from Josh Jennings from TD Cohen. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you. And it's impressive to see all the progress in so many different channels. gives us a lot to ask about. It's challenging to choose one of those lanes, but I wanted to start with Butterfly Embedded. Absolutely. Just wanted to better understand, and you may not be able to share, but any details around potential timing of the technology offering that Mid-Journey is going to put forward implementing Butterfly's semiconductor and ultrasound chip technology. And any help just thinking about the cadence of revenue contributions from this partnership over the course of 2026 and what's embedded in guidance?
Well, I'll let John answer the second part of that in a moment. Let me just get to the first. So I think we're probably going to see something in the relative near term from midterms. One of the things about a butterfly-embedded program is we are enablers for our partners. This is not our business. This is their business, and we do everything we can to amplify their business. And so I don't want to get out ahead of them, and all I want to do is do everything that we possibly can as a partner to support them. That said, I think, you know, they probably want to get this out sooner rather than later. And the moment they do, you know, we'll do the best to show you how it, you know, translates into Butterfly. John, do you want to take the second part of that?
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Joe. Appreciate it. How are you doing, Josh? So when you look at embedded, Obviously, and as Joe touched on during the opening remarks, MidJourney kind of lit it on fire, if you will, with the contract we signed at the back end of 2025. And we're very excited about that contract. But there's also a number of other partners that we're working with in Embedded. So while right now Embedded and our revenue is great, There's a big contribution from MidJourney. We do expect contributions from other partners that we have in there, and we're really excited about what that part of our business can be, as we discussed at the back end of 2025. Relative to MidJourney, it's a $74 million contract, as you mentioned. There's different components of it. There's the upfront payment, there's annual license fees, and then there's milestone work that we do that ultimately allows us to take the revenue ultimately quarter by quarter, if you will, year by year. We expect to get a good amount of contribution throughout 2026 into 2027 from the contract. And then in addition, when they commercialize, ultimately, as Joe mentioned up front as well, there's an opportunity for chip sales, as well as for a revenue share as part of their business. So ultimately, really excited about the overall contribution from MidJourney, but embedded is not just MidJourney.
I appreciate that answer and kind of leads into my next follow-up. I mean, our understanding is that the team was focused on the MidJourney partnership and development work and then locking that in in 2025, but But there were some other potential partnerships on the periphery that sounds like you guys are engaged and moving forward. But any help thinking about the butterfly embedded pipeline that you just referenced?
Yeah, I mean, so we're talking to a lot of people, as I mentioned, some very large organizations and also a lot of startup organizations. And kind of the way it works is, you know, we saw a contract in the 8K with MidJourney in November of 25. But they had been an embedded partner for over a year prior. And so the way it kind of works is, you know, people will buy a license to our software and then they'll start buying chips and they'll do some research. They'll do research, you know, as far as how does, you know, does a chip meet their performance that they need? How does it integrate with their systems? And they do a bunch of work. And, you know, whenever they're done and ready, you know, if everything worked out well, then it will turn into a commercial agreement. They'll come back and say, okay, well, we want to now do, you know, X, Y, and Z. And that's kind of how mid-journey happens. So there's really no formula. It's just, you know, we have, I think now eight or nine embedded partners today and the pipeline is pretty large, but it's also, you know, we're not selling off the shelf. You know, we have to take our product and we have to do labs and show them how it can fit with their tech and whatnot. So it is a bit of a sales process. But, you know, do we have another mid-journey in there? I hope. You know, there's some very big opportunities people are going after, massive opportunities actually. And, you know, we're going to continue to add people into the research phase of our relationships and do everything possible to meet their needs and get them, you know, committed to a commercial phase like mid-journey did.
Excellent and maybe maybe 1 question on on the home. Air franchise, and it sounds like you've made progress in this in this 1st, commercial partnership. I mean, what steps are left before that commercial effort kicks in and and maybe just remind us of the home. Focus market opportunity, or there ever no opportunity for butterfly in this channel. Thank you guys for taking all the questions.
Hey, thank you, Josh. Appreciate him. So, yeah, I think, you know, we're pretty confident that this is going to, you know, get to a commercial conclusion. You know, as John said in his notes, we think it'll probably happen before middle of the year, which will give us the second half of the year to start getting it ramped up. So probably be nominal revenue in 26, but start contributing in 27. And so once Once we get it started and we have a line of sight and we're able to give a better shape of what the impact is, we'll tell you as far as, you know, incorporate it into our guidance. But, you know, in aggregate, I think I've mentioned in the past, you know, if just this one use case we're working on, if it became a national use case, you know, it could be, you know, it could be a $40, $50 million revenue opportunity if everything went you know, the way that we saw it. So, and that's, you know, we, when we think about the amount of chronic care patients are in nursing homes and also the amount of patients that are in the home who are being cared for by nurses. But then, you know, as they get sicker, they need to be, you know, moved, they need to have an image. And so, you know, they have to go to the hospital, whether it's by ambulance or by some other transport. I'll be brought up into radiology and then have, for example, a cardiac echo or something else. Empowering caregivers to be able to take images where they are is efficient, is low cost, and has high impact on being able to quickly give a diagnosis for a patient so their meds can be modified to make them healthier and keep them into the home or keep them wherever they are. And that is literally every facet of healthcare is about being where the patients are, being where people are and helping them get healthier faster in the lowest cost environments. And so our home care business is basically an extension of our POCUS business. It's not a third business. It's an amplifier of POCUS because you know, ultimately everyone will figure it out and they'll use our stuff to do all of this using the AI apps, et cetera. But home is kind of a catalyst for us to, you know, take a lot of the workflow, the logistics and the ramp up and the learning curve out. So we think I think I've mentioned before that we think the home business can be bigger than POCUS and the opportunities are certainly there. But we have, you know, some we have to prove it and we have to get some work. Our pilot was excellent. We need to get the first few states up. We need to prove what we're doing there. And then we need to prove we can go to a large geography. And so it's a process, but it's a big opportunity. And it'll teach core health care providers and payers that point of care ultrasound with butterfly is a significant way to reduce costs at the exact same time of improving quality and care for patients.
Thank you, Josh. Our next question is from Chase from Craig . Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. This is Jake on for Chase. I was wondering if you could, maybe John, if you could give us any more color on the macro environment, if you guys are seeing any of the same trends that affected 2025 and how they're abating now in 2026.
Yeah, sure. And I appreciate the question. So as I touched on with the opening comments, I'm not going to say everything's behind us, but certainly we feel a lot more confident going forward, irrespective of the Supreme Court's action relative to tariffs. It's still a very, say, mildly and unpredictable area, given what happened post that. So, you know, we do still expect to have a bit of some downward pressure. Not a lot, but some downward pressure from tariffs. We did sign a number of contracts late in the year, so we see that things have been opening up a bit there. We still have a number of, you know, good-sized deals in the pipeline. I'd say, you know, timing did move out, kind of the back half of last year, as the company had touched on. when they did third quarter results, but we are seeing some improvement there. We're starting to see some things move. And ultimately, as I mentioned, you know, the company we're managing through it and we don't expect it to have, except for the, you know, the tariff component, we don't expect it to have a lot of impact on the company.
Great. I appreciate that color. And then apologies if I missed this, but is there any more color on the, the opportunity with medical schools going into the year as well for the one-to-one partnerships?
Yeah, so medical schools I think should be a pretty strong contributor to us this year. The second quarter of the year is the big medical school quarter when we put them all in. We have a lot of conversations for one-to-one buys. We did get a bit of a pause last year when the decision to cap student loan debt occurred, and so it caused people a pause. What's so exciting about what we're doing is there is such a strong commitment for new medical students to learn ultrasound. And they're actually now starting to choose where they go and the types of programs they get into based upon the commitment of building that competency. Kids that are graduating today and are going into their residency completely distinguish themselves when they have this capability. Even their attendings who are working with them are kind of surprised when they see what can be done by a resident with ultrasound skills. So there's not a lot of daylight out there. This is not a new thing. Students want butterfly. They're trained on butterfly. They want that experience. And then when we build the brand equity with these students, they go into their residency and then into practice with that loyalty, with that understanding. And we're looking to grow with them, especially you know, with our whole, you know, chip platform improving and getting more and more powerful and then more apps coming in over the years, you know, we're going to grow with them through their careers. So we start off with medical schools. Medical schools will be a very positive contributor in 2026.
Appreciate the answers, guys. Thank you. Thanks, Jake.
Thank you. Our next question is from Andrew Bretman from William Blair. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Good morning. Thank you for taking the questions. I'll echo Josh's comments. Certainly a lot of progress here and a lot to dig into. So maybe with that in mind, I'd like to start a little bit higher level. I mean, it's sort of hard to miss the underlying transformation going on here. towards butterfly-embedded, can you maybe just sort of talk to us about why now for this transition from med devices towards embedded and, in a sense, semiconductors type of business? And then just as you sort of think about organizational focus, perhaps are there any sort of changes in terms of your view on POCUS versus the opportunity with embedded? Thanks.
That's a great question, Andrew. And I actually, I probably should have emailed that to you and planted that in because it's a very appropriate question. You know, we're not trying to pivot away from POCUS. You know, we, you know, we want to have every doctor and every nurse in the world have a device that allows them to help diagnose their patients sooner, easier, low cost where they're at. We will never, you know, move away from that vision. But in accomplishing that vision, Andrew, we solved the problem. We solved the major problem in technology where we can digitize, we can digitally control the ultrasound image. We can control it in a way that is much more than what medical ultrasound uses with multiple planes and depths because we control 9,000 sensors in a rectangle which allow us to send out information, send out sound a certain way and listen to sound a certain way. And so, you know, what we solve for ourselves for point of care ultrasound is a major solution for many other people out in the marketplace. You know, there is this whole concept that AI and the human body are going to merge together. You can Google it. There's a whole sci-fi fantasy out there. And if you even think of brain-computer interface, Neuralink today is putting wires into the brain. And there's this thing in BCI called the butcher factor, which is how many neurons do I have to kill before I get to the neuron I want to talk to? Well, one of the beautiful things about ultrasound and about butterfly is is we don't have a stagnant beam that sits in a fixed position. Normally, ultrasound is like a flashlight. You have to move the beam in order to capture the image. We can actually, in a fixed location, move our beam and scan. So if you implant something in the brain, you're going to be able to communicate and see and listen to 25% of the entire brain or the entire lobe. So it's being seen today that ultrasound is potentially a portal between AI and the human body and just read nature. And you'll see all these articles about brain computer interfaces, and you'll hear about ultrasound. You'll hear about neuromodulation. You'll hear about all different types of, you know, even if it's therapeutic, people are going to be looking at the brain signals through vasculature and how vasculature flows through the brain. And it ultimately, you know, you can potentially heat it and put energy So this is kind of happening. It's not like we just did a prospective randomized study and we're now pushing the market. The market's calling us. They see our 600 patents. They see the excellent technology that we have. And quite frankly, we had been approached prior to me getting here by companies asking to partner with them, but they were turned away because the company was trying to focus on point of care ultrasound. So what we've said to ourselves is no, we've solved the foundational problem and I'd hate to compare ourselves to NVIDIA because there's no way there's a scale or anywhere to draw a line. But from 93 to 2005, they were a video game company. And they focused on their core markets of building technologies to be better gamers that had to be complex. And then with CUDA in 2006, it opened up their platform for developers who can use these incredible chips for other applications. You know where you look at Amazon, you know they didn't set out to become the leading cloud compute company in the world. They realized that they needed cloud compute there wasn't a large enough vendor to take their volume they built it themselves, and when they were done they had. excess capacity and they said let's go sell my capacity and now it's the highest profit generating part of their business sometimes. In business, you solve problems for your customers that benefit others. And we're just simply now allowing ourselves to work with those partners. And the beautiful part about it is that the roadmap that we set ourselves, so our Poseidon platform, our P5.1 platform, our Apollo platform, We are now not going off and developing new things for other people and losing our focus on point of care ultrasound. What we're actually doing is amplifying our current roadmap. And we're exposing our roadmap to those customers and those to allow them to meet their needs. So it actually is going to make our ability to serve point of care ultrasound better. And the roadmap that we have for point of care ultrasound and what's going to happen, you know, with our next launch of our platform with harmonics and key 5.1 and what we're going to do with, you know, some new things that will unveil in 2007. There's so much synergy here, Andrew. It all ties together. So we're not putting something on the shelf and then focusing someplace else. We're pulling our core tech. We're partnering with people who have real interest of building businesses and have technical challenges that we can solve. Instead of having an analog ultrasound device that, you know, yes, you have digital behind the lens, but then once you push the signal through the lens, that lens is cut to do one thing. Our lens can be anything. And developers love the fact that they can see the signal and then change the software, see the signal, change the software. And that, you know, kind of infinite iteration cycle is how, you know, we will fit our ultrasound into many different types of devices throughout the world.
Okay. That's terrific, Keller. Thank you for all that, Joe. Maybe if I could just sort of switching lanes here. You referenced the Compass AI and sort of the launch there. Can you maybe just expand on sort of what that does in practical terms for your moat within that POCUS business? What does it give you that competitors don't have today? And then as you sort of think about, you know, defending against some of these potential, you know, AI, other AI disruptors that are out there, how does this sort of expand them out there?
Thank you. Thank you so much, Andrew. So we were, you know, the prior team before I got here, you know, Todd Fruchterman and the team were very visionary on making sure that if point of care ultrasound is going to be adopted enterprise-wide that we need to manage the data. And the systems, you know, the EMRs, the DICOMs, all the current hospital systems were not geared and built to operationalize point-of-care ultrasound. And so Butterfly became the first ultrasound company that invested in an enterprise SaaS-based software that not only allowed it to collect its own data, push it into the record, push the image into DICOM, and set that record up ready to be submitted for reimbursement with the revenue cycle management software. But we've built the most powerful, you know, SaaS-based system out there in order to do this. And now hospitals, when they put our software in place, they now recognize scans that weren't getting reimbursed, and they increase their revenue and profitability. And so it's just good, good, and good. Now, on the other side, doctors hate new things. They don't like to have to go through new steps. They just want to do everything in their EMR. They don't want to have one software for this one software for that. So getting to an ease of use paradigm is essential because the doctors are already asked and nurses to do so much in their everyday lives. So now going to another platform to go through a whole other set of workflow is just something that they dread, regardless of how good it is for the patient or the economics. It's just more work. So getting our system to be easier, faster, simpler, more integrated into their daily workflow and to use the power of AI to where we take their dictation, every doctor dictates. So if we can take their dictation and then pull apart the data in that dictation and populate the forms for them, you know, those two or three or four minutes that they save is massive to them as they, and that multiplies with each patient. that they see. So we are very committed to making our workflow now. We've solved the major problem of connecting them and aggregating data. And now we're going to be incessant and passionate about making it easier and easier and easier and easier for them to implement, for them to use on a daily basis, for it to be intuitive, and to let the hospitals continue to have the type of ROI they need of capturing all these images. And we're never going to stop making it. And we're going to use every new tool available to us in AI to make it easier for our customers. Great. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the questions. Appreciate it.
Thank you, Andrew. Our next question is from Ben Hainer from Lake Street Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, folks. Thanks for taking the questions. First off, for me on the... How are you? Excellent. Good. Just on your own internal development pipeline with PE 5.1, you know, when should folks expect you to go to the FDA with that? Anything new on kind of the new form factors, whether that's, you know, IQ station or some of the wearable sort of form factors that you showed up the investor day a couple years back?
Yeah, so thank you for the question. We're hoping in the beginning of 27 to have the 5.1 chip into a next probe, so that's kind of our timing. We think that we just sent it into production. Normally, it would take us some time late this summer to get them back, and then we start putting it into the hardware, validating, testing, and then hopefully get our clearance and then we'll be out sometime early of 27. So that's that's kind of our schedule. And at the same time, you know, we have a vision to bring one to one in hospitals and how we can make a cart based experience with Butterfly better. So IQ Station is actively on our roadmap and it's probably a later 2027 timeframe for that. But we are actively working on that program and we think that will really codify the one-to-one model on the enterprise side. So, you know, we're working on making software easier. We're working to make our devices more powerful. We're working to make the workflow in the hospital easier. So it's just inevitable what will happen, and we're on the right path there. And then, you know, on the wearable side, you know, if we wanted to launch a wearable tomorrow, we could, or theoretically we could. We can put that – wearables is not an R&D thing. It's more of a – what's the use case and what's the market and what's the business. And so our philosophy right now is the success of home care will determine, you know, what our wearable use cases. And the more that we, we push ultrasound, uh, all site and we push it into nursing homes and push it into the home. And then the more we'll be, okay, now this is what it's being used for. This really makes sense. This is sticking and now let's automate it and let's make it easier. And let's put a wearable out there. So, You know, we have a, there's one of our partners, Forest Neurotech, took our technology and created a wearable. Go on their website, you'll actually see it. They put it right there. And so it's, the technology around creating a wearable is not the challenge. It's, hey, what's the business use case? When does it make sense to invest the next several million dollars in hardware to put that out there? And so our home care business, in my view, will determine the success and the timing of when is the, what is the right use case for wearables?
Got it. That's very helpful. And then any more you can share on that POCUS innovation forum that you held? That sounds like quite the interesting event.
You know, you probably need to come next year. I probably have to invite our analysts. You know, we had it private the first year. The second year, we brought our whole management team and commercial team in to listen, which was a great education session. I think, you know, what's fascinating about that forum is is it's not all one specialty. You have a cardiologist sitting next to an anesthesiologist sitting next to an ER doctor sitting next to a primary care doctor sitting next to an intensivist sitting next to a nurse and sitting next to an administrator. And they all have a tremendous passion for the power of being able to do a diagnosis immediately at the point of care. And we all heard them present their experiences. But we also gave them a forum to tell us what they need. And that's where actually Compass AI came from the last year's forum was when they said it just takes too long to document each one of these records. And we went now from four to five minutes down to 30 seconds. And so, you know, we listen to them. And that's why this forum is so important. And I think while we had 60 people, we had about 40 people the first year, 60 people next year. Well, we'll probably open it up to, you know, 100 or more. and even maybe a lot of you guys to come too. So we learned a lot. And the biggest thing that we learned is that we're on the right track. And if we keep listening to our customers and being honest with ourselves on what we need to do to improve, we'll win. And it was a great session, Ben.
Sounds fantastic. And lastly, for me, just with mid-journey, you know, you phrase it as a revenue share potential rather than a royalty share. Should folks read into that in any way? I mean, that strikes me more as a service offering rather than a device offering.
No, I think you just look, you look into this like a partnership. We are all in with them and we are doing everything we can to make them successful and we'll do everything we can to make them successful. So we don't look at them as someone we're going to sell chips to. We look at them as someone who, that we are going to invest in and we are going to do everything to amplify their use case. And if all of a sudden we need to do something that was not planned, we're just going to do it because, you know, we both believe in what they're doing and we're going to be the best partner possible.
Great. Thanks for taking the questions, guys.
Awesome, Ben. Thank you.
Thank you, Ben. We currently have no further questions, so I will hand back to Joe for closing remarks.
Well, thank you all for being with us this morning. I know that this time of the season is busy for all our investors and analysts. I hope you can see the excitement. You know, I think that the most important thing, you know, for me is, you know, we put a plan together and we are executing to our plan. Everything that you hear on this call, there's not one surprise. Not one. Everything that we are delivering, we've told you we're going to deliver. Everything that we are focusing on are things that we've mentioned, if not recently, you know, a year or two ago. We are executing to our plan because there's a massive opportunity in digital ultrasound. We are digital to film, and we are digital that will take over analog. It's just a fait accompli. We've put a plan in place. We are executing to it. We have an awesome team. We are beyond the time where there was doubt about the company, and the only doubt should be for anyone who's in our way. So I appreciate your attention and look forward to continuing to deliver results. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. This concludes today's Butterfly Network Inc. Q4N FY 2025 earnings call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.