speaker
Tom Englund
CEO

Hi, everyone, and welcome to this earnings call for Certical Science for the first quarter of 2026. My name is Tom Englund. I'm the CEO. And with me today, I have Anna Ahlberg, our CFO. So we'll start with a walkthrough of quarter one and the numbers, and then we'll open up for questions. So quarter one is a quarter with two stories running in parallel. On the surface, reported sales are down 6% to 236 million SEC. But once you strip out the currency headwind that we had and the dollar moved significantly against us, the underlying business grew by 4%. And if you look at cash flow, we generated 65 million sec from operations, which is a very strong number and significantly better than the same quarter last year. So the business itself is in good shape. Adjusted EBIT came in at 28 million SEC or 12%. That's in line with last year. And when you adjust for currencies, it's actually around 16% right at our target level. So the headwind here is, as with the revenue, almost entirely a currency story and not an operational one. Throughout the quarter, we're executing on the strategy we laid out at the Capital Markets Day in December. And I feel good about where we're headed. So now I want to take you through the different parts of the business. Educational products grew by 6% or 14% growth in local currencies. And there are some exciting things happening here that I want to highlight. EMEA had an exceptional quarter. Revenue was up 80% or over 80%, driven by a number of strong deals across Eastern Europe. And the UK, which, as you know, is where our Certical Science UK team operates, posted one of its best quarters ever. Sales in pound sterling for the quarter actually exceeded the total for all of 2025, which is a big statement. And it also tells me that the investment that we have made in building that business is starting to pay off in a meaningful way. The Americas is a different story right now. We were down about 10% in local currency, and we see a trend in Americas with our active customers that despite pipelines being full, the purchasing decisions by our customers take slightly longer time. There's a certain hesitation in the market, particularly in the US, and we think it's tied to the broader macro environment. The silver lining though, is that the activity is still very high with big pipelines, as I said, especially within ultrasound and robotics, which gives us confidence that demand is there. China deserves a specific mention. The government in China is actively pushing to support locally operated and manufactured companies, which creates a headwind for our simulator business in particular. This has as an effect that the Chinese sales declined during quarter one versus the same quarter last year. However, we are not standing still and we are taking concrete steps to address this, but it's a structural shift that we need to navigate carefully. The quarter saw several important product launches within our endovascular simulation portfolio for pulmonary embolism and ICE 3D or three-dimensional intracardiac ultrasound. The product and R&D teams are working with an exciting product pipeline with the aim of broadening and improving our strong portfolio even further, and also to increase the penetration in this very under-penetrated market. So I want to speak a bit about ultrasound. Ultrasound had a strong quarter, and I'm particularly pleased with the momentum that we're seeing in ultrasound. The adoption of ultrasound across clinical settings is accelerating, and we're well positioned to capture that. Women's health continues to be a big and key focus for us, and I think it's worth pausing on why. Ultrasound is one of the primary tools for diagnosing conditions that disproportionately affect women, and it has historically been under-resourced in terms of training. Our solutions are genuinely making a difference, helping clinicians diagnose earlier with more confidence. That's directly in line with the purpose of surgical science. The ultrasound simulation market is also genuinely exciting from a financial perspective due to the high number of potential users and the big size of the potential market. Ultrasound simulation has the opportunity to represent an even larger share of the revenues of surgical science in the future. A milestone this quarter was that we launched the first products built on the shared technology platform between Surgical Science and Surgical Science UK, or formal Intelligent Ultrasound. This is the first tangible output from R&D from the integration of Intelligent Ultrasound, and it's a meaningful step. There's still plenty of integration work ahead, but the direction is clear and we're moving really fast. Now to robotics, where the headline number requires some context. Industry revenues were down 17% and license revenue came in at 68 million SEC versus 84 million SEC in quarter one last year. If you look at revenue in local currency though, the license revenue was only $600,000 or 8% lower than quarter one of 2025. Licensed revenues in quarter one in USD were actually higher than two out of four quarters of 2025. As we have previously communicated, the memorandum of understanding with Intuitive did not result in a signed agreement, and we reverted back to our existing contract at the start of the year. We previously estimated a 60 to 90 million SEC negative impact on licensed revenues for 26 versus 25, and that estimated remains unchanged. I want to be clear about what this is and what it is not. It is not a deterioration of relationship with intuitive, quite the opposite. The collaboration is as strong as it has ever been. What's changed is the commercial structure reverting back to an old agreement. And we're working within that. Our conviction remains that simulation will be a central component of the digital offerings in the robotic platforms of the future. And surgical science will be at the heart of that. On a market level, the picture is really exciting. The robotics market is very dynamic and fast growing. Intuitive received FDA approval for cardiac procedures. Johnson & Johnson got the Novo classification for Ottawa. Medtronic received US approval for Yugo in urology. And the commercial competition in the US market for robotic surgery is now real. And that's actually a good thing for surgical science, because it means more robots, more training needs, and more licenses. We also had license revenues from several of our other robotic customers during the quarter, which is a clear sign that players beyond Intuitive are now deploying robots at scale. We are developing simulation solutions for most of the top 20 robotics companies. Our pipeline is bigger than it's ever been, and the long-term opportunity here is very big. Medical device had a quieter quarter financially. Development revenue at 14 million sec can simulate the sales of 20 million sec. And this is a business that moves in lumps. Projects have long lead times, and the comparison last year was particularly tough because that several customers undertook large scale fleet upgrades at the same time. We have a clear high ambition within this segment and definitely a growth strategy, and we expect to show solid growth in the future. We should not judge success on one quarter alone and look too much at lag indicators. Rather, the underlying lead indicators remain strong. More than 70% of customers in active development projects are repeat clients. That's a loyalty and retention number that tells you about the quality of what we deliver. We're working with many of the biggest MedTech customers globally and are a critical supplier in their deliveries. And we continue to see new clients entering as well. The foundation is solid. As outlined in the strategy, we have a strong focus on improving our gross margins and we are seeing the effects of our work. On pricing, the work that we have done here continues to deliver. However, the effects of our price increases are countered by the currency headwind that we have had since so much of our sales is in US dollars. we pushed through another price increase in April. The full effect will show up gradually as sales cycles close throughout the year, but the trend is positive and gives us confidence in margin improvement ahead. So let me step back and talk about where we're going. The strategy we laid out in December is about becoming a company that truly addresses the full potential of medical simulation across five segments, all of which have very low penetration today. And we are in the early innings of a long game. We have no debt and we have 668 million in cash. We have the market leading position. We have the products, we have the relationships and we have the clinical expertise. This combination is genuinely rare and it gives us real options to invest in growth, to pursue acquisitions and also to return capital when the timing is right. In quarter two, aside from the work with growing these five segments, we will put significant focus on our operational and production structure, particularly on how we scale manufacturing in a way that reduces cost per unit and makes us more resilient to supply chain disruptions. Our new production facility in Tel Aviv is expected to go live during the quarter, which is going to be an important milestone for us. The tailwinds are real and they're growing. An aging population, increasingly complex procedures, a shortage of trained healthcare professionals, higher standards for patient safety, all of these are driving demand for simulation every single year. We're building for that world, and I'm confident that we have the right strategy, the right team, and the right assets to get there. With that, I will hand over to Anna to walk through the financials.

speaker
Anna Ahlberg
CFO

Thank you, Tom. Yes, we're very pleased to report a solid start to the year. For the quarter then, we had sales of 235 million, down 6% in SEC, but up 4% in local currencies. And we have, after Q1 2025, seen a significant negative effect from currencies on our overall sales and also on our result. I will come back to that later. with our just below 80% of revenues in US dollars. For 2025, the full year, the average USD rate was down 7%. But for this first quarter against Q1 last year, it is down with a full 14%. And so, of course, that affects us. As I have mentioned before, we are doing some things to try and mitigate this. We are raising prices. And as Tom mentioned, we did one more price increase in April. And we also try and quote more countries in euros instead of in US dollars where this is possible. This will not mean a very large change in the ratio between different currencies since a lot of our revenues originate from the US. But we see for Q1, there we had approximately 70% of our revenues in US dollars. So it's down approximately seven percentage points if we compare to the full year 2025. And looking at our two business areas for the quarter, the split was 55% for EDU and 45% then for INDU. EDU then up, strong quarter up 6% or 14 in local currencies. For this year, we have updated our revenue segments somewhat. The geographic regions have been adjusted slightly and sales by product segment have replaced sales by product group. And this is done in line with the segments that we have presented in our new strategy. Apart from the emergency medicine segment, that is still too small to be reported separately, and we therefore now have it included in the medical device segment. So back to regions, Tom already talked about it then. EMEA was very, very strong, up over 80%. The Eastern European countries accounted for the majority of this increase, and then the UK had a quarter that was stronger than any other quarter in 2025. Revenue in the Americas, then down by 24% compared to Q1 last year, primarily related to the US, but excluding currency effects, sales for this region decreased by 10%. APAC saw a 25% decline, primarily then attributable to China. Also, we had a large order for Pakistan in the prior year quarter. India was also strong for this quarter. Indu down 17% or 7% then excluding FX effects and licensed revenues, as Thomas talked about 68 million, a decrease in SEC of 19%, but eight then FX adjusted. And if we look at our revenue streams, that means that we had 29% of our revenues were licensed revenues in the quarter. which we see as a good number and again it was as expected that intuitive was down due to the previously announced NYU cancellation reverting back to the old agreement between the company starting January 1st and again the previous estimate that we had that this will have a negative impact on our license revenues of 60 to 90 million that is still our best estimate However, we did have revenues also from several other countries and customers in this quarter. Simulator sales as a whole was down 2% compared to Q1 last year. And this is then due to our industry business area. As Tom said, it's more lumpy for sales than within EDU since it's usually tied to larger projects where development is also involved. And our development revenues, they were up a bit compared to last year, but weaker than the previous three quarters. And this is then primarily due to the project we have in Southeast Asian country. This project saw revenues of only 2 million SEK in this quarter due to a minor restructuring of one of the project's milestones. The total for the project is still the same, even with a smaller addition. But for this quarter, we saw some weaker revenues. And moving on then to our costs and EBIT margin, as mentioned, our gross margin then for the quarter was 66%, 69% if we look at the comparable quarter. Licensed revenues, as we've seen, a lower share of total sales. And then the currency effects, that effect was approximately 2.2 percentage points in the quarter. And here it's important to note that the lower dollar exchange rate has for us less impact on the cost of goods sold than on other cost items. Our input goods are primarily purchased in currencies other than USDs and production and associated wage costs are also not in US dollars. Also for the quarter, the proportion of direct sales within educational products and then primarily in the US was lower. And this also then has a dampening effect on the gross margin. So these three are the main three reasons. And then on the positive side, we have the price increases that we implemented in 2025. And as mentioned, we did another one in April. Regarding OPEX, sales costs were 21% of sales. In the comparative quarter we had some restructuring costs attributable to the acquisition of intelligent ultrasound, now Surgical Science UK. And then we also did some further restructuring in Q3. And then starting in Q4 last year, the reductions that we implemented in the Salesforce following the acquisition started to have full effects on the cost side. Tariffs from the US implemented in Q2 last year, meaning that we had no costs for this in the comparable quarter, Q1 last year. And for this quarter, then tariffs amounted to approximately 2.4 million SEK. Admin costs 8% of sales, same as Q1 last year if we exclude acquisition costs for IU in the comparable quarter. In absolute numbers, admin costs were down if we compare to previous quarters. We have started to work on the relisting process. But these costs, we will of course inform of how much costs we have for each quarter due to this process. And we expect the relisting to take place next year. R&D costs, 24% of sales. We activated slightly less, 9 million instead of 10 million SEK in the quarter. The costs on this line also vary depending on how much development revenue there is for the quarter since salaries for the portion of the development team that have worked on projects that generate development are transferred to cost of goods sold. and in absolute numbers for R&D costs we were down a bit compared to last quarter Q4 however then we also had some restructuring costs on this line 3 million SEK related to the termination of development personnel in Seattle on the other hand we had more development revenues then meaning more costs were moved to the cost of goods line but all in all if we look at all these different items our R&D costs were down a bit compared to Q4 even though we continue to invest in this area. The other operating income and operating costs line that mainly consists of costs for the company's option programs, as well as the revaluation of operating assets and liabilities in foreign currencies. And for this quarter, we had a negative impact on results. So just above 5 million SEC attributable to this revaluation compared to a positive of just under 2 million SEC last year. So following this then our operating profit our EBIT for the quarter was 23 million SEK corresponding to an operating margin of 10%. If we then adjust our P&L for FX effects EBIT amounted to 36 million or 14%. And the way we did this is that we used the average exchange rate for Q1 last year, recalculated the P&L. However, balance sheet items and their impact on this line, the other operating income and expenses line, that has not been restricted. Organization wise, the number of employees at the end of the period was 317. That's 19 less than going out of Q1 last year. And the majority of this change is attributable to the restructuring of the Salesforce following the acquisition of IU and also the closing of the Seattle office in Q4 last year. For adjusted EBIT, which is an EBIT exclusive of amortizations on surplus values related to acquisitions, the result here for the quarter was 28 million. And if we then adjust for FX effects the same way as we did for EBIT, our adjusted EBIT was 42 million sec or 16%. Finance net and taxes, not much to say here for the quarter. We have no loan financing, meaning that the net financial items mainly consist of interest income on bank deposits and also we have revaluation of internal loan liabilities to subsidiaries and an IFRS 16 effect. Net profit for the quarter 19 million and the tax expense was 3 million. For this year there are tax loss carry forwards in the US attributable to Mimic and also in the UK attributable to Surgical Science UK. And then cash flow, we saw a very strong quarter on the cash flow side, 65 million from operating activities compared with the minus five last year. We had a big positive from working capital, 36 million, where inventory remained largely unchanged while accounts receivable decreased. current receivables, including accrued income, and that mainly relates to accrued license revenues that we invoice and that are paid in the following quarter, that has also decreased, meaning a positive effect on the cash flow. Investing activities, Tom talked about our new production facility in Tel Aviv and for this quarter we invested approximately 6 million. And as also mentioned, they are expected to be commissioned now in the second quarter. Financing activity is not much to mention here for the quarter. And that meant that cash flow was a positive 51 million for the quarter. And we ended the quarter with 668 million in our cash and bank. And with that, we open up for questions.

speaker
Tom Englund
CEO

I would like to conclude by first thanking Anna and then a short wrap up. Quarter one was a solid quarter for Surgical Science. The underlying business is growing. Margins are in line with last year and cash flow was the best quarter one we've had in some time. The currency environment has been a real headwind. and the intuitive impact on the license revenue is playing out as expected. But if you look through those two factors, what you see is a company executing well. We have momentum in EMEA. We have a very strong quarter in the UK. We have exciting new product launches generally and specifically in ultrasound. We have a growing robotics ecosystem beyond intuitive and a pricing strategy that is working. We are not yet at our financial targets. We have been clear that 2027 is the year we expect to hit them, but we're moving in the right direction and building the foundation that gets us there. The opportunity in front of surgical science is significant. Simulation will become a central part of how healthcare trains its professional, and we intend to lead that shift. With that, we open the floor for questions. Next up.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. To enter the queue, if you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Christian Lee from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead.

speaker
Christian Lee
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Yes, good morning, Tom and Anna. Thank you for taking my two questions. The first is regarding the license revenue. If you could give us some color on the composition of the license revenue in the quarter, if there were any larger packages delivered in Q1. And given that your robotics customers, aside from intuitive or contributing to sales to a great extent, Do you view the $67 million you had in Q1 as a floor for the license revenue, or should we expect continued volatility going forward?

speaker
Tom Englund
CEO

I mean, hi, Christian. Good question. So regarding the license revenues, it is clearly a positive trend, where, as I said, simulation will play a central part of the digital offerings of the robotics platforms in the future. And since there is many players now entering the competition, more robotics systems are out there. The market is growing and the market potential is growing for simulation. That's clear. And I think it's very positive that we see that revenue streams from several different customers were seen during the quarter. Then regarding intuitive and the kind of the expectations going forward. We don't speak about specific customers, but what we can say is that simulation continues to be an important piece of the digital offering of intuitive and In a sense there, you could say that 2025 with 100 percent attach rate on the DFI was a slight jumpstart of the future. But when we speak with all our robotics customers, the team and I, we see that the discussions are only about how they can expand simulation content for their platforms and how they can tie simulation even more closely into their training pathways for the surgeons. There is a real gap here between installed capacity of robotic systems and the number of trained surgeons. That's why I say that not only will we be an important piece for the robotics platform, but also we think that this will be a growing business for us. Exactly how this will play out quarter by quarter is difficult to say, but I think you have to find appeal in the long-term opportunity here.

speaker
Christian Lee
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Excellent. Thank you. My second question is regarding the structural changes in the Chinese market and your steps to address these challenges. Are you considering moving any manufacturing or perhaps assembly operations to China?

speaker
Tom Englund
CEO

It's a very good question. And it's definitely a structural shift. And what we are doing is that we are trying to be a term coined by Atlas Coco, local, meaning that we want to be global and local at the same time. So what this means is that we want to have more local presence, generally speaking, in China. not just related to production or operations. We want to be perceived as one global important player with a very strong local foundation so that we can be seen as an attractive player from a Chinese perspective and not as a foreign company. So we're taking actions then to to increase our presence generally in China. And that has had as an effect several important decisions here through last quarter and also this quarter.

speaker
Christian Lee
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Great. Thank you very much.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

The next question comes from Simon Larsen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

speaker
Simon Larsen
Analyst, Danske Bank

Yes, hi Tom and Anna. I would like to start on the education segment. I think it was a rather solid quarter for that part of the business and it seems looking back a couple of quarters now that you've established some kind of revenue level around 130 million per quarter. So how should we think about the edu segment in particular going forward? Is this some kind of floor level you believe or any meaningful maybe one of here in Q1 that shouldn't be extrapolated thinking maybe about the ultrasound business which was very strong obviously but yeah any help on the dynamics on the EDU segment here going forward would be helpful.

speaker
Tom Englund
CEO

Yeah so we haven't as you know particularly explained or set specific target for the EDU segment in the new financial target but rather we had financial targets on the full company on the group level right but the segment is definitely an under penetrated segment and there is lots of opportunity for growth there and within the different sub segments of the other segments you have different growth potential both in percentage in absolute terms The way we're going to grow this segment is primarily by two important levers. One is the sales and marketing lever driving awareness in this segment of medical simulation and the value of our products. That's mainly a sales and marketing efforts and there we have tremendous amount of activities going into driving different type of marketing initiatives to drive awareness as well as thinking hard and executing on how to to cover the market in a much better way. We have a very broad product portfolio today and there's big opportunity here to cover the market in a more efficient way. And the second growth lever is in new product introductions. And as I mentioned in my comment here, we have a strong product pipeline working within R&D and product development. We also have made some important product announcements here last quarter and the quarters before that as well. And usually what happens then is that that becomes kind of an add-on effect, meaning that it doesn't take away from the existing business. It rather adds on to the business. So when you introduce a new product, then you get the jump in the sales. So it's definitely a growth strategy. And we're working on these two to three levers, sales marketing and product development to increase the penetration and grow the sales.

speaker
Simon Larsen
Analyst, Danske Bank

Yeah, cool. Gotcha. Gotcha. And I suppose maybe a tough question to answer, but on the industry OEM side, as Christian also mentioned, the strong print here in Q1, and you're sticking to your 60 to 90 million impact versus last year for the full year of 26. But could you give us any sort of direction as to how the impact will be sort of distributed over the quarters? I would expect us to maybe see increased pressure from from Intuitive in the coming quarters, or am I mistaken? Any help in that regard appreciated?

speaker
Tom Englund
CEO

I think there is a lot of moving parts here. I mean, it's not just with our license revenues are not just constituted of Intuitive. As I've said, we have several different revenue streams within license revenues. We want to stick kind of to the overarching argument that simulation will become a very central piece for the robotics manufacturer and as i said we see increase in in the number of requests for proposals and the number of development projects that we have with these customers and usually they stay they they become customers and they stay customers uh with us for a long time then there's another piece of this as well is that the robotic manufacturers they themselves work on the business modeling and the packaging of the digital offerings here and the way that you offer robotic platforms tomorrow will not be necessarily the same as today and that will also have an impact on on on the packaging of the digital offerings and it will also have an impact on on on the volume of licenses that we sell so there are so many moving parts here so we don't want to we want to refrain from making any sort of more specific predictions but rather stick to the 60 to 90 million that we have said that is the impact on the full year and then feel very confident about the long-term opportunity here in the license business understood thanks so much

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Ulrich Trattner from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.

speaker
Ulrich Trattner
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

Thank you very much. And kind of building on previous questions and regarding the 60 to 90 million in guidance you provided, Is there any way where you can give us some more information on the effects in Q1? And I know you won't serve to the guidance, but it should really help the market to navigate sort of seeing growth, underlying growth in this segment, if you can help us provide some more granularity on the potential headwind or the expectation of headwinds throughout the course of 26.

speaker
Tom Englund
CEO

Once again, I think it's very dangerous and somewhat unprofessional to try and give guidance on a quarter-by-quarter basis when there's so many moving parts. I think that the macro trends are very positive and strong. I spoke about the increase of competition with different robotic manufacturers now coming in. We see strong competition within the US market now with Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson entering the fray. And that, of course, drives need for training and drives need for simulation, right? And then, as I also mentioned here, just in the previous question, there is also moving parts in how you package and how you price these licenses and what prices you have for these licenses. All this together and and still relatively few number of customers not that we have like hundreds or thousands of of license streams makes makes it that it can be a little bit lumpy but the longer term opportunity is very strong and we also feel very confident in our ability to deliver value and extract good solid prices from these customers Regarding more specifically, for example, the attach rate and how many licenses per system for specific customers, we need to also see how this plays out in a little bit of a longer term. It's too early to judge for just one quarter.

speaker
Ulrich Trattner
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

Sure. But if I were to look isolated here for Q1, what was the quantified negative effect over here?

speaker
Anna Ahlberg
CFO

Do you mean for intuitive? We have never and cannot comment on the amount that we have for our different customers. Again, we do stick to the 6290. It's still our best estimate for the year, looking down at 2026 in comparison to 2025.

speaker
Ulrich Trattner
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

So in essence, we will never be able to essentially track whether it's 60, 90, 150 million in 2026. Sorry, we will never... Be able to, as we're on the sell side, trying to put down estimates, we will never then be able to will then estimate or get any sense of whether it's 60, 90 million or 150 or 250 million in negative effects year over year or 20.

speaker
Anna Ahlberg
CFO

Yeah, we had 300 million in license revenues for last year. And of course, I mean, you know what a dominant player in Intuitive is on the market. We cannot comment on the exact numbers, but of course, this is something that we will follow if we have the possibility to give more information down the line when we've seen more quarters. We will, of course, continue to comment on this range.

speaker
Ulrich Trattner
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

Then sort of a follow-up question. Robotic surgery sales down 17-18% in reported numbers year over year, like 80% plus being towards America, so I guess some significant effects headwind. I would potentially call it a 10% sort of headwind here. But then if you add back sort of the negative effects, are we talking about underlying growth here in constant exchange rates? Or is it still in sort of the negative territory?

speaker
Anna Ahlberg
CFO

For the license revenues, if we look at them... Of a robotic surgery... since like you you're providing the revenue by product segment and robotic surgeries is then sort of isolated so just in general for the entire robotic surgery segment uh yeah yeah we do have a sale of products there of course as well for example the the robotics which which is within the edu but but just for licenses is still the the majority and as tom mentioned that's down like 8% and we saw that actually being higher than several of the other quarters last year. But Q1 was, I mean, 14% down for the US dollar. Q1 really had a very, very large saw a very large currency effect. Moving into Q2 slowly, it will be less if the dollar stays at this level, but yeah.

speaker
Ulrich Trattner
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

Okay, great. And my second and final question, and I'm not sure if you want to answer this one. UK, you talk about successes. in the first quarter and some strong underlying demand and momentum out of that market. Intelligent ultrasound, I guess, is part of this transformation and success in the UK. And given that we saw negative EBIT contribution from intelligent ultrasound throughout 2025, and there is a significant uptick here in EBIT for Q1, at least versus my expectations. Are we to assume that intelligent ultrasound as sort of a separate entities in black numbers now on EBIT?

speaker
Tom Englund
CEO

Yeah, definitely. So they are contributing to our EBIT for this quarter and due to, of course, increased sales, but also through the cost reduction program that we have done as a part of the integration process. Apart from that, I also want to mention that we see an improved funding climate from the NHS that have made it possible to close many deals that have been sort of frozen in the NHS purchasing department. And also the fact that we now have a direct sales team in the UK, which is selling the entirety, not just intelligent ultrasound or ultrasound simulation product, but the entirety of the surgical science portfolio has had a very important positive impact on the on the sales and will, of course, have even more important impact on the sales going forward, both for educational and also for our industry customers in the UK, which represent a big opportunity for us.

speaker
Ulrich Trattner
Analyst, DNB Carnegie

That was all questions on my end, and I'll get back into the queue.

speaker
Tom Englund
CEO

Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions or closing comments.

speaker
Anna Ahlberg
CFO

Yes, great. I was just about to say we have some written questions. I think there was one about China. We answered that one. I hope there's one around the up list and the timetable for that taking place in 2027, which is around the year for this process is is sort of a normal timetable, depending, of course, on how much consultants, et cetera, you use as well. But as for the share buyback, which is connected to this question, we cannot today do a share buyback on First North growth market. However, it will be allowed starting in December this year, and that is why we Tomorrow, when we have the AGM, there is a proposal to the AGM to give us that mandate so that we have it when the uplift takes place or if we're allowed on the First North growth and growth market. Then there is one more question also around the relationship with intuitive. When you say, Tom, it's stronger than ever. Can you please elaborate on that a bit?

speaker
Tom Englund
CEO

Yeah, I think the way that these relationships work, not just with intuitive, but with both robotics companies as well as medtech companies, that we engaged in deep collaborative projects around a specific value, a specific feature, a specific product from them. And then our development teams engage in a development project that leads to either a software simulation piece or some type of hardware for a MedTech company. And these type of discussions with Intuitive are ongoing and development work is still continuing in an unchanged manner. And that's what I mean by this comment. And of course, that's a lead indicator for future business, of course, both with this customer and with all the other customers that we have.

speaker
Anna Ahlberg
CFO

Then I don't think we have any more written questions.

speaker
Tom Englund
CEO

So No, no more questions. So thank you for your attention and see you all in a quarter.

speaker
Anna Ahlberg
CFO

Thank you. Thank you for today.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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