Envista Holdings Corporation

My name is David, and I will be your conference call facilitator this afternoon. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to Invista Holdings Corporation's fourth quarter 2023 earnings results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, press star, then the number one on your keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star and 2 on your telephone keypad. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Stephen Keller, Principal Financial Officer of Invista Holdings. Mr. Keller, you may begin your conference call.

Good afternoon, and thanks for joining the call. With me today is Amir Agday, our President and Chief Executive Officer. I want to point out that our earnings release, the slide presentation supplementing today's call, and the reconciliations and other information required by SEC Regulation G relating to any non-GAAP financial measures provided during the call are all available on the investor section of our website, www.mvistaco.com. The audio portion of this call will be archived on the investor section of our website later today under the heading Events and Presentations. It will remain archived until our next quarterly call. During the presentation, we will describe some of the more significant factors that impacted year-over-year performance. The supplemental materials describe additional factors that impacted year-over-year performance. Unless otherwise noted, references in these remarks to company-specific financial metrics relate to the fourth quarter of 2023. And references to period-to-period increases or decreases in financial metrics are year-over-year. During the call, we may describe certain products and devices that have applications submitted and pending certain regulatory approvals or are available only in certain markets. We will also make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including statements regarding events or developments that we believe, anticipate, or may occur in the future. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those set forth in our SEC filings. Actual results might differ in material from any forward-looking statements that we make today. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date that they are made, and we do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except where it's required by law. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Amir.

Thank you, Stephen. Good afternoon, and welcome to Invista's fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. We appreciate you taking the time to join us today. Despite a volatile macro backdrop, we are making progress against our long-term strategic priorities. In line with our expectations, we finished 2023 with a modest sales decline for the full year and delivered an adjusted EBITDA margin of 18.1%. We improved our free cash flow generation in 2023 and delivered greater than $220 million while continuing to invest in our strategic priorities to accelerate our long-term growth and enhance our margin. Before we reflect on our performance in 2023, as well as our future outlook, I think it is important to provide some context about the current operating environment, as well as the underlying demand for dental solutions. Globally, the market remains dynamic with macro uncertainty and geopolitical risks continuing to create a challenging operating environment. Conflicts in the Middle East and the Ukraine, as well as cybersecurity attacks impacting the North America distribution channel, created volatility in 2023. While our team has navigated, each of these challenges will collectively they have moderated or near-term performance. As we move into 2024, we believe we are well positioned to navigate potential short-term uncertainties while executing a long-term value creation model. While we continue to see resilient patient traffic throughout 2023, we did see a weakening of demand for higher-end dental procedures, including both adult orthodontic cases and full-arch implant restorations. Private practice clinicians and DSOs remain thoughtful about near-term investments in both equipment and clinic-level inventories. While this has created pressure in the short term, longer term we are confident that patients will prioritize dental care and that clinicians will proactively invest in areas that help them digitize their practice, making them more productive and ensuring they can provide the high quality personalized care. Despite the volatility seen throughout 2023, the INVISA team has focused on driving our key initiatives And we continued our progress to drive long-term growth, accelerate margins, and transform our portfolio.

Our orthodontic business is performing well, growing double digits for the full year.

This performance significantly outpaced a global market where orthodontic case starts declined for the year. Onco's comprehensive portfolio, including bracket and wires and aligners, and our clear focus on the orthodontic specialists creates a sustained competitive advantage and a more stable business with ample opportunity for long-term share gains. During the year, we leveraged the Invista business system, EVS, to drive our Spark Growth Formula, and consistently added new doctors, increased case volumes with existing doctors, and grew revenue per case. The Spark business delivered over 50% year-over-year growth, and we are positioned to double this business by 2026. In 2023, our implant business declined low single digits as challenges in North America offset at or above market growth in other geographies. Excluding North America, our implant business collectively grew mid-single digits for 2023. We have strong brands, a leading product portfolio, a passionate and capable team, and a dedicated community of in-time specialists around the world. Leveraging our strong foundation, we have taken aggressive steps to address our performance issues in North America. We're making thoughtful investments in sales and marketing, training and education, and community development, and are leveraging a successful European leadership model and playbook which has resulted in over 300 basis point share gains in the past three years to reinvigorate growth in North America. The North America business is expected to return to market level growth by the end of 2024. Turning to our equipment and consumable segment, we declined mid-single digits for the full year 2023. Much of the decline can be attributed to the emphasis of non-strategic markets and products in our diagnostics business and the cybersecurity issues that disrupted the North American distribution channel for our consumables products.

Despite these isolated changes, we made progress in both businesses.

In our diagnostics business, Dexys iOS delivered core growth of over 30% for the year. We saw a strong volume growth and a stabilizing price environment as we exited the year. Our traditional imaging solutions perform at or above the market in our focused geographies, and we successfully launched two innovative new products. The OP3D LX, our next generation CBCT scanner in the OP3D platform, features a larger field of view and expanded 3D diagnostic capabilities through seamless integration with our DTX Studio clinic software. The OP3D LX provides more flexibility and improved workflow, allowing doctors to augment their diagnostics, planning, and treatment of patients. On the software side, we also released the DEX Assist solution to integrate AI features into the DEX Assist 10 imaging software suite. The DEX Assist solution helps practitioners to detect six pathological findings in 2D deficiency, in 2D intraoral x-rays, including caries, calculus, bone loss, pre-epical radiolucency, root canal filing deficiency, and discrepancies at the margin of an existing restoration. We now have over 50,000 computers running the DTX software globally and have processed over 200 million images on our platform. Sellout in the consumable business remained a highlight during 2023 as we performed at or above the market in most product categories and geographies. With the North American distribution channel stabilizing, we expect this business to grow at or above the long-term market growth rate of the low single digits globally. As expected, in 2023, our adjusted EBITDA margins declined due to lower sales as a result of the volatile macro conditions, our strategic investments in our specialty and technology segment, and our rapid growth of SPARC. As we have discussed, SPARC margins while improving are still below fleet average. Our 2023 performance is consistent with our intention of balancing investments for both growth and margin improvements. We believe that the focus investments we are making in both Spark and North American implants will support our margin expansion over the long term. We continue to leverage EBS to systematically drive operational improvements, footprint rationalization, price optimization, expense controls, and structural cost reductions. Spark margins are improving sequentially as we drive down the production costs of aligners and improve our process automation. Further, we are proactively managing price across the portfolio and deliver 50 basis points of a positive price, excluding the impact of volume-based pricing. Across our emerging markets, we streamlined our organization, reduced our expenses, and concentrated our efforts in areas where we have the most sustainable competitive advantage. One of our primary priorities is to build a better, stronger, and more growth-oriented portfolio. By providing comprehensive solutions for orthodontists and implant specialists, we continue to shift our portfolio to the most attractive segments of dental. Our diagnostic solutions business has been optimized and creates competitive advantage as we help clinicians digitize their workflows. Our two most recent acquisitions, Dexus IOS and Ostergenics, complement our strategy and are key to our ongoing transformation. Both acquisitions saw growth accelerated throughout 2023 and are positioned well for future growth. We are committed to pursuing a disciplined approach to capital deployment, We utilize our EDS driven M&A approach to manage our robust pipeline of inorganic partnerships and investments and are constantly cultivating new opportunities. I will now turn the call over to Stephen to go through our fourth quarter financials and provide more details on our segment performance.

Thanks, Amir. Before reviewing our fourth quarter results in detail, I would like to quickly comment on the $258.3 million non-cash impairment charge related to goodwill and intangible assets that we recorded in Q4. This impairment was primarily the result of an increase in the discount rate driven by sustained higher interest rates and the impact of a more volatile macro environment. On a reported basis, fourth quarter sales declined 2.3%, to $645.6 million. Sales in the quarter declined by 0.3% due to the impact of foreign currency exchange rates. And our core sales were down 2% compared to the fourth quarter of 2022. While our year-over-year growth was supported by solid mid-single-digit growth in our specialty products and technology segment, this was more than offset by a double-digit decline in our equipment and consumables segment. Geographically, our developed markets declined by 4.8%, with strong growth in Western Europe, offset by a double-digit decline in North America. Our emerging markets grew greater than 9% in the fourth quarter. Our fourth quarter adjusted gross margin was 52.4%, a decrease of 380 basis points compared to the prior year. The decrease in gross margin was the result of lower volumes, an unfavorable product mix, VBP-driven price reductions, and currency headwinds. Our adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 15.6%, which is 530 basis points lower than Q4 2022. The lower adjusted EBITDA margins were anticipated and driven by lower gross margins, unfavorable geographic mix, and investments in both Spark and a turnaround North American implants. Our fourth quarter adjusted diluted EPS was 29 cents, compared to $0.52 in the comparable period of the prior year. Our revenue in our specialty products and technology segments increased by 4.8% compared to the fourth quarter of 2022. Strong growth in Western Europe and emerging markets was offset by declines in North America. Within this segment, our orthodontic business grew nearly 15%, with Spark continuing to outperform. Our bracket and wires business delivered mid-single-digit growth, with emerging markets performing especially well. Overall, we are confident that our orthodontic business is outperforming the market, with clinicians continuing to value our comprehensive portfolio and our focus on the orthodontic specialist. Our implant business declined modestly in the fourth quarter, as strong growth in China was offset by underperformance in North America. Overall, we see signs our implant business is stabilizing, with our Q4 minutes Q4 performance improving relative to the first three quarters of the year. As we have discussed, we are making significant investments in North America and leveraging our commercial EBS capabilities and standard work to get this business to return to market-level growth as we exit 2024. For the fourth quarter, our specialty products and technology segment had an adjusted operating profit of 15.4%. This was down 460 basis points versus the same period in the prior year, with the decline largely due to unfavorable mix, the price and impact of the China VBP program, continuing investment spark, and targeted investments in North American implants. Turning to our equipment and consumables segment, core sales in the fourth quarter decreased by 12.4% compared to Q4 2022. Our consumables business declined in Q4 primarily due to the timing of orders in North American distribution channel. As we have discussed, the cyber attack experienced by our largest distribution partner reduced the visibility of channel inventory levels and slowed stocking orders throughout much of Q4. It is important to note that while sales into the distribution channel were down, sell-out to end customers in Q4 performed well. Moving forward, we expect inventory levels to stabilize throughout 2024 and our sales to normalize as we move through the year. Outside of North America, We saw solid growth in our consumables business, and we continued to drive sellout that is at or above market growth in most geographies. Our equipment business also declined in the fourth quarter relative to the prior year, as higher interest rates and concerns around the macroeconomic environment reduced global demand for large imaging equipment. Despite this dynamic, our performance in North America stabilized, showing a more modest decline in quarters. Emerging markets saw a large decline in the quarter, driven by the combined effect of the challenging macro conditions and the de-emphasizing of non-strategic geographies and solutions. Our intention is to refine our focus and concentrate our efforts in those markets where we can build and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage. While this will create a modest headwind to core growth in the short term, long term it will allow us to improve both the growth and margin profile of this business. Our iOS business grew greater than 30% in the fourth quarter, driven by strong unit demand and a stabilizing price environment. We continue to see Texas iOS as a long-term growth driver for Invista, and our focus on expanding our global reach by partnering with our distributors and system integrators to help clinicians digitize their office. In addition to driving growth for Invista, the Texas iOS solution enhances our end-to-end orthodontic and implant solutions. Equipment and consumables adjusted operating profit margin was 19.5% in the fourth quarter of 2023, first 27.2% in Q4 of 2022. The decline in margins was primarily driven by the lower sales of consumables in the quarter. This decline was anticipated and is expected to be temporary. As we have discussed throughout 2023, we have took significant actions to reduce our costs, streamline our operations, and improve our focus in this segment. Long-term, this segment is positioned to accelerate growth and improve operating margins. In the fourth quarter, we generated free cash flow of $99.9 million and delivered $223.6 million of free cash flow for the full year. This represents a greater than $100 million improvement in free cash flow over the full year of 2022. Overall, we are pleased with our progress in improving our free cash flow management and are committed to our long-term goal of delivering annual free cash flow in excess of netting. I'll now turn the call over to Amir to provide an update on our outlook for 2024, as well as some closing comments.

Thanks, Stephen. We remain confident in our strategy and long-term outlook. The dental market is attractive, underpenetrated, and has solid growth trends. Our business is strategically differentiated and we have a proven track record of executing in a dynamic environment. We have conviction in our ability to create meaningful value over the long term. While we remain confident in the future of the dental industry, the current backdrop causes us to be more cautious in the near term. For 2024, we expect demand for higher-end dental procedures, including full-arch restorations and adult orthodontic cases, to remain somewhat restrained. We further expect private practices and DSOs to remain cautious before making large investments in new clinics. For the full year 2024, we expect core cells to to grow low single digits and deliver adjusted EBITDA margins of between 16% to 17%. We further anticipate that our margins will accelerate as we move through 2024. Our guidance takes into consideration both our investments for the long term and the continued uncertainty in the macro environment. In 2024, we're focused on three main priorities to improve our short-term execution and build a foundation for long-term value creation. First, we will further accelerate our orthodontic business by providing orthodontic specialists with a differentiated and integrated suite of treatment options including bracket and wires and clear aligners. We anticipate gaveling our SPARC business by 2026 while simultaneously driving sequential margin improvements. A second area of focus is on re-accelerating the growth of our in-plant business. Globally, we will leverage both our premium and value implant franchises to provide full solutions across the implant workflow, including regenerative and prosthetic offerings. We will continue to utilize our premier diagnostics and digital capabilities to create differentiation and win customers. In North America, we are making targeted investments to improve our commercial execution, refresh our approach to marketing, improve our training and education, and further support our clinical community. We see a clear path to reinvigorating growth and aim to be growing with the market as we exit 2024. As we move forward this year, we will further utilize DBS to optimize our cost structure. We expect to reduce the structural cost by an additional $13 million annually for the full year impact being realized in 2025. Our continuous improvement culture will allow us to further consolidate operations to streamline our corporate functions and drive out G&A spending across the organization. We believe that 2024 will be a transformational year for Invista as we continue to balance investments in growth with our goal of expanding margins. Even our desire to drive improved execution of this transformation in 2024 we believe it's prudent to revisit our long-range targets. Further, because of this focus, recent leadership changes, and our process to name a permanent CFO, we have decided to postpone our investor day and will reschedule. Postponing would allow us to provide a more comprehensive update with our full leadership team. I want to stress that this change of the timing of investor day does not diminish our excitement about the future of the dental industry and the future of Invista. Our purpose is to partner with dental professionals to improve patient lives by digitizing, personalizing, democratizing dental care. We remain focused on delivering long-term value for patients, our customers, our employees, and our shareholders.

Thanks, Amir.

That concludes our formal comments.

We are now ready for questions.

At this time, if you'd like to ask a question, please press the star and one keys on your telephone keypad. Keep in mind, you may remove yourself from the question queue at any time by pressing star and 2. We will take our first question from Elizabeth Anderson with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, guys. Thanks for the question. Maybe to start off with the operating margin guidance for 2024, I mean, that can be pretty disappointing in our view. And if we look at this recently as 3Q, you guys were talking about operating margin expansion. So can you talk a bit more about what happened between that point where you're sort of thinking about expansion and then what the current guidance that you guys are giving us tonight?

Of course. Thank you, Elizabeth. Thanks for asking the question. As we move to Q4, And as we close the quarter, it became really apparent to us several key factors. To be specific, one is around the macro environment. We do not expect 2024 to be any different than what we have seen in the past several quarters. On certain economic environment, interest rate, inflation, consumer sentiment, we think that demand for our high-end dental procedures it's going to be below long-run growth expectation. And we have caution about capitalist spending, specifically on DSOs and some clinicians and inventory management. On top of it, geopolitical incentives, we do not think that that would change over time. So with that backdrop, that has impact in our mix. So if you take a look at it, that backdrop of a macro really impact some of our highest, most profitable businesses in different geographies. In addition, the growth that we are seeing today in our SPAR, that accelerate that mix change over time. As an outcome of that, we did a series of scenario planning. We look at opportunities and risks. We also take a look at what we need to do to put the organization in a format that we can create long-term value, realign investment. It's in margin expansion on the spark and growth. Go back to the North America implant now that we have a really good feel for what it takes to invigorate the growth in there, as well as the G&A and spending. And we thought we need to be more cautioned in here. Provide guidance that considers all that background. Of course, if the environment improves as we go forward, we have an opportunity to perform better. And we think throughout the year, we will see acceleration of our margin as well as our growth throughout the year every quarter. That's basically our assessment, our assumption on how we

put that guidance in place.

Got it. That's helpful. So how do we think about the long-term guide and sort of the longer-term margin expansion possibility with this new step down in 24?

Yeah, and we have been fairly consistent, as you know, about creating long-term value by expanding growth by expanding margin, by shifting our portfolio. We don't think that really has radically changed that framework that we have created in the past four, four and a half years as a state impact. The realities of what we're dealing with in here is one, we have a new leadership in formation. We have a CFO, hopefully soon to be named. We are placing the Nobel, our implant president over time. And we wanted to make sure that we have a solid leadership team in place. We also wanted to show progression on those three key priorities that we talked about. Spark growth and margin, Nobel back to growth, as well as resizing our infrastructure. We wanted to show tangible results and show the progression in there and then come back and have a discussion about long-term guidance that we have provided. We think that over time, our view around growth, margin, and portfolio is still valid. And we need to talk about the capital structure as well. That's why we decided to postpone that conversation until we are in a better place to provide better insight. We're not canceling it. We are postponing it. We should be ready when the team is in place, when we have momentum to come back and have that conversation.

Got it. And one last one for me. You just said you have a potential CFO announcement shortly. Would you like to put any time parameters around that?

We're working on it. We have been working on it, as I mentioned, continuously. We have some very strong candidates, and our goal is to have that name as quickly as possible in the near future.

Got it. Thank you.

We'll take our next question from Jeff Johnson with Baird. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good afternoon, guys. Amir, I wanted to follow up on the margin question Elizabeth asked. Primarily around your answer kind of included some things that you've really been dealing with for the last few quarters now. None of the stuff you talked about sounded overly new relative at least to the past couple few quarters. But this quarter really dragged down those gross margins that flowed through to both specialty and the E&C operating margins. You know, with that drop through on the gross margin, and you've mentioned targeted investments in the North American dental implant business several times in your prepared remarks, it all sounds to me like there could be some pricing, you know, rethought going on here, some change in maybe your pricing strategy on the premium implant side. Is any of that going on? And how do we think about the flow through the gross versus operating margin for that if it is happening over the next few quarters? Thanks.

Thanks, Jeff. Very good question. But let me ask that margin first, then we'll talk about the pricing specifically. So mix, as I mentioned, plays such an important role in here. When we put the plan together in 2022 and also the long-term plan that we put in place, there was a sort of assumption about the mix that we were putting in place. As you correctly pointed out, mix has shifted over time. You know, the China challenges, Russia challenges, and these are the businesses that have the most impact in our margin. If you take a look at it, in our Bracken and Wire business, which is one of the most profitable businesses that we have, one third of that business is outside the United States. And where it has been impacted the most are those geographies that are in the middle of these geopolitical challenges. So you take a look at that, and we consider that would not change, not in near term going forward. We have considered the impact of volume-based purchasing in China. 35% to 40% price reduction in our in-plant business, despite the fact that we have responded to that, that we have seen significant growth, it has direct impact in our margin structures. And last but not least, this shift on the SPAR, the higher, the faster that this grows, it is below average and it has a significant impact in our margin structure. If I take the VBP out, we actually got price. We were able to get good momentum on various pieces of our business. I should have mentioned one more thing, and that's the IOS. Despite the fact that that grew almost 30% last year, the prices were declining very quickly until about Q4 that it stabilized. But now we have a stable situation. We know what that will look like. With that, we made the assumption that, you know, let's assume nothing radically changes in here. Let's not hope that the macro will change radically. Let's not assume the geopolitical will get a lot better going forward. But coming back to your question about impact, we have not seen, degradation or price reduction on our premium impact. That has not been the case. The discussion in here specifically around North America has not been about price. It has been around customer experience. It has been around training and education. It has been around the community and clinical community. And in comparison, this is exactly what we saw. In 2019, we corrected it in Europe. We saw 14 quarters of growth. We took 300 bases from the share. We're replicating that model in North America. Price was not a factor in Europe, and we do not think it's going to be a major factor on the premium side of our business.

All right, that's fair. I guess if I take your comments there about when you did go back above market several years ago, you know, that was right when Ty Ultra Zeal had come out. You were getting some mixed benefits there. You know, N1 hasn't scaled here at this point. You're really, I think, relying primarily on Noble Active, which is an older product in the market. So how do you re-engage these doctors with an older product? Should we think about getting back to market growth because there's a newer product coming out, there's new feature sets coming out that will help drive that? Is this just purely going to be heavy lifting of going out and re-engaging the doctors and trying to get them to come back and use Noble Active? Just what's the path to that, you know, back to market growth by the end of 24 in the North American market? Thanks.

I will answer that, but I want to just define one that's specific. About 50% of our business is North America, 50% outside North America. That 50% that is outside North America has been going mid-single-digit with the same product. In the past, Bobby, five months specifically, we have done a detailed analysis interviewing hundreds of doctors that have done a competitive study of our product, our pricing, our coverage. And what we have seen, product is not the most important thing in how we have really not performed as well as we should have performed in here. If I may, I'll give you a little bit more detail in here. I think it would be helpful. The 200,000 dentists in North America, 70% of our implants are placed by less than 5% of those dentists. there are two groups in that category of the 10,000. Let's say 50% of them are specialists. These specialists depend on a referral network. The other 50% are GPs that they provide one-stop solution. They diagnose, they plan, they place in plan, and they work with labs or they have in-house lab to provide that prosthetics. Both these groups, which is a target for our premium impact, have three major requirements. Customer experience. And customer experience has a very wide definition about coverage, about order management, about return. Clinical training. Training that has really hit the mark. And the model has changed over time. You've got to provide a wide range of training online, through social media, through clinical advisory teams, at the local level. And last but not least, a lot of it is through advocacy. If you have individuals that they advocate and show results and teach it to other people, that would have an impact. And that's the definition of what we call community. Customer experience, coverage, go-to-market, training, education, advocacy, or clinical support. You take a look at those and you figure out that what has really been a challenge for us, we haven't done as good a job building this referral network. A lot of those have been acquired by DSOs. We need to work with these specialists to provide support and training to them, study clubs, lunch and dinner, so they can rebuild that referral network at the local level. We need to make sure the training and education that they provide is relevant. This is exactly what we did in Europe. We took the decision to go at the local level. And when I mention local level, I don't even mean countries. We went to Madrid. We went to Barcelona. We went to Paris. We replicated this model, and we have seen growth. We have seen growth continuously. We're doing exactly the same thing in North America. I'm not suggesting yet that the product is not an issue. I'm not saying that it's irrelevant. But I'm responding to your question that We are in a good place from brand, from recognition, from product, from pricing, from quality of what we do, from operation. We need to change our commercial execution, marketing and training education. That's what we are after. That's what we are doing as we speak.

Very helpful. Thank you. Of course.

We'll take our next question from Aaron Wright with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thanks. And you said you remain cautious on the underlying demand environment, which is obvious. But what did you see on a monthly basis throughout the quarter or year to date? And are there any signs of stabilization in certain pockets of the market that you're looking at or anything to call out on that front in terms of areas where there's disproportionate either deterioration or stabilization? Thanks.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Erica. So it's worth mentioning a couple of things. In China, as you know, Q4 of 2022, as well as the Q1 of 2023, we really didn't have a whole lot of business. First it was COVID and then EVP. And then we had this, for lack of a better word, we had this Zoom boom that we saw in the U.S. We saw it in Q2 of 2023 in China. And we have seen more of a stabilization, stabilization of the patient volume on And that's what we're counting on. And that assumption that what we saw in Q3, Q4 is carrying itself forward throughout at least the first months of this year. Outside of that, what we are seeing is a stabilization of a patient volume. We have a really good relationship with a large number of DSOs. That's what they tell us. That's what we see. Spending per patient has been challenging for patients. a lot of these DSOs in the past several months. And that's what we see. And how is that impacted is because of these high-end procedures, adult orthodontic cases, full-hour frustration, $25,000 to $30,000 that can get postponed. So, so far during the year, what we have seen is a consistent with what we saw in Q4, not a radical change one way or another.

Okay, thank you. Of course.

We'll take our next question from John Block with Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yeah, thanks, guys. Good afternoon. I guess the first one will be the longer one. It sort of follows up a little bit where Elizabeth and Jeff were going. But, you know, Mira, in February 23, so at the analyst day, right, 12 months ago, I think we all had about 21% EBITDA margins for 2024, and now we're all going to be about 500 basis points lower as of tomorrow morning. And I know dental has softened, but everyone's dealing with that. And I know you've got VBP and IOS pricing, but again, everyone's dealing with that. It doesn't sound like the trajectory of the SPAR course margin ramp has really changed, or at least I haven't picked up on that. And none of the other dental companies have 2024 EBITDA margins that are coming anywhere close to compressing like yours are being revised down to that magnitude. So what I'm just getting jammed up on, and maybe you can help, is what is this specific to in regards to Invista? Is it all about implants? Is it the consumables that's being worked down, arguably? Because the decremental seems so extreme specific to Invista. Yeah. when a lot of those challenges are more dental industry? Thank you.

Yeah, of course. Of course, I definitely understand where you're coming from. And this is a challenge that we are trying to make sure that we are thoughtful about this. And we put a guidance in place that considers the realities of what we see in place. We are well aware of where we started in 21, 22, where we have ended up in 23. I want to take us back to about Q4. Stephen talked about that, where we ended up in Q4. Those dynamics that you talked about, John, is exactly what we are faced with. The spark is rapidly growing. It's growing and becoming such a bigger part of our equation. And if you go back, we're a year ahead of what we have considered where we not needed to be. That one year ahead has significant impact in that mixed equation. One. Two, I mentioned that, I repeated it because it's worth mentioning it again. The bracket and wire business is not a business that is going rapidly, but we have been taking share. And the reason we have been taking share is because one-third of our business is sitting outside developed markets. This business has been growing high single digits, double digits, with a high margin. That is not in the picture. It wasn't in the picture before. It is not coming back as rapidly as we expect. And not only that, we're faced with the VBP in China, which is really uncertain when it's going to happen. We are assuming second half of this year. We want to be thoughtful again, not to be surprised. This volume that is impacting us on the high margin on areas like Russia and China, it is really radically changing that mix. The North American Nobel Prize We know we're going to turn this around. There is absolutely no question in my mind because we know exactly where the problem and the challenges are. But it's going to take some time. We have to layer some investment in here in order to be able to get it to that market growth over time. You combine all of that. You put in place to say, I'm not going to make any assumption on macro. The realities are what the realities are. If it changes, absolutely. We'd be the first one to come back and communicate that. But what we see today, what we saw in the past several months, is the realities that we are dealing with, and we wanted to make sure that we are thoughtful about this. We put a guidance in place that we can deliver on it. We put the right set of measures and growth and margin in place to be able to deliver on what we promised.

Okay, that's very helpful. Maybe just a quick follow-up. Steven, this one might be for you, but just a lot of moving parts with the 4Q GM compressing notably. So if we say EBITDA margins are down 160 basis points year over year, sort of going from the 18.1 to the midpoint of next year, any way to think about that, just like sort of the breakdown between GM and OpEx? Because obviously, you know, you're still going to be sort of investing in the business. So any color between those would be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, so I think you can assume, given where our guide is, I think you can assume that our gross margins for the year, year over year, will be down a little bit. That would be our expectation. Obviously, Q4 with gross margins were quite a bit lower. That's a little bit more related to some specific issues that we had in Q4. So I think for the year, it's a better comparison for the full year with margins down a little bit due to mix.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Nathan Rich with Boltman Sachs.

Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess first is just, you know, we think about the margin progression over the year. You know, you talked about seeing improvement, you know, through the year and by 4Q. I guess, you know, if you could maybe help us think about, you know, the magnitude or range that we should think about, you know, where the company is targeting to end the year relative to where you're starting.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. So let's just work through that a little bit and see if we can build a kind of a bridge in here. So every quarter, the spark margin has improved. Every quarter. It's coming up every quarter, and we expect that trend to continue. As it ramps up to double the business over three years, our goal is to get it to the fleet average. So for that to take place, we've got to see this progression every quarter. And the other part of that equation is no balance. Nobel is one of our most profitable businesses. We expect that to get to a market proxies by end of the year. So if we start where we were for the whole year in Q4, and I start making profits every quarter, we're gonna see this margin progression throughout the year. We think Q1 is gonna be nominally better than Q4, and we expect as we go through the year, we wanna see that progression every quarter We see better performance on margin until we get to end of Q4. And that's what we put that guidance in place to take a look at the range that we can manage the opportunity if macro improves to respond to it as necessary.

Okay, great.

And if I could just ask a quick follow-up, I wanted to just get a bit more details on your outlook for China. You had good performance in the quarter. I understand it was against an easier comp. It sounds like you'll have one more quarter like that in the first quarter of the year. But I guess beyond that, could you maybe just talk about how you feel about the demand environment in China overall and what type of growth you'd expect as you know, the comparisons normalized. And I just wanted to also clarify, I think you said you may be expecting a VBP related to wires and brackets in the second half of the year. I just wanted to make sure I caught that right.

Of course. So what we saw in Q4, China's sales increased by almost 15%. And that, as you mentioned, that's a good indication that proxies play a really important role in it. But if I take a look at the entire year, China was flat. And normally, about 10% of our business have been going double-digit for years. And so in 2024, what we see in here, Q1, because the easier comp, we expect a strong growth. As we go through Q2 to Q4, we're going to have a more difficult comp in here. VVP of implant comes in place, so we know exactly what that looks like, but it's more of a moderate growth. Our assumption is that the ortho-VDP is going to be in place in the second half, and that's how we have planned for it. If it doesn't happen, then okay, we will have a different model to discuss. We expect some volatility in China, and the reason for it is purely because of the consumer spending and sentiment. What we hear from our team, what you hear I'm sure, the housing crisis, the slower growth, government intervention in some of the areas. We are considering all of that to be an issue that we need to deal with, but we have not taken our eyes off China. We think China is going to be a growth driver for Invista. It's underpenetrated. We've got a great reputation and brand. Our specialty business is really well positioned. We just need to deal with these short-term issues and find a new model transform our business as we did with our implant, do that on auto, get ourselves in a better place on equipment and consumable, and we expect this to stabilize as we go forward. The patient demand in China, based on the latest information that we have, seems to be resilient as it's stabilized. We're not getting any major feedback that we are seeing a major change, as you can imagine, February 9, Chinese New Year 2016. We're going to have a little bit of a break in here. Our hope is after they come back, we're going to see that momentum to continue.

Thanks so much for the comments. And I'll now turn the call back to our speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you very much for spending time with us today. We really appreciate it. We look forward to delivering on our 2024 key priorities, and we'll talk to you next quarter. Thank you very much.

This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.