Ambu A S Ord

Hello and good late morning to everyone and welcome to our Q2 earnings call for Ambu, where we'll go through our business highlights and financial results from the second quarter in our fiscal year. So my name is Britt Milby Jensen. I'm the CEO of Ambu. And with me today, I have Henrik Skagbender, our chief financial officer. So let me start with the business highlights from the first six months of our financial year, starting talking about our key growth driver, endoscopy solutions, where we are leaders in the single-use market and where we are continuing to drive a structural conversion in the market from reusable to single-use. We delivered in the first half of the year 14.1% growth. The guidance which we are on plan with for the year on endoscopy solutions is plus 15% revenue growth. We also, when we set that guidance back in November, we said that we will have a higher growth in the second half of the year than the first half of the year. So with 14.1% for the first half of the year, we are on plan to deliver on that. Also, when we look at what is driving the business, we continue to see increasing traction from our new launches. I'll get back to that later in my presentation. But it's also important to highlight that the growth momentum and what is really driving the conversion from reusable to single use, it's very much increased. the solutions that we have had in the market for many years. And this is an important highlight because this is one of the main dynamics of the business model that we have, that we are with the big wide space we have to capture from hospitals and clinics using reusable. We can deliver growth on our solutions many years after they have been introduced to the market. But other than driving the progress with our existing solutions, innovation continues to be a key lever in our business as we progress. And that's why I'm happy to also report that we have good momentum on our next generation endoscopy solutions across a number of the areas that we are in. And we are also expanding our endo-intelligence investments into the software, AI-driven solutions that is going to make an even greater impact for our customers as we look ahead. So overall, if I comment on the EBIT margin, when we adjust that for tariffs and FX, we are at 14.8% EBIT for the first six months of the year. If you look at... At the net, taking into account the tariffs and FX, we are at 10.8%. The guidance that we set out in the beginning of the year set 12% to 14%. Here, as with the revenue, we also said that we are going to be higher in the second half of the year than the first half of the year. So that also means that when it comes to our EBIT margin and profitability, we are on track to deliver on that. I'll come back later in my presentation to anesthesia and patient monitoring, where we had a decline of 2.5% in the quarter following a strong year last year. But this also means that we see a slightly different expectation for this year than we had originally expected. expected going from mid single digit to low single digit and on the basis of this we can also see that relative to the guidance for the full revenue growth that we announced in November of 10 to 13 percent we see now that we will land in the lower part of this therefore we are being transparent and down or adjusting sorry that to 10 to 12 percent so we're still within the guidance that we communicated in november but it's we are expecting to land in 10 to 12 percent rather than 10 to 13. let's look at the numbers now from q2 so in q2 the overall endoscopy revenue growth was 13.8 so close to the first quarter of this year. As I just mentioned, we had a decline of 2.5% in anesthesia and patient monitoring and thereby having a total revenue growth organic of 7.3% in the second quarter. Still, we have endoscopy solutions making up now 63% of our total revenue. When it comes to the EBIT margin, we delivered 11% growth on that one. If we look and adjust for tariffs and FX, it will be 14.5%. In terms of free cash flow, we had a free cash flow of 104 million, which is very much in line with our expectations. So let's now dive into the segment starting with endoscopy and starting with our respiratory business. So in the quarter, we grew 12.2% organically within respiratory. And if we look at the rolling 12 months, this is 10.1%, so slightly lower than this. And if we look also at what we delivered the first half in total, it's 10.3%. So we are seeing a slightly stronger growth in Q2 for the respiratory business. So this momentum that we see in this part of the business is very much driven by, on one side, the bronchoscopes where we are continuing to see a solid increase in penetration, both when it comes to AScope 4 and AScope 5. And then on top of that, we are also seeing increasing momentum on the SureSight portfolio that we have launched. And in the quarter that we are in now, we are starting in the U.S., doing the full commercial launch of our SureSight mobile, which means that we are expanding the portfolio that we didn't do in the previous quarter. So overall, we see the continued strong momentum on SureSight helping to generate... bigger franchise for SureSight alone, but also we have the synergies with the bronchoscopes that is also helping and will in the coming quarters help fuel the growth when it comes to respiratory. So overall, we are... quite pleased to see the good momentum in this segment, in particular also because we see ample of opportunity to continue to also here increase and drive the structural conversion from reusable to single-use, and we are by far leading this in this segment. Now, let me turn to the other part of endoscopy where we still report on urology, ENT, and GI together. So in this segment, we grew 15.5% in the quarter. And if we look at the overall rolling 12 months, we are at 18.3%. And if we look at the total for the first half of 25, 26, we are at 18.2%. So if we take a step back and zoom in on urology specifically, the overall driver of the growth still continues to be our sister scope. And this is, again, because we see the continued structural conversion to single use in this business. When we stood here beginning of February reporting on Q1, we said that we had seen a slightly higher number of orders towards the end of Q1 that we thought would impact this quarter that we're in with slightly lower growth rates. And this is also the key explanation between the 15.5% growth in the quarter relative to the 18.2% that we see for the total of Q1. of this first half of 25, 26. So overall, this is where we are trying to be as transparent as we can around some of the quarterly fluctuations when we can see those having an impact on the coming quarter. Also, when we look in this segment, we have new solutions that are coming out. We are still seeing continued growth and good customer feedback on these, and we are continuing to expect those to continue to make up a bigger share of the total revenue in this segment. What we also see is what we have talked about a number of times now is that the There's slightly long sales cycles in the hospitals, and also when they are to embed new solutions into the clinical workflows, which is the case when they're switching from reusable to single-use. This is taking some time, but we are very much tracking that progress and is happy to see that this progress is building over time, and we have a very strong opportunity pipeline that is turning into... real orders and also rebuying customers is increasing quite a lot. Now let me turn to anesthesia and patient monitoring. So here we saw a decline of 2.5% in the quarter. If we look at the rolling 12 months, we were at 2.5% increase. And also, please keep in mind that last year we grew 9.9% in total for this segment. If we look at the split in the quarter between patient monitoring and anesthesia, we saw patient monitoring being up by 0.4%, and then we saw anesthesia being the one dragging this down by a 4.4% decline. Now, let me just take a couple of seconds to talk about what is the dynamics that happen here so everyone understands this. And this is very much a U.S.-focused thing, and it's also very much related to a part of the anesthesia portfolio where you may remember that around two years ago, we... went out and said that we are going to customers, some of the larger customers, asking for significant price increases for a part of the business where we were simply not profitable. And at that time, we said maybe this will result in negative growth because we do have to get the prices up. Otherwise, we are willing to walk away. What happened at that time was that we actually were successful getting the higher price increases. The customers did not walk away, but what we did trade, which is fully normal in these situations, was that we went in some of the big contracts from being an exclusive supplier to giving up that exclusivity. Then we have been trending well with no impact on volumes until recently and until this quarter, where we start to see that some of these customers who accepted the higher prices but opened up for... other suppliers that they are starting to now buy from some other suppliers. So this is, in essence, what is driving the minus 2.5%. And I also have to say that the volumes that we are seeing that we are not getting now is going to continue into the next couple of quarters as well. So these are basically the dynamics, but very much... something that we have been in control of ourselves, because for this business, which is not the key part of our Zoom Ahead strategy or where we focus the most, we have to make sure that we are profitable and that we also set the prices at levels that make sense. Hopefully this is clear and this is also the reason why we are taking down the guidance for this segment for 25-26 from mid single digit to low single digit. Let me move to some of the progress that we're making with the Sumo head strategy, because since we launched that October 1st, we have had a lot of good momentum and good progress across the business. And here's a few of the highlights. So one thing that I want to call out is that we have made some enhancements to the commercial setup in the North America organization that were implemented April 1st, where we are basically taking a step back together with Scott Heinzelman, who joined us as president of North America end of August last year, to see how is it that we see the changing customer needs in the space and how are we then adjusting our setup to best serve our customers. So this is something that we have implemented. It has been implemented very well with minimal disruption, but it's something that we are continuing to get settled in on, which will bring us long-term opportunities for driving sustainable growth as we are able to better serve the customers and cater for the different stakeholders that we serve. Then on innovation, there continues to be a lot happening and we are investing quite well into innovation. We had in this quarter the CE mark for the SureSight portfolio. in Europe, as we announced some weeks back. We also, with the whole SureSight solution, which is receiving a lot of positive feedback from customers, received a design award, the Red Dot Product Design Award, When it comes to the cystoscopy portfolio, we have strengthened that with accessories that are enabling both stent removal and foreign body retrieval. So this is a way that we are continuing to complement and expand the portfolio that we have around the ASCOPE system. I mentioned intelligence, endo intelligence early in my presentation. This is also an area where we continue to invest as we see very big synergies with the endoscopy solutions that we are offering in making sure that we can improve the efficiency in the hospitals and that we can even also in the future support much better diagnosis and treatment using some of the new technologies that are now available. And then last, on the business platform, we are continuing to improve our ramp-up in Mexico, and we are on plan on accelerating that to make sure that we have a much stronger global footprint when it comes to manufacturing, first and foremost to supply our North American customers, but also in general to make sure that we have the flexibility that is required to operate in Europe in the world that we are operating in right now. Let me finish with a couple of words on innovation and where we are on our journey towards global endoscopy leadership. So if we look at our SUMAhead strategy, we are on track to deliver on that. And there's really two key things that are driving our success with SUMAhead. The first one is commercial execution with the portfolio that we already have in the market. And the second one is innovation. So if you look to the left part of this slide, this is familiar to several of you. This is an overview of the market where we work. where we have a lot of white space, meaning that when the market is fully converted from reusable to single-use, which still has a number of years to go, we are looking into a 190 billion DKK market. If we then look at the penetration levels today, where we are by far the market leader, these vary across the segments with the largest penetration in respiratory, which is where we started, and we have really been spearheading that conversion. What we are very successful with right now and where we see the growth coming from is very much driving the conversion from reusable to single-use with what you see in the middle of this page, the existing portfolio that we have across the different segments where we are present in all major segments, less focused today on the gastroenterology. But what I can also say is when we look ahead, we are investing heavily into innovation and into the future. So we have a very attractive bronchoscope solution in development, and we have further expansions also of our video laryngoscope portfolio in development. In urology, we also continue to innovate with next-generation solutions on the endoscope with added features, which really is both about increasing the quality for existing procedures, but also expanding the market as we can deliver a solution that fits more procedures than we do today. And then on the ENT with rhino laryngo, we have an a next-generation solution in development, and then we also have a number of interesting developments in gastroenterology as well. And then last but not least, because we are building everything on one software platform, it means that the hardware and the software that we are developing fits across the portfolio, which is really a key value driver for customers as they can use our software our systems across the full portfolio, but it's also a way for us to easier leverage new technology to drive benefits across all the categories here. So both we are doing specific targeted software AI driven solutions, but we are also looking at solutions that supports very much the efficiency and the workflow in the hospitals and clinics with our endo intelligence. So with that, I will conclude my presentation and hand over to Henrik to go through the financials.

Thank you, Britt. Good morning, good late morning to all on the call. I'm happy to take you through the financials, narrow a little bit in on what are some of the geographical drivers of growth beyond what Britt already talked about, talk about margin and share some more light on our considerations on guidance. So let me start with growth again. As Britt introduced, we had an overall organic growth for the second quarter of 7.3%, bringing our year-to-date growth close to 8%. Rolling 12 months, that means that we are now at an organic growth level at 9.4%. Considering the fact that there's been a lot of still depreciation of the U.S. dollar, if you look at the growth in reported currency, the reported growth was only just above 1% at 1.2%, mainly again driven by the U.S. dollar depreciation. The growth overall was highly driven by endoscopy, our main growth driver of the business, with a year-to-date growth of 14.1% and 13.8% growth for the quarter. Continued really strong results where we feel we are on plan and on track versus our guidance for the full year. On ANPM, we had a lower quarter, which is also why we're updating our guidance, which is what I'll come back to. And as Britt explained, this purely relates to our North American business, where we saw a decline in our anesthesia sales, specifically on selected customers. And with that, let me share a little bit more on what does the growth look like if we look at our different regions split geographically. EMEA and rest of the world continued the very solid track we've been on for many quarters. In EMEA and rest of the world, we see continued really strong endoscopy solution growth and also positive growth, both in anesthesia and in patient monitoring. For rest of the world specifically, we have had a couple of quarters with low growth. We saw a bigger high growth in this quarter. And this really comes back to the timing of orders that we've talked about in previous quarters, where we see bigger orders in single quarters, therefore bigger fluctuations. Whereas in EMEA and North America, it's more steady development. Coming back to North America, as Britt explained, in the just above 6% growth, 6.1 to be exact, we actually see very, very solid endoscopy solutions growth still, a track we've been on for a long time, and where in particular also our SureSight launch is having really positive effects and really positive reception from the customers. On the other hand, this is also the market where we then see the negative effect from anesthesia, where there on selected customers have been lower volumes on non-exclusive contracts, something that we are, of course, still working on mitigating. But really coming back to Bridgepoint from the premise that we also have set certain margin targets that we're not compromising. And therefore, we still have observed some of the volume losses and are managing how we can make sure we regain volume still at the right margins. If we then turn to gross margin, we feel again a good start of the year, a 60.5% gross margin for the first half year and 60.3% for the second quarter specifically. This is positively improved by a continued better absorption of fixed cost, i.e. better utilization of our production facilities. In Mexico specifically, we continue the ramp up. Secondly, a continued positive development in our product mix with now EES representing more than 60% of our total sales, 63% to be exact, and ANPM representing a lower and lower share. And with EES having a higher gross margin, that supports our gross margin. That said, particularly in the second quarter, but also for the first half, we continue to also be negatively impacted by FX, which is the only reason why we're not actually growing more in this segment. We continue to focus on how we drive price and governance, both for NMPM business, but also within industrial solutions, balancing organic growth opportunities against making sure we continue to deliver gross margin improvements. If we then turn to EBIT margin, as Peter also explained on the first page, we continue to see solid traction on our overall EBIT margin expansion plan. If we adjust for tariffs and FX, our second quarter was a 14.4% EBIT margin adjusted. And for the first half, that means we are close to 15% on our adjusted EBIT margin, again, adjusting for tariff and FX costs. In the second quarter specifically, we again had more than 50 million DKK recognized in tariff costs and also had negative effects from FX, particularly the US depreciation I talked about before. In our Q2, we are also now communicating the number of IEPA tariff that we have paid, both for this financial year and for the last. And I just want to reiterate, as stated in the financial statement, that we have not recognized any of those as income in the statement yet. And still also that our guidance does not take into account if we manage to reclaim any of those. If we look, therefore, on the right side, on the EBIT margin development, of course, the reported margin development as guided and communicated in our Q4 has been lower for the first two quarters, for the first half year of this financial year, as expected. But with our mitigation plans on tariffs, and the higher growth expected for the second half of the year, we're comfortable that with a 10.8% realized EBIT margin for the first half, we're still safely within the guidance of delivering 12% to 14% on the full year. Turning to cash flow, second quarter, as expected, delivered a solid cash flow, reminding us all that seasonality in our cash flow is that the first quarter is usually lower, second quarter better, and third and fourth quarter typically the best. Particularly in the second quarter, the positive free cash flow was driven by solid operating performance, but also a better development and decrease in our net working capital ratio. That also means that with our expectations for the second half on growth and margin, we feel comfortable that we're still on track to deliver on our full year cash conversion guidance of plus 40%, and therefore delivering a really solid cash flow for the full year, strengthening our financial position even further. In summary, therefore, looking at our guidance for the full year, we are, as Britt communicated earlier, narrowing our top line revenue growth guidance from previously 10 to 13 percent to now 10 to 12 percent. This is driven by our anesthesia and patient monitoring business, where previously we were guiding mid single digit growth. With the lower volume on the selected US accounts and the traction we see right now, we're updating this to low single digit. And this is really driving the effect on the total overall organic growth guidance. On endoscopy solutions, again, we are maintaining the guidance of plus 15%, which assumes an acceleration for second half, which is what we're still targeting and seeing in the trends. And particular on respiratory assumes an acceleration of our respiratory growth, where the suicide launch and our continued momentum on driving more sales on that and the whole bronchoscopy portfolio is really driving this acceleration. And we still feel comfortable that we can deliver on that. On the EBIT margin, we are maintaining the guidance at 12% to 14%. As said, again, second half, as we guided from the start, will be higher, with higher growth and lower tariff costs, and therefore we feel we are on good track to deliver on that. Last but not least, cash flow conversion, as I just said, also on good track, even though we are lower year-to-date, as the typical seasonality for our business is that we will have a higher cash flow in the second half, and with higher growth and higher margins, this will be even further supported. Last but not least, as part of our Q2, we are now also announcing and have started an extension, an addition of the share buyback program. We previously announced in Q4 that we would do a 150 million DKK share buyback program that we launched and have completed. Here, as part of Q2, we are now launching another additional share buyback of 300 million, starting today and ending no later than 30th of September, i.e. at the end of our financial year. That means that combined, we will this year be having a total share buyback expected of 450 million DKK, which is really a reflection of the very strong balance sheet that we have and the continued strong cash flow position and strong free cash flow. I also want to reiterate this does not change our ambition on M&A, but puts it into the perspective that organic growth is our main focus, and M&A will more be an accretive lever for technology or solutions that support our overall solution, but not be big or massively transformational. Therefore, we feel comfortable that we can deliver on this and still maintain a very solid financial position. With that, I thank you for your attention and hand it back to the operator for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to one question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Tara Lee, UBS. Please go ahead.

Morning, Britt. Morning, Kendrick. Thank you for taking my question and congratulations on the buyback. If I just do the math, in the spirit rate, an acceleration over 11.4% delivered in 2025 would imply a H2 delivery of at least 13%. And then in the express business, a delivery the same as in 2025 would imply a H2 delivery of at least 21%. Could you maybe speak to the visibility you have within these two areas for acceleration and growth and some color on the expected saving between Q3 and Q4, please? Thank you very much.

Absolutely happy to take the question. So in short, you could say it is two slightly different drivers of the growth that makes us comfortable on maintaining the overall plus 15% endoscopy growth. Respiratory, it's very much a momentum of conversion of new customers. That means that even that we are just above 10% growth for the first half, we're still maintaining the view that we will land the year above the 11.3% that we had for the full year last year. It's really conversion of new customers, and this is therefore a momentum building across the quarters. Secondly, I also want to remind you that the comparables at the end of the year from last year are a little bit weaker, relatively speaking, and therefore, if you look in absolute terms, it's actually on respiratory more a continuation of the acceleration you're already seeing in the numbers from Q1 into Q2, further to Q3 and Q4, that will drive this effect. On Euro ENT GI, you're also right that it requires a higher growth for the second half to deliver close to or at the same level of the Euro ENT growth that we had for the full year last year. In this area, it is mainly single-use conversion of existing solutions. particular cystoscopy and our rhinolaryngoscope in ENT that are driving this, supported by more and more sales on the ureteroscopy product, though still that is coming from a low base and not a very big contributor. So on the ure, ENT, and GI side, it is more an organic conversion from reusable to single-use. One of the key factors for us to continue to drive that is commercial efforts, which is also why, as Britt highlighted, we have invested in an updated structure in US particular, where we still see a lot of potential. Of course, there's always a balance of how fast you see the impact of such an investment. But this is why we continue to hear us talking about investments, because it's really about bringing hand and feet, salespeople and support staff to the customers to drive this continued conversion. Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Tobias Bergnissen, Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my questions. I have two, if that's okay with you. I know they already said only one. But I was just surprised by the magnitude of the order-facing headwind here in the second quarter. But you're also surprised to this and to what extent a smaller headwind. And that's also just on the more than 15% organic growth for Endoscope Solutions for this year. It just seems that sales continue to be very lumpy. We have talked about this earlier, but what gives you more comfort in this into the second half of the year and what is actually needed for you to reach the top end of the guidance here for the group around these 12% organic growth, right? And then just another one, Henrik, on cost inflation. Many of your MedTech colleagues, they mentioned the disruption from the Middle East and everything, but you don't really talk much about it here in your presentation. So what are we looking into? I know plastics is not a big part of the COX or the endoscopes, but just general inflation seems to be going one way, and that's upright. So I just want to give you any thoughts on this.

Thank you for the questions, Tobias, and maybe I can start with the top ones, and then Henrik can comment on that. So in terms of the order-facing and what you refer to as urology, where we only, I should say, report on the full category urology, ENT and TI, so we are not specific on how much each contributes, but I would say, are we surprised? I mean, we are... not really surprised with the visibility that we have into the business, which is also why we saw clearly an increasing order pattern just before the new year, last year. So that was also why we were very explicit at the as we could see this in our communication around Q1, to say that we are expecting a lower level. I think in general, as I think we have both been alluding to, we see that conversion continuing to happen from reusable to single-user, which continues to be the main driver of our... of our business. And we continue to see a strong, in particular, when you look at the volume, we see conversions both happening very much on the US side and on the Europe side. And on the value side, we also see a healthy development across here. So I think we, I mean, we continue to be very excited about how customers are converting from reusable to single use and also how we are leading that conversion and looking ahead can continue to lead that both with our existing portfolio and as we get new innovation in the market. That also means that when you look at the 15 plus percent that we expect for the year, that also means that we are quite comfortable that this is where we will land, Henrik alluded to the respiratory segment. And what we really see as a benefit in the business is that we have multiple parts of the business contributing to the growth. And that's where the respiratory growth that we see in the momentum we see in respiratory picking up, which is then also, you can say, being a bigger supporter of getting us above the 15%, as we have talked about. And we see the momentum driving in that direction, both on that side, but also continuing momentum on the other area. So in general, I think it's – I mean, you find few – segments, a few areas in medtech where you see such a strong growth as we see in the business. And also even when we look at others in endoscopy and how their growth rates are, I think we are quite pleased with what we see. And also the structural foundation in the market is still very much in our favor in the conversion. And then I will also say when you look a little further ahead how treatment is and where patients are treated is changing from in hospitals, more and more outpatient, is clearly also in favor of our solutions because that's where they're more reluctant to make the big capital investments but rather go directly to a... to a single-use offering. And our portfolio today in most of the areas, still we are a little further behind when it comes to GI, but they can actually address a vast amount of the procedures that they need to do in these outpatient settings. So I think that's making us very confident when we look ahead.

And to supplement, I heard you ask about what should then drive us potentially to the top end of the growth guidance. I think there are mainly two things. One, on the respiratory side, as Britt said, if the conversion picks up even faster. What we have experienced, as we've also mentioned on the calls here, that It's a really positive reception of our products. We now have our mobile solution in the market. Also, we are continuing to see this pickup. And if we suddenly see bigger accounts convert faster than we expected right now, that could be one of the things that would drive us to the top end of the updated guidance. The other element is really ANPM, and I think that is why we really focus on that in the top or in the revenue guidance update, that if we manage to convert some of these lost customers, mind you, again, we're not off contract. We're still on contract or successfully implement price increases in other areas, which we're also working on. That could counter some of the negative effects we've seen year-to-date, particularly on anesthesia. So those two things would be the drivers that could bring us up towards the upper end of the guidance. But I just want to reiterate what Britt and I said. With the trend we're on right now, we are on the updated guidance, but we are on the lower end of that guidance on revenue. In terms of cost-effective innovation, we don't talk about it a lot, to be honest, because we're not directly influenced. I will say two things. So I think one is, obviously, in the end, with a structurally higher oil price, there will be effects across the supply chain. We're extremely focused on supply chain reliability because that is what matters so much for our customers. And it also means that actually in our cash flow or in the networking capital inventory specifically, we are continuously investing in having a solid inventory of finish, but also component for our products. That also means that I think any cost inflation will not really hit us for this financial year. And given that our financial year ends end of September, timing means that it's not gonna have any real impact on this year. If it structurally continues, of course, that's something we need to consider for next year. But then I think there's also a question of what do you then do on pricing. So net-net, that is why we don't talk a lot about it in the message, because it doesn't really matter for now in this second quarter, nor for this financial year for Ample.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Martin Brony. Nordea, please go ahead.

Hi, President Henrik. Thank you for taking my questions here and congrats with the good start here with the respiratory and the sure side launch and also the share buyback. I think you're being rewarded for that. So well done. A couple of questions from my side. I actually have a few, but I'll start with you two and then jump back in the line. Maybe first on the sure side and the upside that you see here as a potential acceleration. Can you maybe Just put a few words on the CE mark that you got for sure aside in Europe and how you see the potential adoption rate could look like in Europe versus the US and how much that could contribute both short-term and medium-term. That's the first question. And then on the second question, given that you have quite a steep margin step-up assumption here in H2, and don't lower the margin assumption even with the top line guidance being lowered. Can you maybe help us bridge a little bit how you get from your Q2 margin to your H2 margin in terms of gross margin expansion from scale, mix, price increases, lower tariff impact, and FX would be super helpful if we could get a little bit more nuances on what is the biggest drivers of the margin upside here in the short term. Thank you.

Thank you, Martin. Let me talk about the SureSight question, and then I'll hand over to Henrik to elaborate on the margin. So when we look at the SureSight, we launched that just over a year ago now in the U.S. and shortly thereafter in the U.K., first with the first wave of blades, and then we added some months later a second wave. wave of blades so we now have 10 blades available for the sure side and then we got approval of the mobile version so where the version that has a small screen on top that you can put in your pocket and bring everywhere you go but that's only going to be commercially available um later in the quarter that we're in now so later in q3 so so that also means that the penetration that we have had on sure side has been very promising but also gradual as we have uh had customers that were waiting for parts of the portfolio before they fully switched. But in general, again, as I said, we are very happy with that uptake. Now we have also got it approved of the CE mark in Europe. And Europe is a little bit of a different situation than U.S. and U.K. in the sense that the market for video laryngoscope is much less mature than what we see in U.S. and U.K. However, it is a market that is growing. So what this means for those that are not so much into this is basically that for intubation, which is where a laryngoscope is primarily used, you have one with a camera, which has a lot of benefits. I mean, reducing the risks that you don't get it right, making sure that everything is intubated safely. And this is also the reason why that... the video laryngoscope solutions have been growing so much in US and UK. But this is where the maturity level for video laryngoscopes is slightly lower in Europe. So they much more use a solution that does not have a camera, which is also referred to as a direct laryngoscope. So that also means, to answer your question on what to expect, that you should expect for the rest of Europe a slower uptake because there's part of the market that is already out there looking for a solution like ours, and they're not at all used to a solution like ours that also is on the screen together with the bronchoscope. So that is going to be... exciting for them and we see a lot of excitement. But there's also, on the other hand, a change in behavior because you will need then to a much larger extent use a video laryngoscope instead of a direct laryngoscope without a camera. And that typically, when you're changing behavior, that typically takes a little longer. So that's also why we don't want to be too bullish on the uptake in Europe because it can take longer as we are changing habits of physicians. So hopefully that makes sense. We are not putting a number on here, but just to say that that's what the situation is.

Exactly. And therefore building that, I think also we are therefore not talking about the sure side launch in EU being a real upside at the short term. It could be at the long, mid to long term, but not at the short term, only for UK and US. On your margin question, I think really you should view it as mainly an OPEX ratio reduction for the second half. driven by two things. One, tariff costs that we talked about already from the start of this financial year, where, as I've said before, we have very high level of transparency of what is impacting us now in Q3 and actually into Q4, as there is a three-month delay between what we pay at import and what we expense. And we are in a slightly more favorable tariff regime right now. Still more uncertainty, but I think good transparency in terms of what will happen or what will impact us in this financial year. That's one key element of the improved OPEX ratio. The second is really also higher organic growth, which drives a higher leverage on the cost base, generally speaking. Lastly, and a minor part of this is also that with higher sales in the second half, we are also expecting a slight improvement in the gross margin. But that's a smaller effect. On FX, I don't dare to give a view. These days, it's been going up and down. So I think in our guidance, we also accommodate, as we illustrate in the updated FX assumptions also, that things can move up and down. Obviously, right now, the US dollar has been moved a little bit in a better direction the last month and a half. but it's very difficult to predict what will happen there. What we are expecting and we'll see is that the lag effect from the fact that we have lower COX on some of our production sites from an FX advantage, Malaysia and Mexico specifically, will help us a little bit on gross margin. So there is an effect there, but it's a minor effect. So again, it's really tariff and operating leverage on our OPEX base that's going to lift the margin in the second half.

That's very clear. Thank you for answering my questions.

The next question is from . Please go ahead.

Hi, . Thank you for taking my questions. Also, I will keep wishing to. Firstly, just on the products, the new guidance, low single-digit, If I'm not correctly, you steer me to do a close to mid-single digit in the second half. But please correct me if I'm wrong. The loss of the volume of contracts should also impact here in the second half. So what visibility do you have to accelerate the growth in the second half? That's my first question.

I can take that. So I think two things to bear in mind. I think one is that we are on these contracts non-exclusive, which means there's still a discussion. Can we get some of it back in the forecast or the guidance we put forward now? We are assuming that we will not necessarily win these back. We're still in a fight for other customers. So we have been both winning and losing some also over the last two years. And there are a number of opportunities we're looking at, which makes us comfortable if we look at our normal win rates, that we will gain some traction to replace some of what we lost. The other bigger factor is really that, remind you again, we've talked about this before, but the price effects on the ANPM business were highest in last financial year, in first half, and much lower in second half. So there's also a little bit of an impact of the comparables are slightly easier when you go to the second half. I think if you combine those two, that means, as you say correctly, we are expecting we get back to that mid-single-digit growth level for ANPM in the second half, which will bring the full year to that low single-digit expectation.

Great. Is it possible to indicate the facing? When exactly can you return the positive growth? Should we expect a positive growth already in Q3?

So we are not guiding on quarter specifically, but I think what I will say is with some of the negotiations we're in, we are expecting that it will improve gradually across Q3 and Q4. So it's probably likely more improvement in Q4 than it is in Q3. But I don't want to be more specific than that.

Thank you. And then my next question is regarding agentic AI. We have heard some companies talking about cost benefits and savings improvements. from the adoptions recently. So where is Ambu on this journey? I mean, if you don't do it or if you're not started, I guess probably some of your Chinese competitors already started or looking in.

And maybe I can answer that and Henrik, you feel free to add. I think what's very important when it comes to AI, it's something that we are pursuing in two different ways. One, in connection with our solutions where we do have active projects that we are running in terms of using AI technology to improve technology. the performance of our existing solutions to also bring additional features to our existing solutions. So that's where we see huge opportunities to make even greater benefits for our customers in how they both diagnose, treat and so forth. So this is an area that we are focused a lot on. both when it comes to our internal development, but also when it comes to looking externally and partnering with different types of companies and that. So I think that's – and customers. So that's one part where we are actually very excited about the opportunity, and we do think that we have an opportunity to lead in that space, but we are also very much considering how is it actually also the – regulatory landscape is evolving so the solutions that we bring forward that we have a good understanding of the regulatory pathway for approval which is both in Europe but also with the FDA evolving and a lot is happening there right now. So that's one area that we are very focused on. The other area is obviously internally in the company and we take two different approaches here. One, how is it that we can improve our efficiency and how we actually operate in a smarter way. We have a number of things that we have already implemented to do that, not always only to improve the efficiency, but actually also to improve the quality in what we do. So I think that's an important way to look at it. But over time, of course, it is a key contributor to driving a more scalable business. The other thing is when it comes to internal opportunities to improve how we serve our customers. And that's also where we see a number of things that we can leverage technology to even set us up to do that, to even serve our customers better. We are not talking so much about that externally right now. We have a number of different things both happening online. locally as tests to make sure that we get it right before we scale it and some more global initiatives. But it's something that we think that we need to think carefully and be prudent in how we invest, but we see a lot of potential for Ambu. And with our culture and our way of operating, we should be able to gain a lot of benefits in this in the next one, two years.

And just to supplement, I would say, without linking it specifically to margin targets, I think in our view on the internal side, less so AI is about efficiency. It's actually more about agility in our business, back to Britt's point on how we serve our customers, and scalability in our business. If anything, particularly from an internal side, this makes us more comfortable in our ability to deliver a scalable business model faster. And that for us is a really positive, you can say, in terms of the growth story and the growth ambitions we have ahead of us.

Okay, is it possible to quantify a bit about those benefits or it is still very early stage?

It's still too early. And I think for us, again, the main priority is driving more growth. So I think the only comment I would make is if we see an opportunity for adding more agility, more customer experience, focus in our business or better scalability faster, we will make that investment, even if it short term comes at a slight margin impact, because we still believe that the main driver for us is to put ourselves in the best position to drive growth. And therefore, I'm not going to split it into what does it mean for margin short term, midterm and long term, but it's more our ability to deliver on the long term growth. We feel more and more encouraged and technology will help us more and more on that journey.

Great. Thank you. I'll jump right to the queue.

We have a follow-up question from Tyra Lee, UBS. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking me again. I just had a quick follow-up on my first question there. Now, I appreciate you don't want us narrowly focused on the performance, but I was just wondering if we could get a directional idea on whether Q3, Q4 performance will be more balanced or whether you are expecting a very back-end-loaded year.

I can comment briefly. So I think, again, it's two slightly different dynamics. So on respiratory, I think you should expect that gradual acceleration where we're expecting Q3 to be another gradual acceleration and likely also Q4 because it is really customer conversion. I think on URI and TI, it's a slightly different dynamic because there are many subsegments in that. So there we're more expecting it to go back to a steady state here from Q3 and into Q4. The only, you could say, factor on that is that, as Britt mentioned, we have implemented this new commercial setup in U.S. It was just changed, and U.S. is a very big driver of growth for this. With this change also sometimes come a little bit of implementation slack, which could mean that for the Q3 could be a little bit lower and then Q3 a little bit higher. But this is more internally driven in terms of how do we make sure people have focus the right places. We talked about in Q4 last year how focus on urology had taken focus away on ENT. So some of these dynamics is what we are investing in making sure we become more clear on. but also means in the very short term can sometimes create a little bit of unclarity that we're then working through. So I think the sum of the parts is on respiratory, it's really that customer conversion. On urology and TGI, it's more internal execution that can drive some differences between Q3 and Q4. Yeah.

And I think maybe just a quick comment to what Henrik said. That also means that we have been sitting looking at some of those different dynamics and what we can expect from those. And this is factored in how we look at the plus 15% for the full year, just to fully clarify that, even though you may see slightly higher growth rates in the Q4 relative to the Q3.

Exactly.

Thank you. That's very clear.

I really appreciate that.

Thank you.

We have a follow-up question from Martin Brunet, Nordea. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you very much. Just two quick follow-up questions, I hope. The first one is on the cost inflation. You're not seeing too much disruption in the supply chain, but I guess that it's called the supply shock for a reason that you actually get supplies somehow. The intel that I'm getting at the moment is that plastic prices are surging plus 50% to 100% at the moment on the contracts. So I assume that you have some long contracts, but can you maybe tell me a bit about your exposure to the plastic prices and also maybe just a few words on how at least the proportion of contracts that is inflation linked somehow to raw material. That's the first question. And then on the second question, I get that it's still too early to really – say too much on the Eurotereo scope, but when I try to assess your portfolio within the Eurotereo, it doesn't look like it's extremely competitive or commercially differentiated, even when I compare it to some of the competitors that you are maybe looking at inferior. When I look at the sizes of the scopes and sort of the tubes and the different settings, Also, on that note, Boston Scientific has its fluid management system cleared by the FDA in March, which I guess is a bit more locking their customers in, making it more difficult to take market shares from them. So can you maybe put a few words on how you see your Euroterrascope portfolio and the breadth of that? the need potentially for organically innovating your portfolio here and potentially also looking at what Boston Scientific is doing, buying assets that can help you accelerate closing the gap to your main competitor in this space. Thank you.

Thank you. Let me comment on this, maybe starting with our ureteroscope. So I think if we look at that, we have basically launched our first version, if you will, our first generation of our ureteroscope that we have been working on for a couple of years that we are bringing out to the market where we do see some differentiation when it comes to I mean, to what is out there also in terms of that we have on the system and the software and how we have connectivity into the hospital systems which no other single-user suppliers have. So we do see that we have some strength. But having said that, I think it's also important, and that's some of what you alluded to, to take a step back and say that we are actually entering a market that is characterized by slightly more complexity than... I mean, cystoscopy as an example, meaning that the procedures where you use a ureteroscope for primarily kidney stone management, that's unlike cystoscopes. It's hours-long procedures where you use lasers and a lot of other equipment. So that means then when we go to our customers, they will have a number of different providers of different solutions. And you can say we are... now have our foot into this market with the first generation, and we have a number of development projects in place that should strengthen that solution in a couple of ways that I cannot talk about more externally. But that's very much how we see this, that this is our entry into a market of higher complexity than some of the other segments, and we will gradually strengthen some of the portfolio around that to be... I mean, to drive our share in this market. When it then comes to Boston, I mean, they're much more a urology player, and I think the fluid system that they have, I mean, we are also looking at different acquisition opportunities. It may not be a fluid management system necessarily, but I also do think that they need something to support the whole urology franchise because they're, I mean... Their ureteroscope has been in the market for around eight years now, and it's clearly, I mean, not one where we see them a lot out there when we are getting new customers. And we also see last year in the recent quarter from Boston Scientific, you see recent quarter almost flat in urology. So there's definitely not the same momentum in their business right now. But more to say that, I mean, this is a... foot into this market and we see a lot of potential and also see some options on how we can further strengthen our position. Maybe I can just put a few comments on the plastic and the cost inflation and then Henrik can add. I mean, I agree with you around, I mean, that we do follow closely the whole situation with prices also on plastic and have done have done so for a while and it's very clear that there is I mean there is a reason for us right now to be close to our suppliers fortunately we have several suppliers and we have also I mean managed to get some good contracts that I cannot come into go into detail with we also as Henrik said before we also have I mean to prepare for an unpredictable world we also have I mean a good level of inventory also on the plastic side that keeps us going for some time. And then at the end of the day, I think we can all conclude that the market is more unpredictable. Also that, I mean, ultimately these prices will, price increases if they happen and become drastically, they will also fall onto customers because everyone else, I mean, that we are competing with will face the same we have the benefit of being leading so we can buy volumes that some of the others are not able to. So relative to the industry, we are quite well positioned. And relative to our own situation, we are taking a number of different measures and bringing different suppliers into play to make sure that we are super focused on keeping the cost down of all material that we are using. Plastic is not the key driver of our cost, I should say, but nevertheless, this is, of course, important.

And just supplementing very briefly, just remind us of two things. On the endoscopy portfolio, we have on our handles bioplasts, which is less related to oil. That's not why we implemented it, but it's less dependent or linked to oil price. And plastic is a small fraction of the cox of an endoscope. On NPM, particularly the anesthesia products, it's a different situation. Plastic is a much bigger fraction of the cost, but this is also a business area, like we've discussed before, where we have a much better practice of then being able to push cost increases to our customers. And this is a general challenge for all suppliers within that space. So should that be a structural change, we also believe that's something we can manage towards the customer. Net-net, this is why we don't think it's a, it is not a challenge in Q2. We don't see it as a challenge for H2, but it's something we're observing closely to Britt's point. And I just want to come back to what I said earlier. For us, it's really all about supply chain reliability. In a long-term conversion like the one we're on, that is the one key thing, success parameter for us. And then we can manage around that.

Thank you very much.

The next question is from Bernstein. Please go ahead. Yes, hi.

Morning, everybody. Just as a follow-up or a wrap-up, can you come back into the evolution of the order intake that you're seeing into the Euro division and any changes or possible changing you want to flag regarding the dynamic versus last year? and also possibly another very quick one regarding the gross margin difference in between the endoscopy and the APM.

I can take the last piece quickly. So we don't comment on the gross margin specifically for the two businesses separate, but just as I said earlier today and I've said in previous calls, endoscopy has a higher gross margin, everything else equal than our ANPM business. So in a Longer term perspective, that also means a higher growth in industry solutions than NPM, which is what we are guiding for and targeting, will of course be a helping and supportive trend towards driving up the gross margin.

Do you want to comment on that? Yeah, and then maybe on the growth and the order intake and specifically on Euro, ENT and GI, you could say we were very clear last time that after Q1, slightly higher growth than we expected to... orders coming in towards the end of the quarter, so we would see that impact in Q2, which it did. So I think that's very much on plan. When we then, to your question, look at Q3, Q4, we don't... I mean, those dynamics that we saw around Q1, Q2 are washed out, if you will, so we don't have anything that we can see right now that should impact... I mean, that split necessarily. I think it's... I mean, the comparators are... I mean, are easier in Q4 than Q3 is one comment that I would make. But in general, I think while we do see fluctuations quarter over quarter, as that's the nature of our business, we don't see anything that should, I mean, in terms of order timing that we are looking into right now that should have an impact on the quarters to come.

I think in terms of predictability, just also reiterating, this growth is coming from conversion from existing customers, removing more of their volume from reusable to single-use. We have some often very good transparency of that. And it is converting new customers to our single-use solutions, which, of course, there's always some timing dependency sometimes of what you land, when, and exactly in what quarter. But on both, we see a very clear trend towards higher single-use penetration, as Britt said, and with our position, therefore, we feel really good about that trend. Then there can be these quarterly fluctuations, which we're trying to be more transparent and clear on. Okay, thanks a lot. Thank you.

That was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Britt Malby and send for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you to everyone for joining our call today. Thank you for great questions as well and wishing everyone a great day.