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Ambu A S Ord
8/26/2026
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the AMBU earnings release Q3 2025-26 conference call. I'm Vicky, the course call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star, then zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Britt Meelby Jensen, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you and good morning, everyone, and welcome to this earnings call for our Q3 2025-26 My name is Britt Meelby Jensen. I'm the CEO of Amble and I have Henrik Skak Bender, our CFO with me today. So if we move to the next slide and then the next one again, I'll start with a review of our business and progress before I hand over to Henrik to go through our financials. And starting on the next slide, please, with the highlights for Q3. Overall, We see a very strong shift towards single use endoscopy. We continue to lead this conversion to single use by bringing new innovative solutions to the market that can address a wide range of procedures, also supported by key opinion leaders across the different areas that we are in. In the quarter, this was most evident in the reacceleration we have seen in respiratory, which, as you know, is the first area we entered. Here we grew 17.1%, which was driven by our bronchoscopy portfolio, but supported by the strong synergistic effect from our new video laryngoscope solution, SureSight. So in urology, we grew urology ENT and GI. We grew 15% in the quarter, resulting in a 16% growth overall of the endoscopy solution. In ANPM, after two quarters of negative growth, we returned to positive growth with 1.6%. and we also announced recently a new solution Neuraline Cup MRI CT that is positioned to support further growth recovery. Our EBIT margin came in at 13.5% both reflecting increased investments and partly offset both by tariff reclaims and scalability. We expect the reported EBIT margin to land in the upper end of our 12 to 14% guidance. And in line with the communication that we had in Q2, that we were trending towards 10% organic growth for the full fiscal year, we are confirming this as we are updating our revenue guidance to around 10% growth. So in total, we continue to be very well positioned to deliver strong organic growth and increase profitability over our summer head periods. Let's turn to the next page, please. And here you see a lot of numbers as usual. And overall, these reflect a very strong financial position, cash generation and high revenue growth. So specifically, as I just mentioned, I want to highlight the 16% endoscopy growth and that this segment now represents 64% of our business. While NPM has turned to positive growth, the volume of uplift will take some time. The low single digit growth is the driver of our updated revenue guidance for the full year. Also let me again here highlight the EBIT margin which grew 13.5% and again highlighting that this represents a stronger growth acceleration in the second half of the year as we communicated in November when we started the year. I'll let Henrik cover this in more detail. So overall, we believe it's a strong financial position and we are continuing to invest a lot in both innovation when it comes to commercial and R&D. Let's look at the business in more detail on the next slide, please, starting with respiratory, where we posted really strong growth this quarter of 17.1%. And when we look at the rolling 12 months, this amounts to 11.5%. Single use is in this segment becoming increasingly the standard of care as there's a lot of room to continue to grow with reusable still making up the majority of the procedures in this segment. Our growth was driven by our Broncoscope portfolio, so the A Scope 4 and A Scope 5, where customers are also with the A Scope 5 still willing to pay for premium solutions. SureSight, as I mentioned in the beginning, is still an important growth driver and that has both created a new adjacency for our business and also a synergistic market opportunity with our Broncoscope portfolio. So it contributes thereby both as an individual revenue stream and together with the full solutions of Broncoscopes. When we take a step back, we are very optimistic about the respiratory portfolio in general. And I want to highlight when we look at these numbers that this is a great example of how we are proving that the playbook that we have and that we have used in recent years that works and how we continue to drive new innovation that is differentiated in the market and thereby accelerating growth. Also in this segment, which was the first we entered as most of you know now many years ago. So if we move to the next slide, this is the other part of our endoscopy solution. So urology, ENT, and GI. And here we delivered 15% growth. And when we look at the rolling 12 months, this amounts to 16.9% growth. As we mentioned in Q2, we were impacted a bit by some of the deliberate US commercial adjustments that we did in April that positioned us well for long-term growth. continue to see momentum coming from those adjustments that we made. But when we look at where the growth is coming from, most of this is really driven by our existing portfolio of sister scopes and ENT. And it's a continuation of the momentum that we have seen in the last quarters. When we then to comment on the 16.9 rolling growth, this is also the level that you should expect short term for the business. I believe it's quite solid growth and we have good solutions in the pipeline on top of this that will bring to market over the next two years that should both support and also strengthen this growth momentum that we see in this group. So let me move to the next page and to anesthesia and patient monitoring. But before doing that, I think I should clarify that overall, The growth that we see in the endoscopy segment of 15 plus percent this year is something that we believe is very well on track to deliver over the strategy period 15 to 20 percent as we set out to do last year. And the 15 plus percent growth represents also what we communicated back in November. So now moving to ANPM, which now represents 36% of our overall revenue of the company. And we returned, as I mentioned, to positive growth of 1.3%. And when we look at the rolling last 12 months, this is then now 1.3%. Patient monitoring continues to show solid growth here, but anesthesia is where we're seeing the annualization effect from some of the volumes that we lost on selected accounts as we communicated in Q2. It's important to say that we have not seen any further losses in customers in the recent quarter. The changes that we saw came on the back of two years of price increases where it takes some time to get that volume back that we lost. We still expect once this is normalized that the business will follow the market growth of 3-5% and overall we believe that when you look at this segment the growth should going forward be supported by the new MRI and CT compatible electrodes that we recently announced. So let's move to the next slide and look at the progress that we've had on the strategy. So there's a lot of this slide showing that we have and we are continuing to see a lot of momentum here nine months into our Sumo head strategy. And I'm very pleased with the execution and the speed that we see across the organization. I'm not going to go through all the details that you see on this slide, but let me just highlight A couple of things here. One is the sure side reiterating that we are very much on track and very excited about the progress we see on the launch of this and also the very strong positive customer feedback that we continue to get on this solution. Then also the second thing I want to highlight here is our endo intelligence which we launched at our capital market day and where we are continuing to expand our capabilities in this field and we're continuing also to advance our solution and one recent validation of this is the best-in-class cyber security validation that we got on our monitors and this is really crucial for the endo intelligence platform because as some of you may recall we are offering integration into the hospitals and into hospital systems as the only single use player Something where we are seeing increasing momentum and where the cybersecurity validation is really crucial. But let's now take a step back and just remind everyone on the strategic priorities that we made with the strategy on the next page. Because when we launched the strategy, we called out urology and respiratory as the key focus areas. and why was that? That was basically because we see a very strong trend towards single use solutions becoming the standard of care and that this is most profound in these two areas. We need the single use conversion and also our winning formula as I alluded to earlier is very much driven by innovation with the aim of differentiating and for us to provide the full solutions for our customers and continuing to deliver strong commercial execution. Let me just double click on these two areas starting with respiratory on the next page before I hand over to Henrik. So respiratory is, as I said, a clear example of how we are winning with the broadest portfolio with the 17.1% growth in Q3 and more to come. We saw competition a few years back but came back with a full solution that addressed a lot of the different procedures in this segment. You see different parts of our solution on the left-hand side of this page. And I want to put specific attention to our SureSight solution that we just brought to market because it is a very nice adjacent new segment for us. But it's also where we see a lot of synergies with our BroncoScope portfolio. If we look at the middle and where we have tried to illustrate where is it really we see the growth coming from in this market. And the biggest growth driver, as you see on the top here, is really the conversion from reusable platforms. Despite the respiratory being a more mature market, we still continue to see this as a very strong and by far the strongest driver of growth. Then we are also gaining some market share that we were losing previously. In particular, this is a very U.S.-focused market. And then lastly, the new product launches with SureSight can expand the relevance of our procedures and open up for new areas of growth. So this is precisely the split in growth. Sorry, it's not so easy to have a precise split, but this is really how we see some of the key contributors to growth that we want to highlight. And as we look ahead, and which is what we're trying to illustrate on the right side of this slide, The next generation of solutions that we have in development will continue to support that we both increase our revenue with existing customers, that we expand also the procedure relevant in the existing markets. And this is very much the ICU and OR, as we've talked a lot about before. And then we are also being focused on driving new adoption in new markets where the OR suite in particular is an area that where there's still a lot of untapped potential. The innovation roadmap we have, we don't talk a lot about this for competitive reasons, but we do see exciting solutions in development that can strengthen our position in this area. So let me finish off my section here with urology on the next page. Because urology is, as you know, a market that consists of two clinical areas, cystoscopy and ureteroscopy. We stepped into cystoscopy as first movers in 2020, and we have had time to build a broader portfolio here We continue to be market leaders and to gain market share here, which is very much driven by the structural conversion from reusable solutions with a strong momentum also for our premium solution, Ascope 5 system. For ureteroscopy, we entered this segment more recent and we launched our first solution into a very competitive market where we were for the first time not first movers. Therefore, we are still developing our portfolio in this segment. So again, here, as you see in the middle here, we have tried to illustrate also how we see growth and where the growth is coming from. And it is, again, also the exceptionally strong conversion from reusable endoscopes, both in ureteroscopy and cystoscopy, validated by the key opinion leaders and also with an increasing entry of other players. Then we see the single use market share being more stable in cystoscopy and compared to ureteroscopy where we are gaining share but from a low base and not at the speed that we were originally planning. Then most of our growth is coming here, as I mentioned before, from existing solutions. So that is very much our cystoscopes that is the main driver in urology in a very fast growing single use market. So while we have the strong offering in cystoscopy performing really well, we will have the same approach in this segment as I talked about for respiratory, and that is to continue to advance our solutions and our offering and the relevance for more procedures. In ureteroscopy, our strong focus is really to gain share and we'll do that with our existing solution, but we're also looking to win by bringing new innovation into this segment within the next two years that should strengthen our offering in this segment. So before handing over to Henrik, maybe I should finish by summing up to say that how we see the market is really that single use is becoming the standard of care and the The trend towards single use is moving fast. We are continuing to lead this, and what is really the most important growth driver is not so much the small market share shifts, but it's really the conversion from reusable, where we see our endoscopy solutions growth still at 15 plus percent this year, and again confirming that we are well on track for a CAGR of 15 to 20 percent over our sumo head strategy period. So with this, I'll move to the next slide and hand over to Henrik to go through the financials.
Thank you, Britt. Thank you for the update. Good day, good morning to all. I'll now take you through the financial review for Q3. As usual, I'll start with revenue development, then cover regional performance, talk a bit more on margin in particular, cash flow, and finally the updated outlook as Britt already referred to. So let's first have a closer look at reported revenue and organic growth on the next page here. Looking at our overall growth performance, we delivered 10.3% organic growth, resulting now in a 12-month rolling revenue of organic growth of 9%. As Britt said, this was really driven by strong growth in endoscopy, with now a revenue share of 64% and continuing to increase as endoscopy is outgoing anesthesia and patient monitoring. Respiratory Within Endoscopy delivered a particular strong quarter with 17.1% organic growth for the quarter and accelerating 12 months rolling organic growth. While AMBM returned to positive growth for Q3 after a more challenging first half, it's still a modest growth expected for the rest of the year. The growth is still challenged with selected customers in US where we're seeing volume declines, and that is still a full year effect that we expect to see across the year while we are now also seeing positive momentum across the business in many other areas. And that also means that ANPM again is back in positive volume growth. This change though is still the main driver behind our updated organic revenue growth outlook of around 10%. I'll come back to that when I review the outlook in more detail. Last but not least, FX continued to be a headwind in Q3 compared to Q2, where we continued to see a negative development in the US dollar DKK currency, which continued to be both impacting us negatively on top line, on gross margin, and slightly on EBIT margin. Let's have a closer look at the regional performance on the next page. Overall, we continue to see solid growth across all regions. The strong growth in all regions is within endoscopy solutions. Growth in North America continued to be really solid, also endoscopy solutions, but still impacted by the lower growth in particular anesthesia on the non-exclusive contracts and the lower volume that I addressed before, and we also mentioned now Q2. Both EMEA and particular rest of the world are on solid growth tracks, continuing to be driven by the really solid underlying endoscopy growth in all markets. With that, let's have a closer look at margin and start with gross margin. So looking at gross margin, you continue to see a steady, next page please operator. Thank you. Starting with gross margin, we continue to see a solid developing trend overall where we are compared to last year improving our gross margin by 60 basis points for the quarter specifically moving or ending at 59.5% compared to 58.9% for the same quarter the last year. Though for this quarter specifically, it is a lower level and that is mainly driven by FX, by the continued FX development and the negative development I just referred to in the US dollar GKK currency. The underlying trend of the continuous positive development in gross margin and the drivers of those are really still unchanged, being one, better output efficiency in our manufacturing sites around the world. continuing the journey of being more effective and scaling our footprint both in China and Malaysia, but in particular in Mexico. Improved pricing governance across the board, but particular with high focus on ANPM. And last not least, a continuous positive driver being that the higher growth in endoscopy with stronger underlying gross margin continues to drive a better product mix and therefore a better gross margin. Let's move on to EBIT. For EBIT specifically, there's a number of things that are moving around and therefore I really want to make sure that we are clear in terms of how to look at the reported EBIT and also the many different adjustments that are moving back and forth. Reported EBIT was 13.5%, an improvement of 2.2 percentage points versus the same quarter of the last year. In our report, This was previously labeled as EBIT before special items, but as we don't really have any special items in this financial year, nor in the comparison year, we're just calling it reported EBIT. On the adjustments, to reach what we call in our presentation adjusted EBIT, this is really what you could say a like for like comparison from previous year. Unlike in Q1 and Q2, where we saw a positive effect from these adjustments, It's really a different adjustment here in Q2. The underlying building blocks are as follows. We still pay tariffs in the quarter, but these were lower than in Q1 and Q2, following the trend, as we said from the start, that the paid tariffs in the first half would be higher than the paid tariffs in the second half. And we still consider or expect this number to decrease further. ending basically at a runway cost of around one percentage point negative effect for tariffs that we will carry over into the next financial year, something that will also come back to. On refunds, we received slightly less than 40 million DKK back from the US government on the reclaimed IEPA tariffs. This is slightly less than 40 million, because there's also an FX adjustment and smaller transfer pricing adjustments. But as you can see in our interim report, Note 4, this is really the difference between the balance that we communicated in 2.2 and the balance that we're now communicating as still outstanding in 2.3. In addition to that, after the closing of the quarter, we received additional 85 million DKK, which were not recognized in Q3, but will be recognized instead in Q4. One of the reasons why we're also now communicating a higher landing point of our EBIT margin for the full year in the upper range of our guidance of 12 to 14%. As the refunds were larger than the expenses in Q3, net impact on tariffs for this quarter, unlike previous quarters, was slightly positive. In addition to that, we also had a smaller impact from FX, as I also mentioned earlier, if you compare this quarter to the previous two quarters, particularly driven by the US dollar DKK development. Altogether, this means that the adjusted EBIT, as referred to here on the slide, landed at 12.5%. This is below quarter one and quarter two adjusted EBIT of 15.2 and 14.5 respectively. We did indicate in our last quarter that we did expect quarter three to be a bit lower than quarter four, and that's also part of what you're seeing here. And we are comfortable today reiterating that quarter four will be higher, both on re-drop, partly driven by tariffs, but also on the underlying EBIT. To three specifically, was impacted by a few small-time costs, particularly the commercial expansion that we mentioned in our Q2, where we did do extra investments, particularly in the US, to expand our sales force. And there was also always a couple of ramp-up costs on those. This is part of the selling expense line. and secondly we had a number of strategic projects that also were expensed in the admin line and all together this contributed to a slight step down in the adjusted EBIT margin from what we saw in Q1 and Q2, but we are comfortable that this will turn around for Q4. Looking specifically at Q4, the step up in the adjusted EBIT margin will mainly be driven by three factors. As implicit in our underlying updated guidance, we still expect higher growth in Q4, and that will drive an overall better operating leverage. Secondly, we expect a better gross margin, partly because of the continued improvement of mix towards endoscopy, and partly because of geographical mix, as we are expecting higher growth in US. Lastly, and the biggest driver of this will also be a lower OPEX ratio, in the fourth quarter, particularly driven by over-operating leverage, as I mentioned also with a higher growth, particularly in the lines of selling expenses and admin, where we do expect to see higher leverage for quarter four. So net-net, we are seeing what we see as a positive development The quarter three is affected by a few one-time costs that are mainly impacting our admin and selling expenses. But overall, we are well on track. And with what we see for quarter four and the guidance where we're now expecting to land in the upper end of the 12 to 14, we feel very comfortable about it. Last but not least, coming back to my point about tariffs, I also just want to reiterate that the tariff costs, the underlying tariff costs, are still developing as expected. And we will, we believe, end at a point where at the end of the year, we'll still be carrying around a negative one percentage point of impact before any tariff refunds as a negative impact you will also carry into next year. Exactly how we will end up accounting for the remaining outstanding refund claims is still an open question. We have another 70 million that could either be paid as part of Q4, i.e. if they're paid to us before end of September, or could be paid later in the year. We maintain the view that we are conservative on this, and we therefore not recognize any of the outstanding tariff reclaims until they're ultimately paid to our accounts. With that, let me move on to cash flow. We continue to see a really strong cash flow driven by both and mainly and stronger operating leverage from our improved underlying EBITDA, but also with a positive development in networking capital. The underlying EBITDA is obviously also here helped by the stronger or the additional reclaims of tariffs. But overall, the main driver of this is really our operating leverage. That also means that we are reporting a net free cash flow for the quarter of 154 million. And we continue, therefore, also to see a stronger and stronger cash conversion now for the quarter specifically at 48%. And therefore, also reiterating that for the full year, we're still expecting a cash conversion above 40%. With that, on the last page, let me turn to Outlook. So ultimately, we are today, as Britt also mentioned in her opening, updating our Outlook as extension of our updated view of the AMPM expectations for the full year. We are therefore now guiding towards an around 10% organic growth, which really reflects that the anesthesia and patient monitoring is now expected to be very low single digit. Positive, but very low. We continue to see positive oil volume uptake in NPM, and with that momentum we're seeing both in quarter three and also what we've seen since we closed the quarter, we feel comfortable that we can deliver on this. Very importantly, again, to highlight, as Britt also did in her closing, we're seeing really solid underlying growth in endoscopy with a continuing strong momentum, and we're therefore still guiding for plus 15% organic growth in endoscopy, which keeps us within the 15 to 20% Organic Growth Kicker throughout our summer head period. On EBIT margin, we are maintaining our EBIT margin guidance of 12% to 14%. We still expect the uptick in quarter four, as I just explained on the previous page. This will be supported by tariff reclaims, but also by a stronger underlying EBIT margin for the fourth quarter. Last but not least, as I also just mentioned, our cash conversion remains on track to deliver a 40% cash conversion for the full year in alignment with previous guidance and in alignment with our long-term target. With that, I want to hand it back to the operator for Q&A.
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