Straumann Aktie

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Straumann Group Half Year 2026 Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Guillaume Daniellot, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good morning or afternoon to all of you. Thank you for attending this conference call on the Straumann Group's half year 2026 results. .

Before we begin, let me address the leadership transition we announced this morning. After almost 20 years with the company, I will conclude my 7-year tenure as CEO of the Straumann Group by the end of the year. I have spent actually for quite some time, and I generally believe it is a very good moment for a smooth leadership transition. The company is in a strong position with a clear vision, strong strategy, which is delivering reasons, many opportunities ahead and more importantly, a high-performing management team well positioned for the next chart.

Therefore, I'm sincerely very pleased about Christopher Norbye's appointment, and I'm looking forward to supporting him with a smooth and efficient hand-off. But for the time being, I'm fully focused on closing the year strong, meaning that you will still have the pleasure of hearing from me again for the Q3 results.

And now let's move on to talk about our half year results. Please take note of the disclaimer in our media release and on Slide 2. During this conference call, we are going to refer to the presentation slides that were published on our website this morning. As usual, the discussion will include some forward-looking statements.

As shown on Slide 3, I will start with the performance overview. Isabelle will then cover the financial details. And afterwards, I will share strategic updates and our outlook. We will be happy to answer your questions at the end of the presentation.

Then let's move directly to Slide 5. I'm very pleased to present our results for the first half of 2026. The excellent second quarter performance continued market share gains and meaningful margin progress led us to upgrade our profitability outlook in June. We delivered revenue of CHF 700 million in the second quarter corresponding with an organic growth of 8.5% and reported growth of 5.9% in Swiss francs. This brought half year revenue to around CHF 1.4 billion representing organic growth of 7.8% or CHF 2.3 billion.

The acceleration from the first to the second quarter is important. It shows the pace we drilled through the first half with every region contributing and mature markets performing particularly well. The measures we introduced to improve profitability are also delivering significant improvements. Our core EBIT margin reached 26.9% at constant 2025 exchange rates or 25.7%, including currency effects.

Digital Solutions were another key contributor our [ moralscanner ] portfolio, led by CRO grew at double-digit rate. This strong adoption is expanding our active from an access user base at also a double-digit rate and, in turn, driving further growth across software and consumers. This rapidly expanding connected base of users is strengthening our data ecosystem and creating a platform for future growth across infectology, orthodontics and prosthetics.

In implantology, IXL continued to deliver customer conversions and new account wins while Noden further expanded its global reach. ClearCorrect also continue to make fast progress with its transformation. And very importantly, we are translating this dynamic growth into higher profitability. Manufacturing productivity and supply chain optimization are lowering our cost base, while disciplined OpEx management is creating further operational leverage. Isabelle will explain the drivers in detail in a moment.

Overall, the priorities presented at our Capital Markets Day are clearly translating into results. We are excited about the opportunities ahead and remain fully confident in delivering our upgraded outlook for 2026.

Let me now turn to Slide 6 and look at how this performance developed across the regions. Starting with EMEA, our largest region, organic growth reached 8.6% in the second quarter and 8.2% for the first half. Mature markets performed particularly well with Germany delivering solid growth and Poland and Ambari showing especially strong performance supported by positive contribution from Iberia, Benelux and other established European markets. Implantology was the main growth driver. IXL continued to attract new customers and support share gains while Neodent and Anthogyr expanded their reach in the challenger segment through significant new customer acquisition performance. In parallel, ClearCorrect also continued to expand its presence among general practitioners.

Moving to North America. Organic growth reached 8.4% in the second quarter and 8.1% in the first half. The region continued to outperform the underlying implant market despite the remaining cautious consumer sentiment and stable patient. Premium implantology led the performance with IXL driving double-digit growth in new customer acquisition and then also pursuing its market penetration. The DSO segment remain an important contributor, supported by long-term strategic purposes and increasing adoption of integrated workflows. Consequently, Digital Solutions also grew at a double-digit rate, supported by our own antiscanner portfolio.

In Asia Pacific, organic growth improved to 7.4% in the second quarter, bringing first hike growth to 4.2%. Outside China, the region posted a very strong growth with 25% in the second quarter led by Japan, India and Southeast Asia. Premium in centology and Noden performed well, while Digital Solutions made a significant contribution led by Hero IX and increasing adoption across the region.

In China, performance improved sequentially as patient flow gradually recovered and distributor inventory stabilized. We expect the VDP 2.0 process to potentially begin in the sedan for the year with an expected operational implementation planned for early 2027.

Finally, Latin America delivered another quarter of double-digit growth, with 11.8% in the second quarter and 15.4% for the first half. Brazil and the Hispanic market, especially in Mexico, Argentina and Colombia were the main contributors. Premium implantology achieved double-digit growth Neodent continued to expand across the region, and Digital Solutions also grew at double-digit rate.

Overall, this regional performance highlights the resilience of our business model the high strength of our geographical footprint and our ability to gain share across different market environments.

With this regional overview, I will now hand over to Isabelle to take you through the financial performance in more detail.

Thank you, Guillaume, and good morning, good afternoon also from my side. It's a pleasure to walk you through our financial performance for the first half of 2026.

Let me begin with gross profit on Slide 8. We generated a core gross profit of CHF 972 million in the first half, corresponding to a core gross margin of 7.5%. Let me walk you through the bridge from left to right. After excluding noncore items and translating the prior year results at 2026 exchange rates, the comparable starting point is a core gross margin of 71%. Productivity and mix added 40 basis points. This reflects not only a favorable product mix, but also the continued progress of our operational excellence program and the enhancement of our production network strategy, including our Shanghai campus, which is now fully up and running.

As a result, the rightsizing of our production facility in Biller has been finalized with a write-down of equipment that will no longer be used, resulting in a onetime margin effect of 30 basis points. This underlines our technology strategy shift towards more advanced technologies such as the multivendor to further improve productivity in future. U.S. tariffs reduced the margin by a further 60 basis points, resulting in the core gross margin of 7.5%. Importantly, if we exclude the tariff impact and the onetime equipment write-down, the underlying bridge shows a clear improvement in gross margin.

On the right-hand side of the bridge, the IFRS gross margin reached 72%. The 150 basis points difference to core mainly reflects U.S. tariff refunds recognized during the first half of the year. Overall, the core gross margin remains at a high level. The underlying trend is encouraging as productivity measures, supply chain optimization and local for local production continued to lower COGS.

With the gross margin bridge in mind, let me now turn to Abbott on Slide 9. Our core EBIT amounted to CHF 355 million with a margin of 25.7%, including currency effects. At constant 2025 exchange rates, the margin reached 26.9%. Starting from the comparable prior year core margin of 24.8% at 2026 exchange rates, the 50 basis points gross margin change flow through to EBIT. This was more than offset by 130 basis points of efficiency gains, but other effects added around 10 basis points.

As a result, the core EBIT margin improved by around 90 basis points on a comparable current currency base. The main driver behind this was disciplined OpEx management as well as the execution of our operational excellence programs. Core operating expenses increased in absolute terms because we continue to invest in commercial capabilities, innovation, digital platforms and our strategic priorities, whilst keeping our head count flat, improving scalability.

As a result, as a percentage of revenue, core OpEx improved by approximately 130 basis points compared to the prior year period at current year exchange rates. This reflects operating leverage, sharper resource allocation and productivity measures across the organization. The improving profitability of ClearCorrect and our intra-oral scanner business also contributed.

Overall, we translated revenue growth into a meaningful increase in profitability while continuing to fund future growth. This brings me to the net results on Slide 10. Core net profit reached CHF 262 million in the first half, corresponding to a turn of 19%. On a currency-adjusted basis, this represents an increase of 15.7% compared with the prior year period. The bridge is primarily driven by the improvement in EBIT, which contributed CHF 38 million.

The financial results had a small negative impact of CHF 3 million Results from associates added $2 million, while income tax reduced the bridge by $2 million. The effective core tax rate was 18.8%. Noncore items had a net negative impact of CHF 11 million after tax resulting in an IFRS net profit of CHF 251 million. These items mainly include M&A-related effects and legal costs, partially offset by the tariff refunds I mentioned earlier. Overall, this development shows the quality of the earnings improvement and how effectively operating performance converted to the bottom line.

Let me now turn to cash flow and investments on Slide 11. In the first half of 2026, we generated a free cash flow of CHF 169 million, an increase of 49% compared with the prior year period. This corresponds to 12.2% of net revenue compared with 8.4% 1 year ago. The increase was supported by higher operating cash generation and lower capital expenditure. Net cash from operating activities amounted to CHF 239 million, while net cash used in investing activities was $105 million.

Financing activities and fracking exchange movements reduced cash by CHF 228 million, which included the dividend payment. Cash and cash equivalents amounted to CHF 381 million at the end of June. And we also maintained a net cash position of CHF 350 million, including a solid equity ratio of close to 59%. Capital expenditure amounted to CHF 74 million, or 5.4% of revenue compared with CHF 113 million in the prior year period. The lower capital expenditure reflects the completion of a multiyear period of significant capacity investments.

At the same time, we continue to invest in the Shanghai campus with the expansion of Curitiba and productivity initiatives and digitalization. Overall, our cash generation and balance sheet provide the flexibility to support organic growth, innovation and strategic investments. This leads me to our capital allocation priorities on Slide 12.

So let me reiterate our capital allocation remains unchanged. First, we reinvest in the business to drive sustainable future growth. Because over the past several years, we have completed an intensive manufacturing investment cycle and substantially expanded capacity across our network. With the Shanghai campus, additional manufacturing capacity in Curitiba and investments in automation are in place. We have the manufacturing footprint to support the growth we expect in the coming years.

As a result, we expect capital expenditure intensity to remain below the levels of the peak investment yes. Our second priority is to maintain a strong balance sheet. This gives us the flexibility to accelerate strategic initiatives and pursue value-creating M&A. And such, we remain committed to maintaining and increasing dividends with our earnings. Overall, the disciplined order balances reinvestment for growth, financial flexibility and shareholder returns.

With that, I will now hand back to Guillaume for the strategy update and outlook.

Thank you, Isabelle. Let me now turn to the strategy update. I will start with the size of the market opportunity on Slide 14.

When you look at our market position today, 2 things stand out. the strength of the business we have built and the size of the opportunity still ahead of us. That is the logic behind our perform and transform strategy. We are executing both dimensions in parallel, strengthening performance in our core businesses while transforming adjacent high-growth potential businesses with investments in new and differentiated value propositions.

On the performance side, we are building from position of real strength. In implantology, we are the clear global leader together with rich innovative. These are categories where our brands, clinical heritage innovation pipeline and strong global customer relationships give us a powerful platform to keep outperforming the market. But leadership does not mean we have reached a ceiling. There is still massive headroom in our core business, and we continue to see opportunities to gain share through innovation, stronger go-to-market execution and broader customer penetration.

The transform side is adding a significant dimension of growth. In clear aligners, digital equipment and CADCAM for SDI, our positions for relatively small compared with the size of the opportunity. What is particularly exciting today are the innovations we have invested in over the past quarters are now coming together to transform our competitive capabilities in each of those market segments and start to deliver results.

So across the portfolio, we have a powerful combination and implant leadership position we can continue to expand and significant headroom in large adjacent markets where we are only at the beginning of our expansion. This gives us a very attractive runway for sustained growth.

Let me now show you how our growth playbook turns this opportunity into execution on Slide 5. Our growth playbook combines product leadership with unique customer experience. Product leadership starts with innovation, differentiated solutions, such as Straumann implant performance system or the SIRIOS X3 and tavalscanner as key examples.

They expand clinical applications, simplify treatment and improve clinical outcomes. But being a product champion is only 1 part of a successful equation. [indiscernible] help professionals expect an efficient clinical experience, seamless end-to-end connectivity through efficient workflows, which deliver predictable treatment execution. This is where digitalization is critical.

Our trauma access platform turns individual innovations into an integrated ecosystem that improves practice efficiency and create a unique clinician experience. Finally, education completes our dental practice value creation formula. It gives clients the confidence and skills to adopt new solutions and workflows with efficiency. Across implantology, orthodontic and prosthetics, the same logic applies. Innovation creates differentiation digitalization increases efficiency and engagement and education drives adoption.

Let's start by the entry point into the ecosystem by moving to Slide 16. We everyday workflow in our ecosystem starts with a scan. This is why we have built a differentiated anthocanner portfolio covering the full market for multiple brand price points. At the premium end, we offered the free shape Prius portfolio. SIRIOS X3 addresses the midrange segment, and SIRIOS provides an attractive entry-level solution. This breadth combined with the successful launch of SIRIOS X3 has significantly accelerated adoption across all our markets.

Over the last 12 months, we have captured a very significant share of global antral scanner cells, reflecting the strong adoption of our portfolio. This represents an important strategic opportunity as every scanner placement expands our user base and creates an entry point into from an access our open cloud-based platform shown in the middle of the slide. In the first half of the year, the connected user base grew at a double-digit rate creating a much larger entire base for future growth.

Then moving to the right. These workflows connect directly to the Straumann Group product portfolio, supporting clinicians through our implant restorative and outhonotic solution. This is why Atrascanners is truly a strategic segment for us. It is the gateway to recurring revenue per customer engagement and future growth across the entire ecosystem.

Let me now show you a clear example about what this means in daily practice on Slide 17. [indiscernible] the from and fast molar treatment solution based on our scalable anatomic healing abutments shows how product innovations, combined with digital integration translate into greater practice efficiency. At the bottom of the slide, you can see the traditional workflow.

After surgery, the clinician placed a conventional heating abutment. At a later appointment, the chilling abutment is removed and replaced by a scan body. After the scan, the scan body needs to be removed and the healing abutment is placed once again before the final restoration at a later stage. This means several component changes, additional chair time and another patient visit.

At the top, the tram and fast molar treatment won't flow is much simpler. The clinician places the anatomical healing abutments at the time of surgery and can directly scan it on the same day. The restoration can then be produced from the scan with our intermediate scan body steps with all the necessary data automatically transferred to the dental laboratory. This is saving at least 1 full patient appointment and around 30 minutes of clinical time.

For the practice, this means higher productivity, fewer handling steps and a more standardized workflow. For the patient, it means fewer visits, less manipulation of the heating side and a faster, more convenient treatment done. Then for trauma, the workflow strengthened the use of original restorative components and create recurring value around the implant system and its differentiation. The TromanFastmolar treatment workflow towards how digitalization is directly improving treatment execution. In addition, AI is also now more and more enhancing those digital capabilities and drive practice growth. We have just released an important AI-led innovation supporting implement case conversion before treatment begins.

Let me turn to Slide 18. Here, the mine Cloud AI-enabled YES technology supports implement as conversion before treatment even begins. As you can see in the video, it transforms a simple 2D patient photo into a dynamic 3D video simulation instantly at the chair side. The patient can see immediately her future new Smile in a kind of real life. This makes the expected outcome tangible, strengthened patient understanding and confidence and support significantly higher and faster conversion of advanced implant cases. Because the solution is connected to Straumann access it also enables more efficient digital case collaboration and further strengthen our ecosystem.

Having shown our digitalization supports both treatment efficiency and case conversion, let me now turn to our premium portfolio on Slide 19. In premium implantology, IXL is the main drive. In the first half, it represented close to 40% of toman premium implant volumes globally so. It is attracting new accounts driving conversion from both premium and value competitors and supporting share gains across key geographies. The simplicity of the platform is a key advantage especially combined with the unique SLActive surface and unique oxolate material, which supports clinicians to deliver excellent clinical outcomes with confidence. To continue on our dynamic market penetration, we are further investing in a rich innovation pipeline built around IXL.

As another example, we have just launched i-Guide or fully guided surgery solution for IXL, which translates digital treatment planning into precise implant placement through a simple intuitive procedure, giving clinicians greater confidence and predictability. Overall, we are really confident that IXL and the premium pipeline will continue to drive growth and reinforce our market-leading position.

Let me now move from premium to the Challenger segment on Slide 20. Our challenger portfolio complements premium and allow us to address distinct customer needs across markets and price points. Neodent is our global challenger brand. It continues to scale at a very dynamic pace through constant go-to-market and education investments in key geographies, supported by additional manufacturing capacity now created in Curitiba. Its differentiated [indiscernible] portfolio and broadening geographical presence make Neodent a very important growth engine for the group.

In parallel to Neodent, our Medentika brand is also growing well. building on its leadership on NPS abutment system, multi-platform system abutment compatible with all major implant systems. As a new opportunity, it has locally developed in China, a new implant line, which will suit our challenger offering in this key market.

Finally, at the regional level, ontology is expanding in EMEA with Axium X3 combining clinical differentiation with treatment simplicity. Together, Straumann, Neodent, Anthogyr and Medentika, give us a very unique multi-brand, multi-price point portfolio with global reach and especially local relevance. This portfolio is a key part of strategy to continue gaining share in implantology, and China is 1 of the key examples where this multi-brand approach will become increasingly important.

Let me turn to Slide 21. China remains 1 of the most compelling long-term opportunities in implantology. As the chart shows, China remains far below mature market benchmarks. Compared with Spain, where penetration is around 48 plants per 10,000 adults China has substantial room to grow. This creates substantial headroom for long-term growth overall. This opportunity is supported by a large patient population, rising treatment awareness and a good growing number of train clinicians. So the opportunity is there.

Let's see how we are planning to capture it on Slide 20. Over the past GDP cycle, the Chinese market was significantly evolved and so are we. Today, we are competing with 3 very important strengths. The first is the breadth of our multi-brand portfolio. We have a clear market-leading position in premium with trauma. And given the low penetration shown on the previous slide, premium still has significant room to grow.

At the same time, the Challenger segment has become the larger part of the market by volume and offer substantial headroom for us. onto already gives us an established proposition in this market. Earlier this year, we launched our new locally developed Medentika implant line targeted to the local segment. The Neodent is planned to be finally registered in 2027. This multi-brand approach enables us to address all customer needs and price points. It also gives us multiple options to adopt in the future when VBP 2.0 new rules will be released.

After this multi-brand portfolio, our second important strength is local manufacturing, our Shanghai Compass is complete and fully operational. Most of our stromal oncology products for China are now manufactured locally. This improves our cost position, strengthen supply resilience and allows us to compete effectively under different potential VBP 2.0 scenarios.

And finally, our third strength is our local education network. Through the ITI and our local education programs, we continue to train new implant dentists and help experience clinicians moving to more advanced cases. This expands occlusion base support treatment adoptions and build long-term customer trust and relationship. We are very confident that these 3 major competitive strength will be able to respond effectively to any scenario under VBP 2.0.

With that, let me now turn from Implantology to the transformation of ClearCorrect on Slide 23. Our clear correct transformation is progressing rapidly. The new value proposition is gaining traction with customers, supported by a sharper commercial focus, a more scalable operating model and digital tools designed for digital practitioners. The digital features launched in the middle of the year are driving strong GP adoption, which is accelerating active case growth. AI-enabled tools, especially case assessments made case evaluation and treatment planning easier. They help the GPs treat more patients and start more active cases in full confidence.

At the same time, the completed Smart manufacturing transition has improved the consistency of our turnaround times across EMEA and Asia Pacific and is driving the expected COGS improvement. This strengthened the ClearCorrect brand in the GP segment supports further growth and improves the scalability of the business. Together, these developments keep us on track to reach breakeven by end of 2027 for our ClearCorrect business and make it a meaningful growth contributor for the group. This brings me to one final point on our growth strategy.

As Isabelle explained, we are moving into a lower capital expenditure cycle the major manufacturing capacity investments are largely behind us. At the same time, we continue to invest selectively in the areas that are critical to our short, midterm and long-term growth.

Let me briefly highlight where we are focusing this investment on Slide 2024. First, we continue to invest in innovate and digital transformation including an exciting implant product pipeline for the future and further AI supported ecosystem treatment workflows. Second, we are investing in go-to-market initiatives to strengthen customer reach and our capacity to scale.

And third, we continue to invest in our people, organization and culture. They are essential to execute with speed, consistency and entrepreneurial mindset. These 3 dimensions are critical to deliver the ambition we presented at the Capital Market Day and to turn our market opportunities into sustainable dynamic growth.

With that, let me now turn to our outlook for 2026 on Slide 26. Following the excellent first half performance, we upgraded our profitability outlook in June, and today, we are pleased to confirm it. We operate in an addressable market of more than CHF 20 billion with significant growth opportunities across our core and adjacent segments. At the same time, we remain mindful that the external environment continues to be volatile with ongoing macroeconomic, geopolitical and regulatory uncertainties.

However, our leading market positions, proven business model and strong innovation and transformation pipeline give us confidence that we can continue to perform across different environments, and capture the opportunities ahead. Against this backdrop, for the full year, we continue to expect high single-digit organic revenue growth, together with a core EBIT margin improvement of around 140 to 170 basis points at constant 2025 exchange rate. We remain very confident in our ability to deliver this outlook and excited for the opportunities ahead.

With this, we are happy to move to the Q&A session to answer your questions. [Operator Instructions]

The first question, please? SP1 The first question comes from Graham Doyle from UBS.

Well hopefully, you get some time off very well earned. Just 2 quick questions. First, just as part of the CEO search, it's reasonable to assume that the midterm guidance was something the new CEO had to buy into. And then maybe just a second question on working capital. Isabelle, if you could just give us some color on the receivables buildup in the first half as well, please.

Why don't you start with the net working capital.

Yes. Happy to start with the net working capital, Graham, and thanks for your questions. So I think -- I mean we need to differentiate between a couple of different things. I think when it comes to inventories, looking at this, we have the tactical built up during last year.

With the tariffs, and we're still, as we speak, mitigating half and you all notice, there was a new announcement in July. So we started to slightly stock up again, but this is all planned and nothing to worry about. It's just really us managing basically the uncertainty we have the tariffs as well as the slight uncertainty with the VBP because obviously, we want to be prepared to be able to deliver.

And when it comes to the accounts receivable part I mean there were some swings and roundabouts when you look at it at certain points in time because given we are looking at an average of 12-month revenue compared to a spot accounts receivable balance, and there's a lot of saving, obviously, in there looking at it and June was a super strong month. This is why, from a percentage point of view, it was up slightly.

But if you look at it, I think what is important to notice please, for the time being, do not only look at trade working capital, but include other working capital as well. Given last year, we had a reclassification from other to trade working capital. And if you look at it, we are basically more or less flat compared to prior year at the same period in time.

Yes, Graham, thank you, Isabelle. For the midterm guidance, Graham, I think I will come back to the short comment I've done at the beginning -- the company is in a very strong situation with a very clear strategy, an ambition that has been aligned with the Board that has been communicated to the capital market and with a strategy which is showing already quite strong results with regard to the performance transform we put together.

Then while he has not said yet, but I can speak on his name, but yes, Christopher agrees with the mid-term guidance that we have given. And well, with what we are let's say, transitioning, then this is going to be a good position to get there. At least we are very confident to get there. And something to say as well, is the management team is also then aligned and also confident with that guidance. because we have really very strong leader in all the different parts of the world and the company. And this guidance is a commitment not only by the CEO, but by the entire organization.

The next question comes from David Adlington from JPMorgan.

Thanks for the question. Maybe just on the CEO change and thanks for your work over last 7 years. But I just want to check, did you check internally and what was the thought process to go external? .

And then secondly, just on -- a question maybe just on VBP. I got your latest thoughts on what you think the likely price impact is going to be.

Yes. On the CEO change, obviously, it's more a question for the Board because this or the Board owning the CEO decisions and selection. But what I can confirm is, yes, I think we are looking at talent inside and outside. And at the end I think the Board has decided to go with the candidate, which is providing the breadth of expertise and experience that will be the most adequate with what we want to achieve.

And I think Christopher is coming with obviously a very large expertise and experience on different functions, different geographies, different industries. And as we have a very strong dental knowledge internally, I think that the value will lie in the combination of bringing all those knowledge together and I'm sure that as we believe as a personal trade that fit well with the stroma culture, that's where we believe that it would be a good asset and a value creation for the organization.

When it comes to VBP, I see VBP in still in a positive way for, I would say, 3 major reasons. The first 1 is we are entering into a very low comparison base. we have done double -- significant double-digit decline in China than now since Q3 2025, meaning that -- we have almost 4, at least 2.5 quarters to go with a low comparison base that could absorb any kind of changes also in the Chinese market coming from a potential price standpoint.

The second side is that I believe that from a pricing standpoint, I don't see a significant price reduction. And I think I explained a couple of times because in the private market, which is representing 80% of the market in China, the price of already much lower than the VBP price level that has been set 4 years ago. and that it may decrease the price that was set 4 years ago.

But the reality is that the ASP is already lower than I don't expect a major overall ASP drop versus what we had in the past. The third reason why I'm confident is that we have local manufacturing and multi-price point with our multi-brand strategy. Then while we don't know what the rules of the VBP will be, I think what was critical for us is really to prepare multiple options. And we have multiple options in price points a lot of options from a manufacturing standpoint.

And I think we have the premium company with being the most advanced in local manufacturing in the country. Then if you combine lower costs with acceptable we said between minus 5% to minus 15% ASP decreased maximum and the capability to play in different segments, we see the VBP as a potential opportunity to continue to gain share if we play the new rules in the right manner. And obviously, everything will depend on those roles. We will do, as usual, being agile, being dynamic and execution and especially at the end, serving clinicians and customer in the better way because this is also what is guarantying long-term success by creating relationship and engagement from that.

Next question comes from Hassan Al-Wakeel from Barclays.

Firstly, another on the CEO transition, and thank you for the interactions over the years, Guillaume congrats on the many successes. Can you elaborate on why now having presented the 2030 strategy relatively recently and the Board's view on what Christopher will bring to advance growth strategy of the company. The strength, his expertise, particularly given a more limited health care background.

And then secondly, if you could help unpack the magnitude and drivers of the strength in digital solutions in North America, how SIRIOS X3 is trending since the Q4 launch and the extent to which this is supporting your higher profitability view for the year given the mix benefit? And how significant a growth driver or accelerator of growth in NAM could this be in the years ahead given the success here in recent months?

Well, a lot of questions I think for the kind words. Why now. Very often, people are expecting a management change when you have a crisis in an organization. And what is really important is was that my -- I see my role as 1 of the last very important things that needs to be done is to do a very smooth and efficient transition.

And that was also part of my responsibility, and I'm not taking that lightly. 2 years in an organization, 7 years as you can count the Cove years double. Then I think it's also the right time that we can have some fresh eyes and a different perspective to continue then to enrich the Straumann Journey and bring it to the next level. Then I'm proud about the years I've done here to serve. But I think that value could be created also by different perspective after a while.

Then as we are in a very strong situation, as we have a very good strategy, I think it allows more flexibility in that transition and looking at obviously different candidates. That's 1 of the reasons it's now. It's also because I had planned that for quite some time, and there is a limit to every good thing and December 2026 will be this 1 for me.

When it comes to Christopher, I think once again, it's a board decision. I've been happy to be associated in the search and being able to see then his background. And I think what Christopher has done is interesting in many ways. I think First thing he has done a lot of different roles. He had responsibilities in finance. He has responsibilities in operations, in sales and obviously, also CEO in both private equity and listed company standpoint.

And I believe that this is always already giving a very, very good overview on how you can also maximize value creation in an organization. The second approach where I think it's a lot of value for us, he lived in China, he lived in the U.S. He lived in Europe and looking at the split of our business at Straumann, which is truly global. -- with 45% in Europe, 30% of our business in NAM, 20% in Asia Pacific, 8% to 10% in Lat Am, you need to be global in your way of thinking but still having local relevance in what you are talking about.

And I think there are a few leaders that have that breadth of experience from a geographical standpoint and from also then the different functions in an organization. And the third, I think it's also I think Christopher has a very strong track record on value creation in the different companies we led which is also something, obviously, that is very critical for the Board and every investors are making sure that this is a proven leader in the organization where it went.

And finally, to your point on no health care or not so much health care experience, indeed, he has not lately a lot of experience on health care, but he started his career in Orca where he spent acres on the orthopedic side and [indiscernible] has already then experienced this environment. At the same time, as I expressed on it before, we have a very strong management team that are knowing dental very, very well.

And when you have a new leader coming, it's also a specific expertise that are coming from his past experience that will be an asset for organization. a lot of M&A in greater experience if I remember in ASSA ABLOY, there have been a lot of digital transformation in all those locking systems that you have been able to lead. Then yes, I take a lot to learn -- and I think a good leader from a control standpoint that together with the lithium and the 2,000 worldwide foment team members will lead this company to the next level when it will take over in December.

Now a very strong onboarding will be done. It needs to travel in all the even regions in all the different manufacturing sites, meeting people and customers where they are. And this is what I actually develop it even by myself, and I will make sure that we will see all the key areas, key customers and especially being confronted with the key topics in order to be ready to take the lead and of course, drive this then the journey to then the future.

When it comes to then the digital side, you were asking in North America, yes, double-digit growth in North America and Deveron. It's a strong acceptance of our SIRIOS X3, but once again, it's also a strong partnership with Free Shape, where we are really selling what the customer one. And I think this is very important. There are a lot of different expectations when it comes to starting digital dentistry.

You have the high-end doctors that want to have already the high-end technology being able to leverage maybe more advanced software capabilities that are going together with the scanner. And that's where our partnership would free shape that we really value is supporting us to offer that right solution as it's fully connected with our roman access. Now Asterios is offering the opportunity for GPs that want to have a lower investment to then be able to stop also their digital tone.

And that's why it was so important for us to have an entry level scanner that we have with SIRIOS, which is the level below SIRIOS X3, which is also very supportive allowing us to do product bundled with implant or clear aligners because of the fact that as a proper technology, then our cost of goods is very different than a third-party product. And that's what we are doing.

And while we have been able to grow significantly in this business, we did not need to increase significantly head count because we have automated a lot of those processes. And I think with the maturity of our team, having increased significantly in digital, I think we are also much more efficient in the way we are handling digital customers.

Next question comes from Julien Dormois from Jefferies.

Guillaume, before my 2 questions. congrats on the highly successful senior and also thank you for the openness and engage you have shown with all of us over the years. So I wish every success in the next chapter.

My 2 questions. The first one, pretty much relates to the midterm guidance. Obviously, were pretty optimistic about the company continuing to improve its margin between 2025 and 2030. -- but you've almost delivered 3 years in 1 in 2026 already. So how should we think about the path to 2030? Is the objective pretty much the same? Or has it been upgraded in the meantime?

And the second question is back to China and VBP 2.0. First, we're now at the end of August. So have you seen any sign of change, any early sign of change in ordering patterns among your customers? And whether you believe that following the implementation, we should see a pretty meaningful rebound in patient volumes like what we saw in VBP 1.0. .

Thanks, Julien. I appreciate also the comment, and I will start with VBP, and I will leave Isabelle commenting on the trajectory that we're expecting. On the profitability side that we see as positive. At the moment, this is a stable situation on the China pension flow somewhat the news has been already sent out last year, people were expecting it. And now I think it's not a news anymore.

It's -- people were even wondering so owe if this is going to come anyway, then we don't see any change in the current market dynamic and the patient behavior we have this stable patient flow distributors are still keeping their inventory at a rather low level, but keep ordering as they are getting the need from clinicians.

And then that's why we're expecting, despite the VBP potentially getting operationally started that we should have significant growth coming from China based from this low than the comparative base. What will become? Do we expect a significant boom in volume I don't think that VBP will completely slash the pricing like it was the case, and I think it will come back to regular double-digit growth in the low to mid-teens, which I think this is what China potential is having in the in its potential, and this is the way we are planning it for the years to come.

Now of course, we can have even stronger growth if then there is a little bit more price decrease than what we have planned. But yes, we see China as a very interesting market moving forward. And we believe that in the next 12 months, we should see a double-digit growth whatever the VBP will be coming because we have all the way that we can answer to it.

I'm happy to take over your question regarding the margin guidance. So I can confirm that our 2030 ambition remains unchanged to what we communicated last year at the CatamarketDays. The strong profitability development we've seen in 2026 and mainly reflect, I would say, faster execution, more focused on several initiatives we already discussed. So I would say it's nothing that's structurally changed.

We just really see that execution and how our teams pick up the different initiatives we launched in a very, very positive way and really make sure we get the full benefit we actually wanted to see. So on the COGS side, obviously, it's the manufacturing, the new footprint, supply chain optimization, all of the new machines we already talked about. This is picking up nicely. But then especially on the OpEx side as well. And this is why for me, it's so important to stress this. What we're talking about is a sustainable improvement in our margin.

Assets, on the 1 hand side, really all the operational excellence that now comes to work. But when you look at our numbers compared to last year, our head count has been flat and our administrative expenses have gone down. And this is part of the equation. So it's not that we say we're doing those huge restructuring programs, but it's really focusing our energy and our resources where they bring more value which means we reallocated people naturally from admin functions more towards sales and put a huge focus on how can we optimize, how can we standardize and how can we get the best value. And this, of course, includes our procurement excellence program we've talked about quite a while.

Having said this, I would not interpret the increase in profit guidance and the big improvement we are seeing as pulling forward the fixed demand from the years to come. but I can reiterate with saying we have 40 to 50 basis points as an average annual core EBIT margin ambition, of course, strengthening average because it can vary in the different years. But I would expect the good progress we're seeing now to continue well into 2020.

Obviously, still too early to give a clear guide for next year, which will come at a later point in time. But happy to confirm the ambition we stated and that all of the initiatives we talked about are well on track.

The next question comes from Hugo Solvet from BNP Paribas.

Congratulations Guillaume on the strong tenure as CEO and all of the interactions over the year. Maybe first 1 on, Isabelle, a quick follow-up on the last question on the core EBIT, 130 bps efficiency gains. Can it impact this a little bit for us, please? And you're clearly delivering ahead of the initiatives and of the plan. So do you see additional levers to be implemented in the next couple of years?

And lastly, on instruments, obviously, strong contribution to group growth. Can you quantify that maybe for us, please? And as you will be lapsing strong comps in the coming quarters, would you anticipate instrument growth to slow down or to continue at a strong double-digit pace.

So I'm happy to take the question on the core EBIT margin -- so it's -- I mean, the programs we announced last year during the Capital Market Day. They are still, I would say, up and running and continuously evolving. So looking at OpEx intensity, it's majority around operational excellence, really thinking things more globally, how can reduce our resources in a more mindful way and really allocate people where they make most sense to achieve our targets in total for the group.

Having said this, I think for me, strongest indicator, what we see now, flat head count with 8%. So I think this is a really good achievement. Of course, we are planning to more of this in the years to come. But obviously, you can imagine when you start programs like this, you still find some of those so-called hanging fruit. So you can execute quite quickly on some stuff you see.

But in the years to come, obviously, we would see more of those improvements. So it's particularly obviously about becoming more scalable, more automated, focusing our people on adding value. And then on the hand side, getting all the procurement savings we can have as a group. But looking into this had, of course, we need to be aware this does not hand for free, but we need to invest into this with investments into technology, into new structures we will potentially meet.

And this is why I'm super confident with this 40 to 50 basis points because we always have to make sure, of course, to find the right balance. But at the moment we invest, we will have basically a negative impact on the margin and a positive impact from the initiatives that are already up and running, but we expect this trajectory to continue well into 2030.

When it comes to the digital equipment, Hugo, and times also for the comment, but just that there is a lot of penetration still to do. not only actually -- and thanks to our technology, which is very cost-effective. Our market is not only like the mature market that we think have the capability to afford digital technology, but actually, we have the capability to be strong in Brazil, strong in India, delivering a lot of technology equipment in China. Then we see, again, in the next 3 years, at least, capability to grow those digital sales moving forward. .

And especially, if you look at it, and which is also 1 of the underlying vision of the strategy, which is our overall workflow and our access platform. When we are going to have to, for example, a lot of the penetration with ataralscanner, and we see those workflows further developing we will be able to plug any potential new technology to this platform.

Free printing as we are doing as a partnership with Sprint trade, milling machines or any new technology that will come we could want to have also kind of a proprietary technology, then we have opened up an opportunity of digital equipment that will not be only related to Atascanner but to any technology that will improve the workflow in the future, and we'll be able to decide whether we want to play in it as a partner or as a having our own offering.

And that's why we see that as a very exciting path into the future when we'll be able to continue our digital equipment business moving forward.

Next question comes from Susannah Ludwig from Bernstein.

I guess, first, congratulations Guillaume, a long and successful tenure at Straumann I have a couple of questions on margins. You noted that executing ahead of expectations on internal improvements was the key driver of your margin guidance upgrade. But to what extent did the VBP delay and lower Brazil tariffs player role. And to what extent have you decided to reinvest some of the benefits from the improved external environment?

And then just quickly, with the recent weakening of the Swiss, what's your current expectation on the margin headwind from FX?

I may take the -- the first part of the first question, and you will complete and take afterwards. But -- that's a very good question, Susannah. Actually, yes, we are reinvesting a part of the great results that we are having on the profitability side. And maybe we did not present it like this at the Capital Market Day in detail, but we were having clear plan on that profitability side. And that's the results of 12-month effort that we have been doing since somewhat Q3 last year.

Because if you look at that 12-month period was Isabelle said that our head count remained flat or even decreasing despite high single-digit growth. And that's what we have been planning over the past 12 months on 1 side, gross margin and manufacturing, then being more efficient on our own manufacturing technology leveraging local and different manufacturing places at lower cost but also moving when possible third-party product to our own proper technology, which is what's happening with the digital side or contracting partner like Smart to decrease this and obviously, afterwards being able to reinvest some of it despite efficiency in our -- than the operational work into go-to-market in innovation.

And I think we are building up also an exciting pipeline in the implant side but also on the digital side and clear correct in the future as we are seeing already the development we just launched, then yes, I think we are not putting everything out there on the profitability side and the EBIT line, but really making sure that we are going through all the necessary investment to deliver our 10% CAGR midterm guidance that we put out there for 2030 in our midterm guidance plan.

And Susannah, thanks for your questions. So happy to take the more financial structural part of it. So regarding the EBIT guidance upgrade, I can confirm the significant part of what we've seen is a structural improvement and that is here to stay. But you're perfectly right. Obviously, pointing out we have 2 external tailwinds that help us as well, particularly the lower tariff exposure and the delayed inflammation of VBP 2.0.

I mean what we've seen in the first half of the year, when you look at -- we still had a significant impact from the tariffs. So the release is more to come in the second half as you have seen a 60 basis points on the gross profit -- and to bear in mind, this is on the 1 hand, the tariffs we paid this year, and we still have to pay, although on a lower base than initially expected. And then obviously, the unwind from last year's tariffs from the balance sheet.

Just as a reminder, that was CHF 7 million as well that came into our P&L this year. So having said this, it's hard to quantify exactly given BP is a little delayed lower volumes, lower costs as well, but we still have the higher prices out there. I would say at least towards of the improvement we have seen a structural and the rest would be a little bit tailwind from the tariffs and from the VBP taking place later than expected.

Now regarding FX, this is obviously always the hardest question to answer. But just to give you a feeling of where we are right now. So if we use the current spot rates as of July, the impact we would expect for this year would be somewhere in between 80 to 100 basis points negative impact on the EBIT margin.

The next question comes from Daniel Jelovcan from ZKB.

And of course, I also shared the comments from my previous speaker regarding you, Guillaume. So the first question is, can you shed some light on your USP of IXL now versus the competitive inroad of the line of Nordbank they mentioned that 25% of their actually quite good growth was from competitive accounts. I don't believe it's coming from you. It's rather coming from the other U.S. guy.

But maybe you can shed some light on that. And they mentioned the same conical connection for all the other lines and so on, but maybe how it compares to your IXL. That's the first question. And the second question, why has the slowed down, still a good growth, of course, but not close to 20% like in the past.

Thanks, Daniel. And appreciate you allow me on the technical side. No line is an interesting, let's say, new product that -- or new initiatives that nobody is doing. But it's not at all comparable with IXL for different reasons. The first one is that what slide is that they took their old implant design and they put the same cuction on it, okay? And from that perspective, they have imitated our 1 connection for implant design okay?

Then that's the only thing that is, let's say, comparable. What is not comparable is what the quality of this connection is about, is not putting the same collection on all implants, which is making collection successful. With our torics, we have the best connection, which is existing in the marketplace and very, very well expressed by clinicians from a stability standpoint from a tines standpoint from then the easiness to use standpoint.

And then I think that's where I think the value of the connection being placed on all our 4 implant design are representing, obviously, already a USP on the connection that has been placed on Nobel implant design.

And the critical value of IXL is, on the 1 side, the fact that you need 1 surgical kit. What does it mean? It means when you start surgery, you can -- because you use the same surgical kit, you can change your mind and you can still decide the implant design you want to use even when you have started the clinical case. And this is unique to IXL because on the Nobel as line, it's still the surgical tip corresponding to the old implant design that they are having.Okay.

The third, of course, huge difference is that AXL is combining the unique SLActive surface and a unique Roxolid material which is allowing for minimal invasive surgery that we are the only 1 to have. Then -- while it's good to see Nobel taking initiatives and being able to keep this premium segment then more dynamic and demonstrating the value of premium offering through new initiatives and innovation.

Now this has not slowed down at all or IXL growth. And we don't see these initiatives as a way to slow down our market share gain on the XL system. When it comes to LatAm, Latin America, yes, I think 1 can say 11% or 11.8% might not be then what we have been used to. You have to look where it was 19.5%, which was higher than what we were expecting.

Then if you look at the first half, which is already 15%, then this is exactly what we're expecting from Latin America being in the mid-teens and if you deliver in an incredible number of consecutive quarters like Lat Am as done, do it on a high base I think they are doing a super job. And I would more look at the 15% growth for the first half, Daniel, which is more demonstrating the performance of the Lat Am team more than just the spot look at what Q2 was being.

The next question comes from Veronika Dubajova from Citi.

And also, Guillaume me add my congratulations to an incredibly successful career. Maybe just a couple of quick ones for me. One, I just wanted to go back to the success you're having in digital. Obviously, you've talked about this doubling of market share. If I look at what you've achieved since you gave that ambition at the CMD, which was only 3 quarters ago, you were already there.

By my math, kind of digital has added 200 to 300 basis points to group growth rate so far year-to-date. I'm just curious kind of whether you're reaching that ambition and you think there's scope for you to expand your market share more beyond that sort of 10% ambition that you gave us back in November and sort of or whether this is a pull forward of that success, but you think that's sort of doubling of market share to roughly 10% is or the right number, but we're getting there a lot faster than you thought. So that's my first question, please.

And then my second question is just a quick check in on the North American market. And obviously, with a lot of the noise and heading into the terms, what are your best expectations at this point in time for the growth rate in North America in the back half of the given the tougher comparison base and maybe conflicting data points on consumer confidence as well.

Thanks, Veronika. Yes, on digital side, then I take it up, and that's also a good question. When you look at the 10%, and we try to put 10% plus, on this segment. The segment which is represented here, it's not the antral scanner on its own only. It's also the freely printed and the milling machines that needs all digital equipment. Then that's why we were saying 10%, but it means that it's already much wider or larger when it comes to antral scanner per se, okay?

Then we have significantly increased our market share on for scanner. It's still difficult to assess it. But I think, yes, I would say in the number of scanners sold per year right now, we are on, I would say, least in between 1/4 to 1/3 of the number of scanners sold in unit right now. based on the performance that we are seeing and the ACO that we have seen from other players in this field. Then that means we are representing or more a very larger share of the entrance sold, and I believe this will continue. Then it will be a way where our 10% will obviously increase significantly more right now as we are presenting that in a yearly market share, that's why we did not move it to 20% already.

But putting 10 plus on our side means that we are already seeing that we are moving very significantly the need. And we expect more for the months and quarters to come, and we are continuing to invest in new technology together with partners because we also want to play into the 3D printing segment and we still value very much also the partnership we have with Sprint.

We are creating innovative workflow on this one. And I think that stay tuned in the third quarter on the digital equipment side, we will continue to have innovation that we will bring in order to make sure we are ready also for the peak period that will come but also to the future ideas that will come in March 2027, where we'll be really, really coming up with a really interesting solutions in line with what we have done, I would say, for the past 18 months now.

Coming to NAM, North America, yes, I think we are benefiting, obviously, from an easier comp for the first half. The second half will be a higher comp. But I still believe that we said that NAM should be between the 6% to 9% growth rate. This is the way I'm saying that's a bracket 6 to 9 more in the high single digit, I would say. I think that if the market is not supportive I would say we would be on the high end of the mid-single for the seminar.

But I still believe when I see the current trend and what we're able to achieve that we will be in the high single digits. And at least that's what we are aiming for. we have good opportunities on the field. We have a strong leadership in place in North America. We have strong customer relationship as well with also a very good dynamic DSO segment and then a lot of arguments thanks to the digital workflow to continue to differentiate versus competition. And that's the way we are seeing it. And then that will allow us to close the year strong.

With this, thank you for joining us -- thank you, Veronika, and thank you for joining us today and for your continued interest in Straumann Group. We look forward to seeing you again soon. Wish you a very nice day and goodbye from Sunny Basel.

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Straumann Group Q1 2026 Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Guillaume Daniellot, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning or afternoon to all of you. Thank you for attending this conference call on the Straumann Group's first quarter results. Please take note of the disclaimer in our media release and on Slide 2. During this conference call, we are going to refer to the presentation slides that were published on our website this morning. As usual, the discussion will include some forward-looking statements.

As shown on Slide 3, I will start with the first quarter performance overview. Isabelle will then cover the financial details. And afterwards, I will share strategic updates and our outlook. We will be happy to answer your questions at the end of the presentation.

Let's move directly to Slide 5. I'm pleased to present to you today a strong start to 2026 with a solid performance across regions and business segments. We delivered revenue of CHF 673 million in the first quarter, corresponding to an organic growth of 7.1%. All regions contributing to this successful being of the year, and I'm particularly pleased with the very solid momentum in North America with continued growth quarter after quarter. Importantly, this performance is clearly driven by strong execution. We continue to gain market share across key segments, supported by our innovation pipeline, our digital offering and the strong customer engagement we are creating through education.

In Implantology, we are further expanding our leadership through innovation, driven by the continued rollout of iEXCEL and the development of our clinical education and research activities with exciting new initiatives, including the launch of a new specialist network, more on that in a moment.

In Orthodontics, the transformation is progressing very well. The transition to Smartee manufacturing in EMEA and Asia Pacific has been successfully completed, and we are introducing significant enhancements to our value proposition in the coming weeks. Overall, this strong start, combined with continued progress across our strategic priorities, gives us confidence as we look ahead to the rest of the year. And despite the still demanding market environment and ongoing geopolitical uncertainties, we confirm our outlook for 2026.

Let me now move to Slide 6 and walk you through the regional performance in more detail. Overall, we delivered solid growth across all regions, reflecting the strength of our diversified geographic footprint and continued execution across markets.

Starting with EMEA, our largest region. We achieved strong organic growth of 7.8% despite a very high comparable base in the prior year. Performance was broad-based across countries and business franchises with particularly good contributions from Spain, Austria and Poland, while other markets also delivered solid growth, underlining the resilience of our business.

Moving to North America. The region delivered strong growth of 7.7% with continued momentum across all businesses. Importantly, we are seeing a consistent improvement from quarter-to-quarter, reflecting strong commercial execution, increasing traction of our digital workflows and continued expansion of strategic customer partnerships.

In Asia Pacific, we continue to see two distinct dynamics across the region. On the one hand, outside of China, performance remains strong with growth above 10%, supported by solid contributions from key markets such as Japan, India and Southeast Asia. On the other hand, in China, market conditions remain affected by the delayed volume-based procurement process, VBP. However, underlying trends are stabilizing with improving patient flow and distributors slowly restocking from low inventory levels. Overall, this resulted in a stabilized regional development of 0.5% against a very strong prior year comparison.

Finally, Latin America once again delivered outstanding performance with organic growth of 19.5%. Growth was broad-based with particularly great momentum in Brazil and across Hispanic markets, including Mexico and Argentina, driven by strong demand for challenger implants and increasing adoptions of digital solutions. Overall, this regional performance highlights the resilience of our business model and our ability to consistently outperform the market across different environments.

With this, I will now hand over to Isabelle, who will take you through the financial performance in more detail.

Thank you, Guillaume, and good morning also from my side. It's a pleasure to walk you through our financial highlights for the first quarter of 2026.

Let me start on Slide 8 with the details of our revenue development. We delivered a strong organic revenue growth of 7.1% in the first quarter. This corresponds to a reported decline of 1.2% in Swiss francs, which represents a negative foreign exchange impact of CHF 53 million. This was mainly driven by the U.S. dollar, which depreciated by more than 10% versus the Swiss franc compared to the prior year period as well as the euro, which weakened by more than 4%. Assuming currencies remain at current levels, we expect the negative foreign exchange impact to gradually moderate over the course of the year.

Looking at the drivers of this organic growth, the main contributions came from EMEA, North America and Latin America, reflecting solid performance across our key regions. In terms of the regional share of this organic growth, EMEA remains our largest region, contributing around 47% to the group's revenue growth, followed by North America at 28% and Latin America at 23%, while Asia Pacific remains at a lower level, mainly due to the current dynamics in China. Overall, this clearly demonstrates that despite the impact of currency movements, the underlying business performance remains strong and well diversified.

At the same time, we continue to actively mitigate external headwinds through our operational excellence measures, which I will walk you through on Slide 9. Over the past quarters, we have made significant investments into our global manufacturing and supply chain footprint, and we are now beginning to see the first tangible benefits.

First, for our premium portfolio, our new Shanghai campus is now fully ramped up, supporting cost efficiency while, at the same time, reducing our exposure to foreign exchange volatility through our local-for-local production approach. At the same time, we have optimized our production footprint in Europe, including adjustments in Villeret, where some volumes have been reallocated as part of our global manufacturing setup.

In Orthodontics, the transition of production to Smartee in EMEA and APAC has been successfully completed and the ClearCorrect production site in Markkleeberg has been closed. This marks an important step towards more scalable and cost-efficient operating model with further benefits expected to materialize over the course of the year.

In addition, for our challenger portfolio, we continue to expand our global production footprint. Neodent is further strengthening its manufacturing capabilities with the expansion of its site in Curitiba to be finished this summer, supporting future global growth. Overall, while we are continuing to expand our production capacity, we have introduced measures to improve efficiency and reduce cost. These measures strengthen our ability to mitigate external headwinds, including foreign exchange volatility, and position us well to drive further margin improvement in the coming quarters.

As a final comment, I would like to mention that the impact from the current geopolitical environment remains limited, reflecting the resilience of our diversified footprint and global manufacturing setup.

With this, I will now hand back to Guillaume for the strategy update.

Thank you, Isabelle. Let me now turn to our strategy update, starting with a look at our market share in a large and growing market on Slide 11. Let me start by putting our performance into the context of our market opportunity. We operate in a large and growing market of around CHF 20 billion, where we have now reached a total market share of around 14% and continue to gain share across key segments.

Our strategy is built on two complementary dimensions: Perform and Transform. On the Perform side, we focus on strengthening our leadership in our core implant segment, where we hold a market share of above 35%. The unique combination of our innovation capabilities with our global footprint and our deep clinical engagement will enable us to keep gaining share. On the Transform side, we are targeting high-growth segments where our market share still relatively low and where we see significant upside potential. This includes Clear Aligners, where the market size is around CHF 5 billion, and our current share is around 5%, highlighting the opportunity ahead as we continue to transform our Orthodontics business.

In addition, we are building strong momentum in digital equipment, particularly intraoral scanners and in CADCAM prosthetics where we are working to disrupt workflows through digital chairside solutions. Overall, this combination of leadership expansion in our core business and significant headroom in adjacent segments provides a clear runway for continued growth.

Let me now show you how we execute on this strategy, starting with Implantology on Slide 12. Supporting our premium implant growth, iEXCEL has been extremely successful across all regions and is a strong growth driver for the group. It is not only attracting new customers from value and premium systems, but also driving significant conversion as existing clinicians switch to the iEXCEL platform to benefit from simplified workflows and increased efficiency in their daily practice.

We are also seeing strong traction with some large DSO customers, where iEXCEL is increasingly becoming the system of choice, further supporting our market share gains. Importantly, iEXCEL is the most successful product launch in Straumann's history despite being on the market for just over a year. Building on this success, we are now clearly doubling down on it. All new premium innovations will be built on the iEXCEL platform, further strengthening its value proposition and driving continued adoption.

Let me highlight a few examples. We are launching iGuide for iEXCEL specifically designed for full-arch treatment, enabling faster and more efficient guided surgeries in higher-value indication. At the same time, we continue to expand the platform with new prosthetic solutions. This includes the introduction of the new enhanced Variobase XC line, featuring a laser-treated surface designed to further improve performance and clinical outcome. Overall, this differentiated innovation approach is key to our future success, strengthening customer adoption and further reinforcing our leadership in Implantology.

Let me now move to Slide 13 and show you how the adoption of innovation and clinical education is translating into growth. With ITI, we have a leading global network for evidence-based education and research with more than 25,000 members across over 100 countries, training more than 200,000 clinicians every year. This very strong foundation allows us to drive adoption of our solutions at scale and support clinicians across all levels of experience. Building on this, we are now further expanding our reach by supporting the launch of AOMI, a new global specialist network focused on Advanced Oral and Maxillofacial Implantology.

With AOMI, we are specifically targeting highly specialized clinicians who perform complex procedures, further strengthening our position in high-value segments of the market. Together, ITI and AOMI create a very powerful and complementary education ecosystem, allowing us to engage with clinicians across the full spectrum from general practitioners to leading experts in complex cases. This is a key strategic differentiator supporting both adoption and long-term customer loyalty and ultimately driving further market share gains.

Let me now move to the Transform side of our strategy, starting with Orthodontics on Slide 14. Our Orthodontics transformation is built on three key dimensions: first, a more focused go-to-market approach targeting high-growth countries; second, improve scalability and profitability through our Smartee technology partnership; and third, a strengthened value proposition with a clear focus on general practitioners.

As Isabelle just mentioned, we have successfully completed the transition of our production to Smartee in EMEA and Asia Pacific. This strategic partnership allows us to significantly improve our manufacturing efficiency and scalability, creating a strong foundation for future profitable growth. At the same time, we have sharpened our go-to-market approach, focusing on selected markets with strong growth potential and with a clear ambition to build a leading position among general practitioners. In these targeted growth markets, we are already seeing great progress in case conversion translating into solid growth for ClearCorrect.

And this is exactly where our upcoming innovations come into play. Starting from May, we will introduce a series of new features that significantly enhance our ClearCorrect value proposition. Let me highlight a few key examples. First, the integration of CBCT data into the workflow, enabling more comprehensive diagnostics and improved treatment planning particularly for more complex cases. This is then strengthening our clinical capabilities. Second, the outcome simulator, which allows clinicians to visualize treatment results with the patient directly at the chair. This significantly improves patient communication and drives higher case acceptance.

Third, the introduction of scalloped trimline, which expands the range of clinical options with a phased rollout depending on regulatory approvals. And finally, RemoteCare, which enables integrated remote monitoring of treatments. We are seeing very strong customer interest and highly initial positive feedback, especially from general practitioners as it reduces chair time and improves treatment consistency. Overall, all these innovations, combined with our improved operating model and focused go-to-market approach, significantly strengthens our competitiveness and position us well to scale in the Orthodontics market.

Let me now move to Slide 15 and show you how we are building strong momentum in digital equipment. This very strong momentum seen right now in our digital equipment business is primarily driven by the successful launch of our new SIRIOS X3 intraoral scanner, which has been on the market for 6 months only. Since its launch, we have seen very strong growth with overwhelming customer feedback and high demand across regions. This success is significantly increasing the number of users adopting our digital workflow solutions and driving increased demand for consumables.

And this growing installed base is a key driver for future value creation. As more clinicians adopt our scanners and connect to our cloud-based platform access, we are seeing increasing usage of integrated workflow, including MIDAS Signature 3D printing solution. Here, we continue to expand our offering with new features being introduced this spring. This include expanded indication such as new advanced materials with a higher ceramic content and inlay and onlay application.

Overall, this clearly demonstrates how we leverage digital equipment as an entry point into our Straumann ecosystem, driving platform adoption, increasing workflow integration and, ultimately, generating recurring revenue through consumables.

With this, let me conclude with our outlook for 2026 on Slide 17. Following the strong start into the year, we remain very confident in our outlook. We operate in a total addressable market of more than CHF 20 billion with significant growth opportunities across our core and adjacent segments. At the same time, market conditions are expected to remain volatile with ongoing macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties. However, our resilient business model, strong market positions and continued execution give us confidence going forward.

For 2026, we continue to expect delivering high single-digit organic revenue growth alongside a core EBIT margin improvement of 30 to 60 basis points at constant 2025 exchange rate.

With this, we are happy to move to the Q&A session to answer your questions. As usual, we kindly ask you to limit the number of questions to two in order to leave other participants a chance to pose their questions within the available time.

Chorus Call, can we have the first question, please?

Sure. The first question comes from Hassan Al-Wakeel from Barclays.

Firstly, if you could just expand on the strength in North America, the extent of any market improvement, if at all, versus share gains and how this progressed throughout Q1 and into Q2. Are you observing any changes in demand or consumer sentiment? And if you could talk to the confidence that you have on continuing this momentum, particularly as comps get tougher throughout the year.

And then secondly, on inflation dynamics, are you seeing any changes in inflation at the moment? Or do you expect them to make its way to your cost lines this year or next on the back of the Middle East conflict? And what steps are you taking to mitigate be it pricing or otherwise?

Thanks, Hassan. A lot of questions into two. Well, let me comment on the North American side. Most of our improved dynamic is coming from stronger execution and capability to materialize on the innovation we launched in the market. We have seen a rather stable patient flow. We don't believe that our strong results has been mainly coming from tailwinds, but a lot -- and we see from where you were asking from where this is coming from, it's coming from all businesses.

We have seen strong traction of our iEXCEL innovation on the premium side. We have seen a good development of our Challenger brand a lot also through our DSO partnership. And we have seen also for our new Transform areas, a significant growth on the digital side, thanks to the complete value proposition we have with SIRIOS for the entry and mid-level but also with 3Shape as a higher-end offering of the iOS market. And finally, we see Orthodontics also then being able to getting traction versus what we had in the past year.

Then one of the good confidence we are moving forward for North America is the fact that our growth is coming from all the different franchises and then bringing some resilience to this performance. We have not seen a particular different trend in the different months. We see more kind of a stable than the performance capabilities. And that's the way we are seeing that moving forward in 2026.

For the inflation side, when it comes specifically to North America demand, we are not seeing impact for the time being. If you remember, in 2022 and 2023, first half, we had also quite a lot of inflation in North America. Actually, it was really, really strong. And our demand has been pretty resilient because I believe that still the implant patients that are affording implant treatment are not immediately impacted by the lower level of inflation.

What has more impacted us has been over time about the interest rate, as we have discussed in the past. And I would say that would be with a significant increase of interest rate that we would see more impact on the demand side from our perspective if we look at the history. And from our cost side, I think, as also Isabelle rightly said in the initial presentation, we have taken, let's say, the measures in order to mitigate any potential increased cost coming from that Middle East crisis, even though when you look at our overall energy cost, this is not significant from a total cost of group because it's a high single-digit to low single-digit millions where we are able then, through some specific cost reduction measures, trying to absorb this moving forward in the first quarter but also in the rest of the year.

The next question comes from Susannah Ludwig from Bernstein.

I have two, please. I guess, just first on China. Is there any update on the timing of VBP. It sounds like, I guess, the patient flow has started to get better and there's less maybe a little restocking, so how you're thinking about through the trajectory of that business until we hit VBP.

And then second, can you talk a little bit about sort of the headwinds and tailwinds for margins in 2026? I guess, versus when you gave the guidance, we've had tariff cuts in Brazil, potentially sort of further delay in the VBP and, hence, delay to the price cuts. And then through the start of the Middle East conflict, how should we think about the magnitude of the potential tailwinds versus potential headwinds?

Yes, of course. So Susannah, thanks for the question. China VBP, then the -- well, what we can say is that no news, okay? And they are been -- it has been postponed but there is no official information on when it's going to be implemented, potentially second part of the year, potentially a bit later, I would say we don't have a clear view here.

Then what we can say, what does it mean for us? It means to a normalization right now of the patient flow even if it's at the low side. But we see really a normalization of activity with patients coming back to practices because there is really no information even, let's say, locally about when this VBP could happen. We have then, as a consequence, distributors that are also slowly restocking in line with current implant consumptions, meaning that we see more activity also for us on the sales side.

Then what does it mean if we look moving forward on the rest of the year? Then because of the very strong comparison rate, we were growing more than 20% in the second quarter also last year in China, we see something like maybe slow negative single -- low single-digit to flattish for the second quarter and, obviously, with a pretty good growth in the second half because we have seen the start of significantly destocking at that time.

Still VBP would be coming. What does it mean? It means that we would have, of course, a lower volume in the 3, 4 weeks of implementation, much higher afterwards, and that's why we would still see growth, we believe, in the second half. And we are also then higher pricing for a longer period than expected, versus our initial plan. Then I would say the fact that VBP is not going to be implemented so far would be, well, rather balanced versus what we have seen to rather positive, especially because we have now Shanghai Manufacturing, which is allowing us to capitalize on our lower pricing and lower COGS and higher pricing than anticipated.

This is actually a good segue for your questions on the different building blocks for the overall margin. And Isabelle, if you would like to take this one. We have some different moving pieces that are really interesting to explain.

Definitely. And thanks for your question, Susannah. So since we last talked, the main building blocks behind our 2026 EBIT development are broadly unchanged, although, obviously, there are a few moving parts I would like to go through step by step. So on the external side, as Guillaume already elaborated, we continue to carefully monitor and manage the factors. We do have FX volatility, tariff developments, timing of the VBP, oil pricing, what have you. So this is something we're very aware of on continuously monitor.

And just to remind you, what we said in the beginning, what we assumed for our guidance is a macroeconomic environment similar to what we've seen in the second half of last year, and this is something we would confirm as we speak. But I think more importantly, on the internal side, there are a few things we see developing very positively. So to start with, it's our Orthodontics transformation. The Smartee partnership improves the economics of our Aligner business and margins with that, so primarily driving COGS down due to the lower COGS per aligners, the automation and manufacturing and scale Smartee brings to this partnership.

But it's as well basically all the things I already mentioned during my presentation, so the increasing contribution from the local manufacturing in China, which is now almost fully ramped up. A lot of the products we sell in China are now being produced in China. Adding to what Guillaume said, we can hold on to the higher pricing for a longer time, but at lower COGS from our Shanghai campus. We see a stronger digital mix with our own IO scanner portfolio, namely the SIRIOS X3 we launched half a year ago. And then last but not least, all of the ongoing productivity measures we discussed during the Capital Markets Day and now partially during my presentation as well.

Then on the flip side, what we will see in terms of phasing is obviously higher tariff impact in the first half year and, now, with the current announcement, a little bit lower impact in the second half, obviously. Still to be seen how it really turns out after the 150 days. And then, obviously, a shift in timing from VBP 2.0, which was originally anticipated in the first half of the year now to potentially the second half. We're still waiting for official confirmation on that.

But this, obviously, as for the top line to conclude this, the year has started on a good note. Environment, however, remains a little volatile, particularly with the geopolitical macro uncertainties. So what I can say, so far is early trends are encouraging to what we see. Phasing between the first half and second half will obviously depend how these factors evolve, but I think especially due to the VBP timing, will be a little bit more even than initially expected. And overall, we remain very confident in the margin progression implied by our guidance.

The next question comes from David Adlington from JPMorgan.

Most of my questions have been asked. Maybe just firstly on LatAm. I just wondered if you could pull out how much the growth was due to pricing. And if it was due to pricing, how much is that sustainable? It sounds like the market has been strong, but I just wanted to get a pricing impact and then that's been a historic driver.

And I thought maybe just on the cost inflation side, just any particular areas you would pull out that you potentially would highlight as a potential problem as we go into the second half and into next year.

LatAm pricing is actually limited. A lot of this is coming from volume. We have done really, really well on our implant development and especially now not only Brazil, but also we have a very, very good progression in all the, what we call, Hispanic countries. I want to again explain one of the major difference we have with a lot of competitors is that we have our own subsidiary.

Then we are not going through distributors in many of those markets, in Argentina, in Peru, in Colombia, in Chile. And we have been also investing with feet on the ground, and we are seeing significant traction on what we're doing also in those countries. And yes, then mainly volume, and we are looking on having still then this really good development in LatAm moving forward. Might not be at the 19%, which is exceptional with also some strong digital market adoption, but still promising for this part of the world.

On the cost inflation side, and David, I think what we can say so far, it's well under control. First, Guillaume said the exposure we do have to the direct categories that will be subject to inflation, on the one hand side, energy costs. Luckily, we are very low on energy. So just to give you a reference, energy is a very low single-digit percentage of our total cost. And those prices are usually secured 1, 1.5 years in advance by our procurement department. So we are very much on the safe side there.

Similar picture we see for shipping costs. So with a lot of the big suppliers, we do have running contracts where pricing is secured. So I think this is very well under control. And even if we see some increases, we are confident we can mitigate with other saving measures, especially since it seems like we will get a little bit of tailwind from the tariffs once it's announced. So for us, it should not be an issue, and we do not expect any downside to the guidance by the current inflation tendencies we see.

The next question comes from Hugo Solvet from BNP Paribas.

I have two, please. On EMEA first. 8% organic growth in Q1. Could you maybe discuss the impact from pull forward of demand? And would it be a realistic scenario to assume a return to possibly low double-digit growth from Q2 onwards? Second question, clarification on profitability. Isabelle, when you mentioned similar margin level in H1, could you maybe clarify whether it's H1 getting better than what you initially anticipated or H1 better but more uncertainty on H2?

Yes, Thank you, Hugo. EMEA, I think very -- we've expressed and I think I expressed that on a regular basis, the fact that we see a very solid resilient trend on our business by the fact that we have several very strong structural factors that are supporting this. On the one side is, of course, the fact that we are present in the entire Western and Eastern Europe, again, with subsidiaries and have been investing also on our go-to market on the challenger and premium side in order to keep developing our market share.

Secondly, we have also the fact that when it comes to the resilience versus, for example, the current environment, GPs are placing implant and it's a gold standard of treatment for replacing tooth. Then we see that despite a little bit some of the turbulence that we see around, this is going to be also resilient moving forward.

Now we are happy with this really strong results of EMEA based, on the one side, the Q4, then the very significant performance due to some sales that has been done prior to price increase in some markets, as explained in the full year results and also that the comparison base last year Q1 was also very strong because it was 10%.

Now are we seeing a potential double-digit for Q2? I think I would not express it like this. I think we are very confident to stay in the same high single-digit, potentially low single -- low double-digits, but it's still having this very, very strong growth in the biggest part of our business because it represents 48% or 47% of the group sales. then very confident moving forward. Still going to be in between the high single-digit to low double-digit. But this is really the confidence in those numbers that I think is really the strength of the EMEA for our overall performance.

And when it comes to profitability, Isabelle will give more color on this. But yes, it's more an improvement of what we saw in the first half that we are seeing from a trend standpoint than some of the second half that will come to the first half. And it's not so much of -- it's a rebalancing by the fact that the first half will be higher than expected versus our second half.

So thanks, Isabelle, for the segue. I mean, very good question, Hugo. So what has changed since we last talked? Let's go through that. So as Guillaume said, for the full year, the assumptions we put in are still valid, but we see a slightly different phasing than we initially anticipated. And there's majorly two factors that go into this. It's, on the one hand side, the tariff impact. So we had initially higher tariff impact compared to last year in the first half and then lower impact on the second half. Basically now with the Supreme Court declaring them illegal and rates going down to 10%, especially from Brazil, formerly 50%, this will obviously be a little bit of a relief to what we initially expected for the first half of the year.

Although at this stage, it's still early to reflect this into our assumptions for the full year or to point to any specific upside, especially since it's yet to come, what will happen after the 150 days. But this is why the first half year will be slightly better than expected due to lower tariffs we will see come through, especially in quarter 2. And the second thing we already talked through is the timing of VBP 2.0. This was initially planned for in our guidance in the first half of the year. From what we see how this will move into the second half, and we see a very stable, solid performance in China as we speak. So we will likely have a timing effect there as well.

And maybe what I would add to this, that was part also of the presentation, we have made a lot of investment and efforts on our COGS side. And we see some tractions that might be a little bit earlier than planned, on automation being done, on premium side, by the fact that we are manufacturing in China for premium, by the strength of our own scanners versus third-party product, which is helping the gross margin. And obviously, when you are also then driving performance in North America,versus what was, of course, past year than with the higher-priced market being successful, we see also, of course, this operational leverage that we can generate more than what we have been able to do in the same period last year.

The next question comes from Julien Dormois from Jefferies.

I have two, and they are actually -- one is follow-up to your comments, I think, it was on China. But I just want to make sure I clearly understood. I think you referred to maybe flat to low single-digit growth, but is that for China? Or is that for APAC in the second quarter? So that would be helpful to get a clarification on that.

And the second question is more for Isabelle, I guess. Could you just give us an updated view on FX impact on margin for the full year as we are here today? Just wondering whether maybe the impact -- the headwind has come down a little bit from when we last discussed.

Yes, thank you, Julien, for helping us to precise this. I was mentioning China. China will be low single-digit to flat in the second quarter based on the very high comparison base and the normalization of the patient flow on the rather low side then, which means that it will help Asia Pacific to come up with then better contribution to the overall group growth in the rest of the year.

Yes. And to put a little bit more color on to the FX impact, I mean, obviously, the impact we've seen in the first quarter was massive, but this is more an equation of the spot rates now compared to the spot rates last year. Going into liberation day, especially the U.S. dollar was particularly stronger than it was this quarter 1, so as indicated roughly 10% and 4% for the euro. And we would see a little bit of a turnaround. We already see that coming in for Q2 actually as we speak.

So looking at the full year guidance, as previously said, we're operating in a very volatile FX environment, and I think we somewhat have to take it as it comes as the year evolves. But just to give you an indication, so we actually rerun our forecast for this year with a March spot rate. And as it seems, the overall FX impact will be slightly below what we've seen last year.

I'm sorry, just to follow up. We're talking about margin impact, right?

Both actually. Both. So what we currently see for the margin impact would be roughly 100, 120 basis points at end of March quarter and lower impact for the top line as well.

The next question comes from Graham Doyle from UBS.

Just two questions, please. On China, so can you just maybe talk a little bit again about that phasing to the extent you can. I understand it's like VBPs still a little bit sort of up in the air. But if we're assuming, call it, down mid-singles or slightly better maybe for the first half, would you still expect like pent-up demand in the second half if you get VBP out there? Or should we expect, like, say, more moderate growth in the second half than, I think, consensus models more like kind of 20% in the second half. Just to understand, is it just kind of balance phasing there now as well?

And maybe if you could just comment on the U.S. Obviously, the comps get a bit tougher in the second half. But it does feel like you've had this very, very stable kind of durable build in growth in the U.S. over the last, I don't know, 5 quarters or something. Are you seeing better underlying demand sequentially as well, which kind of makes you feel comfortable that high single-digits over the midterm is sustainable and, actually, maybe we can see that through this year as well? Just to get your comfort level there would be really good.

Well, when it comes to China, Graham, I think there are two scenarios, let's say. The scenario is no VBP this year, okay? No VBP this year means that we are going to see then a patient flow normalization without being potentially in the 25% from a patient flow standpoint. But on our side, if you have a normalization of the patient flow with the very low second half that we had, which was around minus 20%, then, obviously, we expect to have some double-digit growth for the rest of the year.

Then when it comes to the VBP, if there is a VBP in the second half, then you will see then a much higher volume potentially at a lower price. Then this, it still remains to be seen. But as we had a very low comparison base, we still expect growth in the second part of the year in the case of a VBP as well. And that's why we have been saying that China for us, now that we are going to arrive in a much better comparison territory, then whether VBP or not, we are still expecting growth for China in the second half.

When it comes to U.S., I cannot say that we have seen once again then a sequential improvement of the patient flow. I expressed the fact that we see the patient flow being rather stable, but our capability to generate much more growth is coming from our capability to execute on the opportunity that we have at hand. That's our iEXCEL innovation on premium, that's our business partnership capabilities on our challenger brands, and also then, all the development we do on digital and the Orthodontics space with significant new value proposition here on the Orthodontics side, as expressed with all the new innovation we are coming up in May, but also with our own intraoral scanner that have just been launched in October last year.

Then that's where we believe we can create still traction in a stable environment in North America, and we are confident that we can still drive current trend that we are seeing right now.

That's really helpful. Maybe just a quick cheeky follow-up. On VBP, is there anything -- like have you learned anything as to why this is being a bit delayed? Like are you expecting different outcomes? Is it as you guys were discussing this sort of trade-off between education and price, for example? Or are there other things happening?

At this stage, Graham, I would prevent from any speculation. I think that we have seen and known through experience that the regulation in China on moving in term of dates, if you remember, the first VBP, it has been announced even 18 months or 2 years before it has been actually implemented. So I guess what's happening in the Chinese authorities, there are also some priorities sometimes that are changing, and one is more -- has a higher priority than others, then that's why.

At the moment, we don't know why it's the case. We don't know when it will be happening, and that's where I think it's playing on our agility culture of our organization to try to make the best of the solution out of the situation. And I think we have a lot of solutions to be able to leverage the current situation with the normalization of the patient flow.

The next question comes from Oliver Metzger from ODDO BHF.

First one is in China, so versus the private public market. So obviously, the VBP delay. Does it mean let's experience a stronger support at private practices and corresponding also a positive volume price mix? And second question is about the comments you made about the regain of lower-priced implant customer for iEXCEL platform. For the first time, you made this comment at your CMD. Today, you reiterated that. So initially, it was just a ray of hope. Now you confirm this again.

So I would describe it cautiously as a trend. If you have to quantify this development, would you regard this in the context of your product mix is already as becoming significant? Or is it just, say, an initial trend which doesn't have any meaningful impact yet?

Yes. Thank you, Oliver, for the question, when you look at the Chinese market, private and public. Public Is 25% of the total business. Private will be the remaining 75%. I would even say 25% public, 30% DSO and the rest is regular than smaller practices. One of the specific approach of the VBP has been that the Chinese authorities have been able to bring the private sector to align with the VBP, which means that when we have seen the VBP implementation, the 1.0, it has actually transformed the entire market and not only the public hospital segment.

And that has been something that we might not have expected as much, but that's why I don't believe that the VBP 2.0 will drive different trends in between the public and the private, but they will try to influence the market in the same way. And that's where we don't know exactly what will be the priority of the VBP rules moving forward because we know that the authorities are also very focusing on the quality of care and that the product -- high-quality product still going to be available for the public sector but also for the private sector and allowing also the patients and the clinicians to be able to run their practice with offering the best potential care.

We know that truly speaking, they want to favor also the local Chinese companies as soon as they are ready to be able to scale for this kind of volume in the market. And I don't feel yet that the VBP 2.0 will completely change the dynamic, at least in between private and public and also in between this kind of premium versus value. But once again, we have to see what will be coming when it's there.

When it comes to iEXCEL, and thanks for picking that up, yes, we see that we are able with premium the capability to switch not only other premium company clinician users, but also value clinician users. And this especially based on what one of our customer has been expressing during our Capital Markets Day, it's because of the digital workflow associated to this. He clearly expressed the fact that you can use an implant at a higher price as soon as they are offering a workflow allowing you to reduce your appointment by 2 or 3 appointments for achieving the same treatment solution.

And this is exactly what some of our workflow are offering, and it was the specific Fast Molar workflow that we have presented where you use 1 implant, you have a consumable that allow you to scan the implant at the moment of surgery, which means that you don't need to ask the patient to come back, postponing doing the prosthetic process. And then time is money for all the clinicians. They can see more patients and they can do more cases. And that has been one of the reasons, thanks to the digital efficiency of our workflow associated with iEXCEL, that we have been able to transform some value users.

Is it significant that we see? I would not say significant, but it's more and more the case. Why is this? Because now that intraoral scanner are having a price point which is favoring a significant market penetration, GPs are all going to be equipped. And when you have a SIRIOS at a price that allows you to get started with digital workflow, then you have immediately access to the iEXCEL workflow. And that's where we see an initial trend that we are going to promote, of course, very significantly, by demonstrating that the return of an implant treatment is not based only on the price of your implant but, obviously, of your entire treatment steps that is needed in order to finalize your process.

Then we are really looking forward doing this, and you will see more of us promoting now our workflow that are delivering significant benefits and value for clinicians.

The next question comes from Brandon Vazquez from William Blair.

Congrats on a nice quarter. I wanted to focus first, Guillaume, on the U.S., just in part because I was hoping you could talk a little bit about what you mentioned before, which is that you've had some commercial changes there. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think you had a new leader put in place in the United States last year. I was hoping you could just reflect for a minute on what kind of -- what are the commercial changes that are resonating well, what are the commercial changes that are leading to better results in North America, just also get a better understanding of how durable these improvements in U.S. and North America growth can be.

Yes, we changed leader in May last year. You are totally right. And when you are having a strong commercial-oriented leader, then you are building up then trust within the organization that they will be supported to be able to achieve the best possible results. I think success from a commercial traction is coming, on the one side, by systems.

That means -- you all know commercial excellence, and that means entering the right productivity, the right targeting. And this needs to have significant monitoring from the sales management side. And when you have a leader which has a very clear understanding of this and a very clear expectations about productivity and efficiency on the sales side, this is driving immediately differentiation in performance that you can achieve.

Is it sustainable? Yes. Because afterwards, when you have implemented this more monitored approach on sales excellence, you are also helping your team to be more successful. And when you have more success, you have obviously more energy within the team, and you have also the capability to overachieve some of the target that has been assigned. Then it's also a virtuous circle that you need to implement, and this is what we are seeing in North America right now. And that's where we need also to support this with additional investment, some additional investment we seek on the ground, with marketing promotion and, above all, with further innovation because that's still the name of the game.

And then a strong commercial team is going to really drive a very strong performance as soon as you're also giving them the means to differentiate themselves in the marketplace, and this is what we're able to do with the different enhancement of our value proposition across our businesses that we are doing on a regular basis.

Got it. And then maybe, Isabelle, for you as my follow-up here. On the 30 to 60 bps of EBIT margin expansion expected for the year on a core basis, I think you've had, I'd argue, two good things since you gave that original guidance come out. One of them is, of course, the tariffs. The other, it seems that China is doing -- even as we're waiting for VBP, China is doing better, and you're getting some of the benefits of manufacturing there.

Just kind of curious why wouldn't that push you maybe -- on the core EBIT margin expansion, why wouldn't that -- those 2 push your expansion potential in 2026 higher? Why the reiterated guide despite both of those coming in, I think, more positive? But correct me if I'm wrong.

Excellent question, Brandon. Thanks for that. So I mean, what we see how the year started, we are very satisfied with the top line development and the margin development as well. So I think it has been a really, really good and strong start to the year. As already indicated earlier, we see a lot of moving parts right now. We have the macroeconomic volatility we somehow have to manage. We have to monitor the tariffs a little bit closer. All of the things we did internally with the orthodontics transformation with the new factory in Shanghai, all of this is now falling into place.

So the trends we currently see they are encouraging. The phasing, as I already said, will look a little differently with a stronger first half. But of course, I think for the full year, it's still a little early to be too enthusiastic about it right now. because it still will depend a lot on how all of those factors I just talked through, so the tariffs, the macro environment, VBP, will actually play out throughout of the year.

So I think we are confident that the margin progression we indicated, we can do this. But it's still a little early to reflect all of this in our assumptions and point to any specific upside potential. So things remain. We are very confident. But I think this is something to be discussed later in the year.

Next question comes from Falko Friedrichs from Deutsche Bank.

Two questions from my side, please. The first one is another clarification. Guillaume, you meant to say that China in Q2 is flat to a low single-digit decline, correct?

I said low single-digit decline to flattish, yes, that's correct.

Okay. Got it. And then my second question, do you see a risk of hitting another potential air pocket in demand in China in the second half if VBP is, in fact, implemented in late '26 or even early 2027?

Well, it's -- you're right. It's difficult to say. But I don't see a potential air pocket because you will have still people that will now see that VBP, it is less likely to happen in the coming months, then they will come to practice and get their treatment done. But as there will be no change into pricing, people will not reconsider like, oh, I was not planning to do any implant, but I'm going to do one, like it was the case for the VBP announcement with significant price change. Then I think it will drive to the practice the people that are waiting, but that they were planning to have treatment and there are some.

Is it going to be, let's say, a significant push? I don't think so. We see, as we speak, things really normalizing. But it's a step-by-step approach. Then I don't expect if VBP will be postponed to later any specific air pocket from a patient flow standpoint. However, obviously, because of the low comp base, we should be able to see then a potential good growth from China, not so much from an extraordinary patient flow, but mainly because of normalization and a lower comp base.

The next question comes from Richard Felton from Goldman Sachs.

Just two for me, please. I just wanted to follow up on iEXCEL. Are you able to give us a rough sense of how much of your premium customer base has now been converted to iEXCEL? And then second question, we've heard some feedback that 2 Korean competitors in implants are trying to be a little bit more assertive on competition in Europe. Is that something that you're seeing? Does that have any impact on market structure or competitive dynamics in Europe?

What I can say with the success of iEXCEL is so much that it's now representing more than 20% of our total volume of premium implants. Then in a kind of a 16 to an 18-month start, it's a very, very significant achievement in a conservative market. But then this is where we see -- and this is also why we have decided to double down on it, that all innovation that we are going to do on the prosthetic side, as an example, on the digital workflow side will be everything connected to the iEXCEL platform and especially that specific unique connection, which is what we call the TorcFit connection, which is bringing really a lot of benefit from a clinician standpoint in order to continue to push then our iEXCEL penetration and being really the reference implant system within the industry.

When it comes to the Korean, we don't see yet major investments. We have seen them active in Europe for quite some time. We know also that the current headwind they are having in China is also significantly squeezing their investment capability from what we believe. Then I don't feel in Europe having more constraints coming from our Korean competitors than what we had in the past period, not less, but not more.

The last question we can take today comes from Julien Ouaddour from Bank of America.

The first one, you haven't talked so much about the Clear aligner, but it seems that you are improving quite substantially the offering on the supply chain, software and also on features. I'm just wondering if you have also made enough investment on the sales and marketing to make sure you get some immediate traction on the back of such improvements? And are you still aiming to reduce by half the losses of ClearCorrect by year-end? Or have you identified some areas where you would prefer maybe to invest the money on? So that's the first question.

And a quick one on China for the second one. Could you maybe comment just about the positive landscape you're seeing in the country and especially on the zirconium, titanium implants from Chinese competitors? I mean, do you see players having this kind of technology? And do you expect this category to be, I mean, included in the next VBP run?

Yes. Good question as well here on go-to-market for ClearCorrect. Then we are indeed investing and have invested significant money in then driving our value proposition up with our partnership with, on the one side, Smartee, but also with Dental Monitoring and rewiring highly manufacturing approach for EMEA and Asia Pacific. Could we even drive faster reasons with more feet on the ground?

The answer is not yet. Because with regard to the investment we have done before on the sales and marketing side, we were really ahead from our feet on the ground with regard to the results we can generate. Then that's why we are really excited about what we are doing right now because we were having in all the growth countries that we have selected, the market reach and the team in order to do much more than we have been doing until now. And we were needing, obviously, an enhanced value proposition and a very consistent manufacturing capability supporting them in order to deliver the performance that we were expecting.

Then that's where, as we are speaking right now, they will be able to deliver a lot of growth with regard to the new setup that we have without for us to have the need to add additional feet on the ground for the time being. Now moving forward, we will see. But we can expect significant growth with the current investment we are having on the sales and marketing side.

When it comes to the China competitive side, we have -- China is really developing really good technology overall. We have seen this. We are leveraging some of it, especially with our intraoral scanner offering as an example, with AlliedStar and our SIRIOS scanner. Then we take Chinese competitors seriously. Now they are trying, of course, then to develop technology that we have done on our clinical premium side with Roxolid. They are naming a product. Then with the zirconium and titanium combination, we are testing it. I don't think that it will reach yet the characteristic that we have from a mechanical property standpoint.

Is it going to be a category in the VBP? Honestly, I have no clue about this. It might be a way where the clinician authorities would like to differentiate products. But only at this point, this is just pure speculation and nobody knows really. Then I think we will see what we will be from there, and our goal will be, once again, to be able to differentiate significantly from any other competitors and bring the best product at the best price with then all the Chinese clinicians taking into consideration that our significant differentiation in China is our education capability, which is still very, very much needed to open the market and for which Chinese competitors have very low capabilities at this moment in time.

I mean, if I can quickly come back like on the Clear aligner. So if you don't need more investment, I guess, you're pretty in line to reach the '26 ambition you have on the margin side, which means like lowering the losses roughly by half for ClearCorrect, right?

I think we are in line with, yes, what we have planned, and then we don't need any additional investment to be able to deliver what we have in our plan. Yes, that's correct.

Yes. Then thank you also. Thank you for joining us today and for your continued interest in the Straumann Group. So we are looking forward to see you again soon, and wishing you a nice day. Goodbye from Basel and from all of us.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Straumann Group Full Year 2025 Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Guillaume Daniellot, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good morning or afternoon to all of you. Thank you for attending this conference call on the Straumann Group's Full Year 2025 results. Please take note of the disclaimer in our media release and on Slide 2. During this conference call, we are going to refer to the presentation slides that were published on our website this morning. As usual, the discussion will include some forward-looking statements.

As shown on Slide 3, I will start with the 2025 performance overview. Isabelle will then cover the financial details. And afterwards, I will share strategic updates and our outlook. We will be happy to answer your questions at the end of the presentation. And let's move directly to Slide 5. Thanks to a strong full year performance, I would like to start by highlighting that we have created more than 7.3 million smiles in 2025. In other words, together with dental professionals, we've supported around 10% more people improving their oral health and confidence than in the previous year to keep delivering on our purpose, unlocking the potential of people's lives.

Now let me share how we have progressed in 2025 by moving to Slide 6. 2025 has been a very dynamic year, and I'm very pleased with the results we delivered. We achieved a strong growth with revenue reaching CHF 2.6 billion, representing an organic growth of 8.9%, supported by a very strong fourth quarter despite the uncertainties around the VBP in China. On a reported basis, growth in Swiss francs was 4.1%, which represents a translation impact of around CHF 100 million of revenue. Despite these currency and tariff headwinds, we intensified our focus on efficiency, generating gains that supported our improved profitability. Our core EBIT margin, excluding currency headwinds, increased year-on-year to 26.5%, which corresponds to 25.2%, including currency effects.

These results clearly demonstrate the resilience of our business model and the disciplined execution across the group. On the innovation side, 2025 was a year of record launches. Starting with the Premium Implants segment, innovation remains the primary growth driver. It is the foundation on how we outperform the market and gain share. In 2025, these strategies translated in a record year of new product launches, reflecting both the depth and speed also of our innovation pipeline, iEXCEL is an excellent example. We have already sold more than 1 million iEXCEL implants, making it the most successful implant launch in our history. This performance demonstrates not only strong market adoption, but also the relevance of our innovation for clinicians worldwide.

In parallel, we have seen a strong momentum of our SIRIOS X3 intraoral scanner since its launch in October 2025, significantly expanding the clinician base being connected to our Straumann Group digital ecosystem. On the transformation side, the partial transition of the ClearCorrect manufacturing to Smartee is well on track, boosting our value proposition and supporting scalable and profitable growth in orthodontics. Overall, those very promising progress gives us confidence as we enter 2026. Looking ahead, we expect another successful year with continued market share gains and high single-digit organic revenue growth, along with further profitability expansion of 30 to 60 basis points in the core EBIT margin at constant 2025 currency rates.

Now let's have a look at the regional performance on Slide 7. Thanks to our large geographical presence, we delivered strong growth across the year and in the fourth quarter, especially looking at the strong comparison basis of 2024. Let's start with EMEA, both our largest region and biggest growth contributor for the group. EMEA performed particularly strong in the fourth quarter, leading to a full year organic growth of above 11%. This was achieved across premium and challenger implantology, digital solutions and orthodontics, which supported our continued market share gains across all markets.

In North America, performance improved through the year, reaching a strong organic growth of 6.8% in the fourth quarter. This sequential acceleration is particularly significant as North America remains a strategic market for the Straumann Group. This progress reflects the impact of a strengthened leadership team, sharper execution and the contribution of recent product innovations, all of which are driving more consistent performance and stronger market traction. Growth in the fourth quarter was supported by implantology, digital solutions alongside continued momentum in the DSO segment, underscoring improved operational focus and disciplined execution.

Moving to Asia Pacific. The region delivered solid underlying organic growth of around 7% for the full year, driven by strong momentum outside China, where we achieved a growth of more than 10%. Countries such as India, Japan and Southeast Asia continued to perform well, supported by challenger brands, digital workflow adoption and strengthened education activities.

In China, performance during the second half of the year was significantly impacted by a softer patient flow and distributor destocking behavior, particularly linked to the upcoming VBP process. Despite the seasonal VBP impact, we believe that the underlying fundamentals of China remain intact. With the ongoing ramp-up of our Shanghai manufacturing campus, we are strengthening local production capabilities and supply chain resilience, positioning us very well for the next VBP ramp.

Latin America once again delivered very strong performances with a high double-digit organic revenue growth of around 18% for the year, driven by Neodent, continued market expansion of our Straumann premium brand and fast adoption of our new digital equipment SIRIOS. Growth was strong both in the full year and in the fourth quarter and the region contributing 17% of the group's total organic growth.

With this, I will now hand over to Isabelle, who will take you through the financials in more detail.

Thank you, Guillaume, and good morning also from my side. It is a great pleasure to walk you through our financial highlights of 2025. Let me start on Slide 9 with how we translated our strong growth in 2025 into solid cash generation. We delivered revenues of CHF 2.6 billion, which translated into a core gross profit margin of 70.1%. This is a strong result in a year marked by elevated investments and external headwinds and driven by our productivity improvements and the favorable product mix. The strong gross profit flowed through to profitability.

As Guillaume mentioned, we achieved a core EBIT margin of 25.2%, including currency effects or 26.5% at constant 2024 exchange rates. This was driven by disciplined execution, targeted OpEx measures and operating leverage and demonstrates our ability to protect and improve margins despite FX headwinds and tariff-related pressure. At the bottom line, our core net results reached CHF 478 million, corresponding to a net margin of 18.3%, supported by the quality of earnings and effective cost management across the entire group. Importantly, the strong operating performance translated into cash. We generated a free cash flow of CHF 290 million, representing 11.1% of net revenue and influenced by tactical working capital management decisions as well as one of the highest investment years in our history. This also marks the ending of a large manufacturing investment cycle for future growth. Overall, this clearly shows that we not only delivered strong growth in 2025, but also successfully converted this growth into profitability and cash generation, fully in line with our guidance.

With this overview, let us now look at the individual line items in more detail, starting with gross profit on Slide 10. Compared to the prior year, the margin was only slightly lower with 70.1%. This development was mainly driven by 2 factors: Firstly, the impact from U.S. tariffs; and secondly, the ramp-up of production at our Shanghai campus, which weighed on margins during the year. These effects were partly offset by our strong product mix and productivity improvements across the group. Overall, the gross margin development reflects the strength of our portfolio mix and our ability to further automate our production while maintaining a high and resilient margin profile.

With this, let me now turn to Slide 11 and discuss EBIT in more detail. Foreign exchange effects had a visible impact on our profitability. While revenue growth differed by around 480 basis points between local currencies and Swiss francs, only around 130 basis points of FX impact flowed through to the EBIT line. This reflects the effectiveness of our local-for-local production strategy and the structural improvements we have implemented across our supply chain, which significantly reduced the sensitivity of margins to currency movements. In addition, cost saving and efficiency measures contributed around 120 basis points to the EBIT margin improvement. These measures were implemented across the organization and focused on operating discipline, prioritization and productivity while continuing to invest in our strategic priorities.

Overall, EBIT development shows that we were able to translate strong growth into improved profitability, even in an environment characterized by currency volatility, tariffs and cost pressure. Looking ahead, it is important to note that the ClearCorrect Smartee partnership was only announced in October and, therefore, has not yet had a meaningful impact on EBIT margin in 2025. As part of the production transition during 2026, we expect to see positive effects on margin, especially in the second half of this year.

Against this backdrop, let me now take you to the net results on Slide 12. The financial result was slightly lower compared to the prior year. This was mainly driven by the effects of currency hedging, reflecting the volatility in foreign exchange markets. Taxes were somewhat higher as a larger share of profits was generated outside of Switzerland, which is also a consequence of our local-for-local production strategy.

As in previous years, we present core results in addition to IFRS results to facilitate a like-for-like comparison. In 2025, noncore items amounted to around CHF 120 million after tax. A significant part of these noncore items related to restructuring measures, which are directly linked to strategic decisions we have taken to strengthen our operational setup. We transferred implant volumes for the Chinese market from Switzerland to our new manufacturing campus in Shanghai. And furthermore, restructuring costs were incurred in connection with the transformation of the orthodontic business. In addition, noncore items include acquisition-related amortization and special items, legal costs as well as impairments related to the planned relocation of the group's headquarters to our new campus in [indiscernible].

From here, I will move on to the cash flow and investments on Slide 13. In 2025, we generated a free cash flow of CHF 290 million. This is particularly noteworthy given the very high level of investments during the year. Capital expenditure amounted to CHF 223 million, an increase of CHF 56 million compared to the previous year, making 2025 one of the strongest investment years in the group's history. These investments were focused on clearly defined strategic priorities. They include the expansion of production capacity, most notably the ramp-up of our Shanghai manufacturing campus, Medentika and the new third production site in Curitiba as well as continued investments in innovation, digital infrastructure and operational efficiency.

Despite this elevated CapEx level, cash conversion remains solid. This reflects strong operating performance and working capital management across the group. Overall, this combination of high investments and strong free cash flow demonstrates our ability to invest for future growth while maintaining financial flexibility and balance sheet strength.

With this, I will now move to Slide 14 and the proposed dividend. Based on our strong performance and solid cash generation, the Board of Directors proposes a dividend of CHF 1 per share, which is subject to approval at this year's Annual General Meeting. This represents an increase of 5% compared to the prior year and corresponds to a core payout ratio of around 33%. This is in line with our capital allocation priorities to maintain and increase dividends with earnings.

With this, let me now briefly touch on our efforts and progress in sustainability on Slide 15. Before I turn to the details, let me briefly highlight that the annual report published today includes our sustainability report prepared in line with CSRD requirements for the first time. This reflects our commitment to transparency and regulatory alignment. In 2025, we continue to make progress across our key sustainability priorities, closely linked to our strategy and operations. As part of our long-term growth strategy, education remains a central pillar for the group. During the year, we trained more than 370,000 dental professionals worldwide with around 42% of all education activities taking place in low- and middle-income countries. This shows our continued efforts to broaden access to care and enables the adoption of modern efficient treatment approaches across regions.

On climate, we continue to move towards our net zero ambition. We further reduced our Scope 1 and 2 CO2 emissions by around 17% compared to 2021 and 98.5% of our electricity consumption now comes from renewable sources. This reflects the fact that renewable electricity is increasingly embedded as an operational standard rather than an aspiration. In addition, our local-for-local manufacturing strategy contributes not only to resilience and efficiency, but also to sustainability by reducing transportation needs and strengthening regional supply chains. Overall, sustainability at Straumann Group is closely integrated into how we operate the business and supports long-term value creation for patients, customers and society.

With this, I will now hand back to Guillaume for the strategy update and outlook.

Thank you, Isabelle. Let me now focus on our strategy update, starting with highlighting the massive market opportunity we are facing on Slide 17. First, within our total addressable market of more than CHF 20 billion, we have gained market share across key segments, increasing our total share from 12.5% to 14% within the last 12 months. While we have once again outperformed, this total addressable market still offers us a very significant opportunity to grow in the short and midterm future.

Our growth playbook has 2 major dimensions. First, we want to continue to strongly perform in our core market segments, Implants and Regenerative through innovation, digitalization and education. Secondly, we are focusing on transforming our business in key market segments to capture the huge growth opportunities. Then let me start on the left-hand side with the performed dimension. In implantology, our core segments, we are continuing to strengthen our leading position. The market size is around CHF 6.1 billion, and our market share increased to above 35%. This reflects consistent outperformance of the market driven by innovation, digital workflows and strong execution in a still underpenetrated market segment. Regenerative is closely linked to implant surgery with a market size of around CHF 1.3 billion and a market share of around 13%. This is another area where we continue to expand our positions, supported by our strong clinical heritage and portfolio breadth.

These segments represent our core strength. This is where we have strong brands, deep clinical relationships and a proven innovation pipeline. Now on the right-hand side, the focus is on transformation. In clear aligners, the market is sizable at around CHF 4.9 billion, but our market share remains below 5%. This clearly highlights the upside potential. With the ongoing large transformation of our orthodontics business, supported by our technology partners such as Smartee, we are very confident in the future of our business repositioning to grow and scale efficiently.

Secondly, digital equipment such as SIRIOS scanner and 3D printers represent another attractive segment with a market size of around CHF 1.8 billion. In this area, we have made excellent progress in 2025, achieving strong growth and a market share of above 10% now, and we see further acceleration ahead driven by a very differentiated and competitive equipment and workflows.

Finally, CAD/CAM prosthetics is a large market of around CHF 5.7 billion, where our market share is still below 5%. Here, we see an interesting opportunity to accelerate growth by disrupting workflows through chairside solutions. We are very confident that this perform and transform strategic playbook, combining our core strength together with new technologies, which are radically changing our competitiveness in key new segments, will deliver consistent short- and midterm growth opportunity.

With this, let me now turn to Slide 18 and walk you through how we execute against this playbook. Our strategy is focused around 3 strategic priorities, each addressing a specific growth engine of the group. First, we aim to expand our leadership in implantology by driving further penetration in an underpenetrated market through innovation, digitalization and education supported by our strong premium and challenger brands. Secondly, we are transforming our orthodontics business, building a stronger value proposition in a more scalable, digitally enabled model that allows us to grow efficiently and profitably together with strong partners.

Third, to unlock the market potential of digital equipment and the CAD/CAM prosthetic market, we are working to disrupt chairside prosthetics by simplifying and accelerating workflows, leveraging our SprintRay strategic partnership and our open cloud-based digital ecosystem. What connects these 3 priorities is a common execution logic. Across all of them, innovation definitely supports our value proposition differentiation. Digitalization delivers the expected efficiency and education enables adoption and opening up wider the market segments.

Let's now move to Slide 19. Before we go into the details of each pillar, let me highlight the clear principle differentiating our solutions. We are leveraging our cloud-based ecosystem to combine the best products with the best workflows to deliver practice efficiency and superior clinician experience. In today's dental market, product performance alone is no longer sufficient. Clinicians expect not only innovation at the implant or aligner level, but also complete, efficient and integrated workflows that support them from planning to treatment and case follow-up. This combination is what enables us to differentiate and consequently gain market share across segments. With this foundation in mind, let us now go into the first pillar of more detail, starting with implantology on Slide 21.

I would like to highlight once again the fact that the implantology market remains yet significantly underpenetrated, offering a vast growth potential. Spain, with its large number of surgically trained dentists and a dynamic DSO presence driving increased affordability, serves as a valuable benchmark for evaluating average implant treatment penetration. Using Spain as a reference, we see significant potential for growth in both developed markets such as Italy, France, Germany, but also especially U.S. as well as in emerging markets like India. We are very confident that market penetration will continue to rise. This development is driven by increasing patient awareness of dental implant treatments and constant growing number of surgically trained dentists who can place implants in all geographies and more affordable treatment costs.

With this context, let me now go into the first growth driver, starting with innovation on Slide 22. In implantology, innovation is the key driver to expand penetration and gain market share. In 2025, we launched iEXCEL, our next-generation implant system. Since its launch at IDS in Cologne, we have already sold more than 1 million iEXCEL implants, making this the most successful product launch in our history. IEXCEL combines unique features such as our premium surface SLActive and our Roxolid material with a simplified system architecture. One connection, one prosthetic diameter and one single surgical instrument set enabled to treat a wide range of indications with easier handling. In parallel to excellent clinical outcome, this simplicity is critical. It reduces complexity for clinicians such as inventory management, improves efficiency in daily practice and supports the adoption of more advanced treatments such as immediate loading and full-up solutions. Importantly, iEXCEL is not only driving growth within our existing customer base, it is especially a strong conversion tool, driving new customer acquisition. Premium competitors implant users on the one side, but even more importantly, it is now also a strong tool to switch clinicians using value systems.

With this, let me now turn to our leading global challenger brand, Neodent on Slide 23. Neodent continues to be a strong growth engine driven by innovation and geographical expansion. In 2025, we sold around 5 million Grand Morse implants, underlining the strong acceptance of this platform across markets. Grand Morse is a very powerful system. It combines a modern implant design with a broad indication range and is also available in ceramic materials. Neodent is now established as a leading global challenger brand and continues its dynamic expansion into new geographies and growing market share in the Challenger segment. A key milestone ahead will be the registration of Neodent in China, which we expect to be done by 2027, opening up a significant additional growth opportunity. Overall, Neodent plays a critical role in complementing our premium portfolio and driving global expansion in implantology.

Let's now turn to Slide 24. Embedded in our innovation process, digitalization is what turns products into a comprehensive and efficient customer experience. With Straumann AXS, we have built a successful open cloud-based platform that connects implantology workflow end-to-end across planning, surgery and restoration. The adoption of Straumann AXS has scaled up very rapidly. Within 18 months, the platform has grown from 0 to more than 15,000 active users, clearly demonstrating strong acceptance and relevance in daily clinical practice. What drives this adoption is the integration of complex workflow. Solutions such as co-diagnostic surgical planning and Smile in a Box are fully embedded into AXS, enabling faster, standardized and predictable implant treatments. Importantly, Straumann AXS also strengthened customer engagement. The platform drives a recurring usage and creates a continuous interactions between clinicians well beyond a single product transaction.

Let me show you a concrete example how digitalization amplifies innovation and turns it into a differentiated customer experience on Slide 25. By combining intraoral scanner, the iEXCEL implant and a specifically designed anatomic healing abutment for the digital Straumann AXS platform, we created a fully connected workflow that significantly improves efficiency and accelerates treatment, and the impact is measurable. With the Fast Molar workflow, patient treatment time can be reduced by up to 26 weeks, clinical churn time by around 50 minutes and the number of appointments can be reduced from 5 to 2, enabled by the fully integrated digital nature of the solution. Importantly, it also strengthens the economics. By accelerating treatment and standardizing workflow, we increased the pull-through of original abutments and restorative components, driving higher recurring revenue per case. For clinicians, this means higher productivity and predictable results. For patients, fewer visits and faster restoration. And for Straumann, stronger consumables growth and scalable value creation.

Moving up to Slide 26. To drive access to care, education is critical to make our solutions accessible to more clinicians and patients. In 2025, we delivered more than 10,700 education programs worldwide and trained over 370,000 dental professionals covering implantology, digital workflows and advanced indications such as pull out procedures. Education plays a critical role in increasing penetration. It enables more clinicians, particularly general practitioners to adopt implant treatments and to use digital workflow in a predictable and efficient way.

With this, let me now move to the second pillar of our playbook for growth, the transformation of our orthodontics business on Slide 28. Through the Smartee and DentalMonitoring strategic partnership announced last quarter, we are transforming our Clear Aligner value proposition and accelerating our growth capabilities. On the product side, it means the launch of a scalloped trimline option in May 2026, together with mandibular repositioning devices later in the year, allowing us to address a broader range of orthodontic indications and more complex treatment needs. Equally important is the transformation of our production setup.

As planned, EMEA and Asia Pacific aligner production is now transitioning to Smartee manufacturing, enabling constant quality, faster turnaround time and lower cost of goods. The first customer feedback on quality and service levels has been very positive so far. Together, these innovations and production capabilities are strengthening our ability to compete and our potential to scale and win market share in the Clear Aligner segment looks very promising.

Moving to Slide 29. Digitalization is also here a critical enabler to scale orthodontics and broaden access to treatment, particularly for general practitioners, which is the focused growth segment for us. Through ClearCorrect remote care powered by DentalMonitoring, we enable remote treatment monitoring. This reduces the need for in-office visits and supports a simpler and more efficient patient journey while building the confidence of general practitioners to achieve consistent quality clinical outcomes. Digital workflows also support case conversion for general practitioners, which is one of the most important aspects of market growth. Tools such as before and after simulations make treatment outcomes more tangible, helping clinicians explain cases more clearly and increasing patient acceptance.

In addition, the integration of CBCT data simplify treatment planning and enables more comprehensive diagnostics, especially for more advanced cases. This further expands the range of orthodontic treatments that can be addressed digitally by general practitioners. Overall, the digital capabilities simplify workflows, improve efficiency and create a faster and more compliant patient journey, supporting clinical success and scalable growth in orthodontics. And to ensure broad adoption of these workflows, education plays also here a critical role, which I would like to comment on Slide 30.

Lowering barriers for general practitioners is critical to accelerate adoption and enable scalable case growth. Digital workflows and advanced aligner technologies only create value if clinicians are confident in using them in daily practice. With the ClearCorrect orthodontics, we provide structure and modular education tailored to different experience levels and treatment needs. This allows clinicians to progress step by step and build clinical skills over time. In addition, we complement education with ongoing online and clinical treatment support, ensuring that clinicians are supported beyond the initial training and through to the treatment process.

With this, let me now move to the third pillar of our playbook for growth, disrupting chairside prosthetics on Slide 32. Digital equipment is an attractive and growing market in its own right and at the same time, a strategic enabler across our entire portfolio. Across implantology, orthodontics and prosthetic, there is always the same starting point. It all begins with an intraoral scan. Intraoral scanners are the entry point into our digital Straumann AXS platform. They capture the data that connects treatment workflows and platform across all segments. And this is why the intraoral scanner is strategically important for us. With our iOS portfolio, we cover the full market spectrum. We offer premium solution through our partnership with FreeShape, mid-range solutions with our SIRIOS X3 and entry solution with SIRIOS. This breadth allow us to address all customer segments and significantly expand access to digital workflows.

This strategy has delivered very strong results in 2025, and we are confident to continue this momentum in 2026. We are seeing strong market share gains in intraoral scanners, allowing us to outgrow the digital equipment market. Each scanner placed increases adoption of Straumann AXS, our open cloud-based platform. And this expands our active user base, strengthen engagement and drives recurring usage across implantology, orthodontics and prosthetic.

Let me now show you how this applies to prosthetic on Slide 33. What you see on this slide is a clear example on how we translate digital integration into speed, efficiency and recurring revenue while transforming the chairside prosthetics segment. With the Straumann Signature Midas 3D printer fully integrated into Straumann AXS, we enable automated crown design and production directly at the chairside. Clinicians can produce crowns, inlays or onlays in less than 10 minutes, significantly accelerating treatment and reducing dependency on external lab processes. This workflow is supported by our innovative chairside resin portfolio developed by our partner, SprintRay, delivered in patented capsule format. This format simplifies handling, improved consistency and ensures predictable clinical outcomes.

Importantly, this is not only about speed, it fundamentally changes the economics. For clinicians, this means faster turnaround time, higher productivity and more control. For patients, it means especially fewer appointments and same-day restoration. And for Straumann, it means recurring revenue streams embedded in the workflow and the Straumann AXS ecosystem. For us, the integration of scanning, design, production and material into one seamless workflow creates a recurring revenue model driven by ongoing resin and consumable usage linked to every printed case.

Finally, moving to Slide 35 to unlock those many opportunities and execute flawlessly on our growth playbook, the player learner culture is a key asset. We operate in a world that is increasingly volatile, uncertain and complex. In this environment, speed, agility and learning capability are decisive. At Straumann, our high-performance player-learner culture brings this all together. It encourages entrepreneurial thinking, accountability and continuous improvement, while at the same time, fostering collaboration and learning across functions and regions. This culture enables us to innovate closer to customers, take faster decisions and execute our strategy consistently across markets. And importantly, this is not an aspiration, it is measurable.

Our employee engagement score of 80 reflects the high level of commitment and energy across our organization and represents the top score amongst globally leading companies. This is a major robust competitive advantage and allows us to turn strategy into execution and execution into results.

With this, let me now turn to our outlook for 2026 on Slide 37. We entered 2026 with solid momentum, supported by our strong market position in a total addressable market of more than CHF 20 billion. While market conditions are expected to remain volatile with ongoing macroeconomic and regulatory uncertainties, we're expecting positive impact from our new key strategic initiatives, especially in the second half of the year. In China, the impact from the VBP process is expected to support growth momentum as the year progresses. And in orthodontics, the ClearCorrect transition to Smartee is advancing as planned and will contribute positively over the course of the year. With this timing effect, we are very confident in our outlook. For 2026, we expect to deliver high single-digit organic revenue growth alongside a core EBIT margin improvement of 30 to 60 basis points at constant 2025 exchange rates.

With this, we are happy to move to the Q&A session to answer your questions. As usual, we kindly ask you to limit the number of your questions to 2 in order to give other participants a chance to post their questions within the available time. Chorus Call, can we have the first question, please?

The first question comes from Doyle, Graham from UBS.

Maybe, Guillaume, just firstly, on sales phasing for the year, I know it's early in the year, it's a bit hard to fully describe it given what's going on in China. But it does look like the way EMEA and the U.S. finished that maybe those regions are a little bit more H1 weighted. So is it reasonable to think that this is a relatively balanced year in terms of group growth for organic? And then secondly, just on free cash flow, should we expect a good step-up from H1 just as some of that inventory unwinds and maybe the restructuring charges fall as well?

Yes, Graham, for the top line, we will have obviously some different effect also from a regional basis. But when you look at Asia Pacific, where China is obviously a major impact, for the time being, assumption is that VBP will take place in the second quarter. That's an assumption as there is not yet any official statement by the China authorities, but the latest information that are coming up seems to demonstrate that it will be rescheduled around this time frame. As we have a very strong comparative base in 2025 in the first half and the low in the second half, I would say 2026 is going to be the reverse of 2025.

We are going to have obviously still a weaker first half in China and Asia Pacific for the first half and a much stronger one in the second half when we look at the start of the year. When it comes to North America, we expect progress to continue, and we expect in our guidance, let's say, we have tabled a stable macro environment where we believe that our execution is going to continue to produce positive results, then that's the way we are seeing that our growth rate for 2026 will be more weighted on the second half than the first half.

Let me take your question on cash flow, Graham, a very easy answer to that. Yes. What are the big building blocks when we look at it? It's CapEx, it's net working capital and it's the noncore items we're looking at. So CapEx, as outlined earlier, we said we are coming out of one of the biggest CapEx cycles we've had in the history of the group. By end of this year, we will have doubled our capacity in terms of how many implants we can produce this year. So the last big project to be finished is our third factory in Curitiba during this year, but you can already expect a significantly lower CapEx level for 2026 compared to prior year.

Same holds for working capital. As you might recall, we did a couple of tactical decisions to increase our inventories to mitigate for the U.S. tariffs last year, and this is likely to unwind. So we will see structurally a little bit lower working capital in 2026. And last but not least, I think last year, we have seen a lot of effort we put into putting the right structures for our future growth. so namely preparing the orthodontics transition as well as enabling the China campus and making sure volumes can be produced where they are needed. And this is why we expect to see significantly lower noncore items in 2026 as well.

Next question comes from Hugo Solvet from BNP Paribas.

Just Guillaume, maybe for you on North America and the U.S. in particular. Can you help us understand the balance between volumes and price mix in Q4? And just a word on current trading. Do you continue to see that sequential improvement in the U.S. as we start 2026? And maybe on a follow-up to Graham's question on the phasing, but more on margin this time, maybe for you, Isabelle. Can you quantify how much of margin pressure should we expect in H1? I think historically, you were more 55%-45% H1, H2 EBIT weight and that was more 50-50 in 2025. So would 2025 be a better proxy? Or would it be even more skewed towards H2?

Hugo, when it comes to U.S. volume price, it has been mainly volume growth. We had some price impact, but really small. Then I would say 80% to 90% of our development came from volume and share gain. When it comes to what we start to see in Q1, we see the trend still being positive with our iEXCEL still being very appreciated and helping us to gain share. Actually, something which is important, I tried to allude that in the script, not only on premium users, but also on value system users based on the efficiency gains delivered by the digital workflow and the digital equipment. Our DSO development is also positive.

We have seen the DSO starting to reinvest on the marketing activities in order to keep then the patient flow at the same level. While it's still not very dynamic, at least we have seen a really good stability over the past month. That's why we believe that at least the beginning of the year should also see North America being able to keep delivering this kind of performance.

And regarding your question for the margin distribution, Hugo, so I think this follows a little bit the same pattern Guillaume already elaborated on for the sales phasing. Just to help you think about how the margin distribution could look like, for me, there are 3 big building blocks. On the one hand side, of course, it's the China business and the VBP. There's still a little bit of uncertainty regarding the timing. But what Guillaume already explained that last year, we had a super strong first half year in China and a little bit weaker second half of the year, this will look the other way around this year.

The second big building block definitely, the ortho transformation. As we speak, we are in the process of transferring production volumes to Smartee for the EMEA and APAC region and winding down our own production line in Germany, which, of course, means the benefit will be bigger in the second half of the year that the first, where we have transition costs and the wind-down costs included. There's still a little bit of double cost. And last but not least, which we shouldn't forget is the phasing of the tariffs. From all we know to date, the amount we expect to see is a little bit the same we had last year. But last year, it was more biased towards the second half of the year since it was only announced in April, and we didn't see a big effect in the first half. And this year, the amount will not differ significantly for the full year, but will be a little bit more biased towards the first half year since we will have a more continuous flow of tariffs from what we know today.

The next question comes from David Adlington from JPMorgan. Mr. Adlington removed his question. Let's take the next one from Susannah Ludwig from Bernstein.

I have two, please. I guess, first, could you just give a bit more color in terms of the strength of the EMEA performance in Q4 and maybe what you're seeing in Q1 so far? How sustainable are you thinking about sort of the acceleration in performance there? And then second, on prosthetics, that's a business that historically, the dental labs have controlled and dental offices have very strong relationships with their labs. So what do you see as the catalyst for sort of the disruption of that relationship? Dentists often tend to be a creature that have a bit of inertia. What do you see as sort of driving the shift to chairside? And what role will the DSOs play here?

Yes, Susannah. Then on those two questions. EMEA is obviously a very, very solid trend. We had an exceptional Q4 first, because I think we have very underlying capability to continue gaining share, and we are leveraging all the innovation that we have at our fingertips. And I think the EMEA team is doing very well on all the different franchises, and this has to be highlighted. I think in premium, in challenger, also digital and orthodontics is really driving then the very solid performance. Now -- the fourth quarter has been also boosted by some January '26 price increase announcement that has been done, and we know that there have been some also high digital equipment orders that have boosted performance. And I would say we have always said that the EMEA regular high performance is going to be between high single digit to low double digit.

And I think this is what we expect to see also in 2026. And it will be balanced between the different quarters, saying that potentially the first quarter will be a little bit lower based on the strong finish. But all in all, it's going to be just a balance in all the different quarters that will still see us delivering strong contribution of EMEA with regard to our total 2026.

When it comes to prosthetics, you have a very good point that the lab relationship with the dental practitioner is very strong. And why do we believe that such chairside 3D printed crown can have some disruption capabilities in the future for one very good reason, we believe, is patient expectation. If you can say to a patient that you are going to solve his decay or his crown issue in one appointment, there will be a lot of benefits on the patient side and obviously, a lot also on the clinician side because it will save significant number of appointments.

Will it be a fast disruption? No, because we all know that dentistry is rather conservative. But as soon as practitioner will have experienced this same-day dentistry being able to gain significant efficiency in posterior crown restoration like this, we do believe that the share of the business will not go to the lab anymore. Obviously, DSO will be able to push those workflow because of the efficiency and profitability gain that they can generate. But it will be all across the market based on the significant appointment savings that could be generated. Then to be seen step by step, but I think all the elements are here now to be able to allow the same-day dentistry that will, I personally think, going to take significant share in the future.

The next question comes from David Adlington from JPMorgan.

Yes, just -- I may have missed it, sorry if you addressed it. But just in terms of your margin guidance, just wondering if I could check what you're assuming in terms of savings from Smartee or whether you're looking to reinvest those? And then secondly, again, I think you may have touched this and I just missed it, but in terms of the tariff impact in the second half, I just wondered if you could quantify that and how you see that evolving through 2026?

Sure to take that. So I think -- I mean, margin guidance for Smartee. So David, I think what we explained a little bit before, we have a very clear plan how we want to turn the orthodontics business profitable over the next 2 years. And I think the first big step will be this year really working on our COGS position, working on our profitability position by transferring the big production volumes we have in EMEA and in APAC to Smartee. But how will this look like? So on the one hand side, we're currently closing down our own production site in Germany to be finished by end of Q1. So you will potentially still have the COGS in Q1, but then at the same time, transfer to Smartee at a much lower cost per liner than we had before internally. And this will ramp up over Q2, so we can see the full effect in Q3 and in Q4.

And then I think in addition to that, obviously, we expect to see a little bit higher growth rates for the ortho business as well, being a positive impact to the margin in the second half because we are planning, as Guillaume said, to launch the scalloped shape trimline during Q2, which will substantially complement our portfolio. And this is why we will, for sure, already see a step-up in terms of margin in the first half, but the bigger impact we would see in the second half of the year once the cost for our own production is out and Smartee is fully ramped up for those 2 regions.

And then for tariffs, I think to give you an indication, we expect the total amount from all we know today, so assuming tariffs will stay where they are to be at a similar level as 2025, where we saw a total hit of around about CHF 20 million in our P&L in the COGS line. We expect that number to be pretty similar, maybe a little bit higher in 2026. But saying this, it was very biased towards the second half of the year in 2025, especially in July when we did all the shipments, but then in the second half of the year when we had the high tariffs, whereas in this year, you can rather think about it as distributed half and half, so half in the first half of the year, half in the second half of the year.

Next question comes from Hassan Al-Wakeel from Barclays.

I have two, please. So [indiscernible] up on the margin guidance and why this isn't higher given your commentary on Smartee halving the loss, [indiscernible] loss in '26? And is the guidance is that of the uncertainty that you still see in China? Or is there anything else to highlight in terms of the margin building blocks? And then secondly, on China, is the second half realistic? And what do you have in your guidance from the potential continuation of destocking beyond this quarter and the [indiscernible] can also ask what the margin headwind that you're baking China VBP in 2026?

We are going to try to answer, but you have been breaking up on your questions. And let me try to summarize your questions and try to answer that, and you will let us know if this is in line. First question is, what are the different building blocks we are seeing on our margin. I think as Isabelle explained and what we discussed already quite a lot is, on the one side, we have that negative impact of tariffs. That will be almost the same, a little bit more than potentially 2025, but that will be then having an effect more in the first year -- in the first half than the second half because of the fact that it has been, in 2025, impacting our second half mainly.

The second side that we said is about Smartee, where as our manufacturing now is for Asia Pacific and EMEA translating to Smartee, we will see the effect over the year starting from March because we are going to finally close our German plant, as just Isabelle said, there in the end of the first quarter. and something also to express on Smartee, there are 2 effects for our margin. The first one is the immediate COGS effect that will be obviously direct. And the second one will be the operational leverage that will come over the next 18 months, where we really are expecting significant growth that will help us to drive then significantly improvement in profitability as well with regard to all our SG&A costs that are going to be absorbed in a much higher way with the double-digit growth that we're expecting and that we are seeing at this point.

But we are having also additional elements in our building blocks that we are counting and that are going to have positive effect on our profitability. The first one is obviously the manufacturing of the Shanghai campus, where we are allowing to have all our China volume being manufactured at a lower COGS that have been obviously planned in our guidance. We have also another one, which is in part looking at the growth of our digital equipment, where we are transitioning some significant part of our volume from third-party products to our own SIRIOS intraoral scanners, meaning that we can also benefit from a higher profitability.

And last but not least, we are continuing to do operational leverage in the overall organization, thanks to the growth that we are delivering. Then that's where our improvement from a profitability standpoint is coming from many parts that are allowing us to be pretty confident about delivering then the improvement that we have been presenting.

To the second side, I think if I understood well, you were talking about or you were asking about what is baked in our guidance somewhat with the current VBP being in Q2 and the destocking -- potentially further destocking of distributor. What we believe is that the destocking of the distributor is going to be less important than the second half of 2025 because they are -- it seems from our information in between 1.5 to 1.8 months of stock right now than at a pretty minimum level to operate.

Then while it's going to be still slow from a patient standpoint, we don't believe that the destocking will be massive anymore. Now obviously, we are going to be still against a very strong comparison base. What you have to remember is our first half in China has been in the 20-plus percent growth. And we are going obviously to see much more than the weak market than what we have seen in the first half. Then it's much more this challenging comparison base that are going to provide, I would say, China still in the negative territories from our perspective that will strongly be reversed for the second half. Then we have baked more or less this dynamic in our guidance for our high single-digit growth for 2026.

The next question comes from Daniel Jelovcan from ZKB.

The first one is also on Clear Aligners. Can you elaborate a bit on the geographical growth? It was probably double digit in all areas, but I'm not sure, that's why I'm asking. First question.

Yes. Daniel, Clear Aligner has been very dynamic, and we had double digit in 2025 again. Significantly in Latin America and EMEA, rather flattish in the North America, which we expect this to change with a better consumer sentiment. And we have been, since the partnership with Smartee, also seeing some interesting uptick in Asia Pacific and especially in the 2 markets where I think we will be able to drive interesting volume in the future, which are Japan and Australia. And that's why we are pretty confident to get on track with our Clear Aligner also operational leverage in the future, looking at the current growth trend that we're having on this business segment.

Okay. Great. And the second -- last question is the development in Spain. As you elaborated, you mentioned a lot in the past, DSO is pushing penetration up because of the low price and so on. I would wonder if you can add a bit more details. So what implants do the Spanish use? I mean, is it Neodent or is it premium or both? I'm talking about the DSOs. And also when you look at your penetration chart, is the DSOs, you see evidence that the DSOs are also pushing growth in other underpenetrated countries. I mean, have in mind the DSOs are not allowed in Germany, for instance, or maybe there is a change coming up. So yes, that's the question.

Yes. Spain has been a very good example on how DSO has grown the market through opening up a segment of patients that was not thinking that they could afford implant treatment. And with rather aggressive marketing activities, presenting, of course, implant treatment at a lower level, but especially pushing the patients to go through the door to get presented with the diagnostic, actually, it's a question of spending prioritization. Then if you do an implant, then you might not buy the latest, I don't know, computer or iPhone or whatever. And that's a little bit what we have seen for countries where most of the oral care or dental care are full copayment by the patient, which is the case in Spain.

Then this has been one of the significant effect DSOs have had on those patient group that was not going to a dentist anymore, but are suddenly going to DSO because they feel that it's actually more affordable than they were thinking about. Then those DSOs are mainly using challenger brands and our Neodent system, but some are still using premium as well, especially because of the efficiency driven by the digital workflow that are not fully yet available on the challenger brands. We are expecting this to continue developing in other geographies. And one of the good reasons why we have also seen China developing so strongly after VBPs has been because DSOs have been able to invest and scale clinician education and also doing investments in equipment to be able to place more implants.

Then DSOs are a very strong partner for us for continuing to open the market and expand the market in most geographies because they are also the ones that are investing in technology that are allowing efficiency and then potentially more affordable pricing, that's what we see the future. And that's one of the reasons also why we are working in co-creation with a lot of DSOs to develop specific solutions that are adapted to the strategy they would like to pursue.

That's great. And also congrats for this achievement in '25 in these challenging times.

The next question comes from Julien Ouaddour from Bank of America.

I have only one. But I just want to understand the level of maybe [indiscernible] conservatism that you have in the margin guide this year. Just to explain myself. So I mean, usually in a given year, you have some operating leverage that you expect to grow high single digits. You should have some -- I think you mentioned strong growth in EMEA, like North America also probably improving, which should help you on the mix side. In the call, you mentioned digital and Shanghai production to be a tailwind as well. So it seems the swing factors are the savings from ClearCorrect and like the VBP. Have you changed your expectation in terms of the VBP? I think in the past, Isabelle said China is expected to have roughly a flat margin.

So is there, I mean, any different assumptions in the guidance? And in terms of savings, do you still expect the losses from ClearCorrect to have in '26, which should clearly give you a nice boost. So just trying to understand really the 30 to 60 bps of margin expansion. It's pretty -- I mean, it's pretty good already, but I wanted to check if there is any level of prudence there.

I can start with answering. Again, on the ClearCorrect, as we expressed, it has been a large transformation we started in August. And honestly, we are really pleased on where we are right now. We have made a very strong progress being able to connect manufacturing for 2 major regions with no hiccup, having really strong already feedback from customers from turnaround time, from quality levels and still using, again, all the ClearCorrect specific technology.

That means we are using all our ClearCorrect portal. We are using all our specific ClearCorrect material. We are having still a very clear differentiated branding by leveraging the technology of Smartee. From a manufacturing standpoint, we are well on track, being able to -- we have started to transfer this manufacturing, meaning that with operational leverage, the plan that we have for end of 2027 to be breakeven of ClearCorrect should be really achieved. At least for the time being, we are pretty positive about this midterm perspective that we have.

Then looking at regions like North America doing better and being able to deliver the stronger growth than the 4% we had in 2025 and backing for higher growth rate for 2026 will also deliver then higher profitability, thanks to the higher pricing that we have there versus the other regions. Solid EMEA will also contribute well that we can generate operational leverage from those geographies. Then I think we already expressed manufacturing in China, the fact that we have our digital equipment that are going to be more in-house than third party and the fact that we are also going to have the latest for us high CapEx year because we have been investing a lot into profitability -- into capacity, sorry, in the past years. I think it is making us, yes, I would say, confident about our capability to deliver higher gross margin and higher EBIT moving forward in 2026, but also having a profile keeping improving over 2027, which is really something that we are looking at from a midterm standpoint.

The next question comes from Julien Dormois from Jefferies.

I have two. The first one relates to the iOS business. I think you have mentioned during your presentation that you have experienced significant share gains, obviously, related to the comprehensiveness of your portfolio. So I was wondering whether you could help us size this market on a global basis and whether your current market share is maybe above or below the 10% you have highlighted for the broader digital equipment market. So just to understand where you sit on that side. And what do you think could be a realistic target for Straumann maybe by the end of the decade or in the next 5 to 10 years? That would be quite interesting.

And the second one is very much a housekeeping question, and sorry if I missed that, but it's probably more for Isabelle. But at the current FX rates, I'm just curious whether it is fair to assume more than 500 basis points of adverse impact on top line and maybe a new round of headwinds to margin, probably to the tune of 150 bps if I compare to the 130 bps you had in 2025.

Yes, I will. I think -- thanks for the question, Julien. It's not so easy to assess the real full market total value of iOS. But if we look at what we call modern technology that our iOS and 3D printer, that's where we are assessing this market to be a bit shy of CHF 2 billion. And when we see our development, we are seeing, yes, our shares being double digit now. We have been, I would say, more on the 5% to 6%. We think that we have significantly increased this, this year, thanks to this new technology coming from our AlliedStar acquisition that we have made in September 2023. And we believe that this is going to continue to grow as together with our FreeShape partner, we are on the sweet spot to be able to deliver a really advanced technology with FreeShape for surgeons and orthodontists that really want to leverage the latest technology also in terms of diagnostic and having advanced capabilities.

But as we are now entering a lot into the GP segment with orthodontics, but also implant treatments and now prosthetics, very often, they like a good technology that does not need to have all the latest one at a more affordable price. And what we have seen in this market penetration, we are now in the middle of the S curve, and we are well positioning to take a fair share of the volume of our intraoral scanner in the next 3 years. And we see that significant growth in the next 3 years. Afterwards, we expect the total market penetration to move from -- it is around 35% to, I would say, 35% globally today. It will double in the next 3 years from my perspective because we are having the sweet spot in terms of quality to price ratio on digital equipment. And this is where we believe strong growth will still be achieved on our side. This being said, I want to express once again the fact that we consider intraoral scanner as an enabler.

What we want to do is really connect as many clinicians as possible into our open cloud-based AXS platform, where clinicians have then the efficiency, the access to consumables and solutions that are really creating a difference in their practice. That's where they can go to the Fast Molar workflow from Straumann, they can go to the clear aligner, then ClearCorrect solutions. They can go to the SprintRay. And every new technology that will come will be able to be connected through that AXS platform, meaning that we will be open to any innovation in-house or externally, thanks to that customer base connected with our intraoral scanner and that ecosystem. That's really the strategy that we have been pursuing and that we are very pleased into the progress of it right now. Isabelle, do you want to comment on the...

The FX impact, yes. Julien, you didn't miss it. I think you're actually the first one to ask it, which I think is a little surprising. But I think -- I mean, FX impact, as you all know, I mean, we're operating in a very volatile environment. And I think you gave a very good range already when you said that. So from what we currently see and looking at -- basically looking at what we say we are doing at January spot rates, we are looking at a very similar impact we had last year once again. But having said this, to give a clear guidance at this point in time is very difficult. Because in January alone, we saw movement of over 50 bps up and down just by the volatility of the U.S. dollar. So I think for the time being, if you look at a very similar impact to what we had last year. So to remind you, in terms of top line, 480 bps; in terms of bottom line, 130 bps for the time being, the estimation is not too wrong. And we will keep you updated as the year evolves given of what the currencies will do throughout the course of the year.

Next question comes from Richard Felton from Goldman Sachs.

Just two questions for me, please, both on orthodontics. So the first one, on the product side, like how important are some of the product innovations that you've referenced in your presentation? And for instance, the scalloped trim products, how important is that in filling a gap in your portfolio? And what percentage of cases are you now able to address?

And then secondly, also on orthodontics, are there any changes to your commercial organization that you are making? Just trying to get a sense of what is driving the acceleration in liners that you expect over the next couple of years.

Yes. Thanks a lot for the question on orthodontics. And yes, I think happy to be able to explain this. When we are commercializing ClearCorrect, we had a significant differentiation, which is a specific high trimline, which is helping to place a little bit more force to the teeth in order to move them a bit faster and to do some different movements. This is something which has been appreciated by some clinicians, but a lot of others are used to scalloped trimline, which is what has been proposed by most of the players in the market. Then when we have been willing to switch some of the GPs that were using a lot of competitor products, they were asking us to have also the scalloped trimline option because they are so used to this that they don't want to change any of their protocols or their experience so far by moving to ClearCorrect.

Then it has been a pretty strong obstacle to some of the switches that we were wanting to do because of asking the clinicians to change the way they were treating patients. And obviously, then a lot of the clinicians like to continue doing what they are used to and what they are confident with. And it's a very different way of manufacturing product. We have also to look at how to redefine protocols with a different trimline. And that's why for us, it's also a major addition to our portfolio because we will be able to offer those different trimline capabilities, either the high or low trimline that are existing to ClearCorrect and the additional scalloped auction that will be also a lot of wishes by a lot of general practitioners that we have been meeting over time.

The second aspect on the commercialization side and what we have done is we have also to generate operational leverage decided to focus on the key growth market. And what we are doing is making sure that our customer experience, clinician support and commercial go-to-market investments are going to be done in the 14 major countries where we are seeing actually those double-digit growth. And as much as we are seeing growth, we will then continue doing specific go-to-market investments in order to support growth as we are seeing it happening.

The next question comes from Sibylle Bischofberger from Vontobel.

I have only two questions left. First of all, the gap between the reported EBIT and the core EBIT was quite strong in 2025. Could you give us a hint how will be the delta between your reported and core in 2026? And secondly, CapEx will clearly come down, as you said, only Curitiba 3 will be spent. And then in 2027, it will be even lower. Could you tell us how much it will be in 2026 and what to expect for '27?

Yes. No, happy to take those two questions. I think this is what we discussed a little bit as influencing factors to our free cash flow performance already, right? So just to remind you, 2025, we had a lot of extraordinary impacts in there. So we provided quite some detail in our annual report what they were. And I think it wouldn't be too wrong to assume that everything regarding restructuring when it comes to the ortho business, when it comes to the transfer of our factory from Villeret to Shanghai is something that will not occur again this year. Although having said this, of course, costs related to M&A and so on will remain. So if you look at those categories, we provide quite a lot of detail. I think it's a fair assumption to say that 2026 will be a little bit more of the same as in previous years, but not in 2025, where we did all of those projects I just talked through.

And then I think CapEx, I think it's important to understand that in the last 4 years, we invested over CHF 1 billion into our manufacturing capacity. Having said this, with the finishing Curitiba 3, we will have doubled our capacity for implants. And this means for the rest of the cycle, we will step down significantly in terms of CapEx intensity, so meaning CapEx over revenues. So you can already expect the first step down more towards the level of 2024, 2023, a mix of that in this year with the Curitiba finishing and then a further step down in 2027.

The last question for today's call comes from Falko Friedrichs from Deutsche Bank.

My first question is whether you expect China to see similar sales declines in H1 as it was in the fourth quarter? And my second question is, do you foresee a return to high single-digit growth in North America in 2026?

Sorry, the first one. Could you say again the first one on China, Falko, please?

Do you expect the first half of 2026 to see similar sales declines in China compared to what you saw in the fourth quarter?

First half. No, not to the same extent. We don't think so because we believe that some of the destocking has already happened on the distributor side. But again, it will still be then quite lower than 2025 first half because of the fact that the growth was very significant. But we don't feel we will see the same trough that we have seen in Q4 than 2025. And when it comes to North America, we are not doing specific guidance per region, but I think we expect in between the high end of mid-single-digit growth to high single-digit growth being potentially possible, depending on what will be also the macro around there.

But it's -- if we see the labor -- the latest news about the labor market that was rather positive. The inflation that has been just been presented at 2.4% and being also on the right side, that could help, of course, adding a little bit additional pressure on the Fed lowering their interest rate. We believe that we can have a rather positive development of the macro situation in North America that could support then a really good outcome for North America. It's still too early to say to see consumer confidence, but I think there are options for having a healthy growth for North America in 2026.

Well, thank you for joining us today and for your continued interest in the Straumann Group. We look forward to seeing you again soon, and we wish you a nice day and a warm goodbye from Basel.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.

Well, good morning and a very warm welcome to all of you to Straumann Group Capital Markets Day 2025. After a fantastic day yesterday in [ Vile ] where we visited the production site, it's a pleasure to have you all here. Four years ago, at the last Capital Markets Day, we were all on our own up here. So thank you very much for coming from very far away and to be with us for the whole day. Some housekeeping, take note of the disclaimer. We will record this session and we'll make it available on the website, obviously, once all is done. We have a fantastic agenda for you that you have seen, it's all about perform and transform. And I don't want to steal the thunder. So I leave all more details to my colleagues speaking afterwards. During the break, you will see outside, we have some [indiscernible], some small kiosks where you can see the products and the solutions that we have. These people will also be available at the end of the session after the Q&A during the [ flying launch ]. So these people will be there to show your hands on also what we'll talk about.

But with no further due, I will now hand over to Guillaume Daniellot, our CEO. I think he's even more excited to talk to you than I am.

Thank you, Marcel, and good morning from my side as well. Good to see everyone here. Thanks for being with us physically as well at everyone, which is also attend online. Then we are really excited to have the opportunity to share with you, of course, our perspective, our vision and our ambitions for the next strategic period 2026, 2030.

And for starting, I would like just to echo the patient movie that we have just seen, which is really the symbol of the purpose of our organization that we have set in 2021. Unlocking the potential of people's lives, this is really what we do every day in partnership with dental professionals. This is really critical for all of us because that's also why we are getting up in the morning. You have seen the patient of the people in the factory yesterday that you would see that in all our different organizations, that's the way also we are creating those smile movements that are financing, the Let Them Shine program that you have seen. And this is a very central part of who we are as an organization.

How are we unlocking the potential of people's life. Besides doing all those philanthropic activities is obviously delivering the best product to dental professionals, the best educations and by being the most innovative, customer-focused and digitally powered oral care organization in the world, that's the bold ambition we had set for ourselves in 2021. And back then, we have really defined clearly how we would like to move forward.

Then the previous Capital Market Day 4 years ago have really set the scene. We have clearly presented our bold ambition of having a double-digit growth CAGR over the 2021, 2030 period and being able to touch, transform more than 10 million smiles annually by 2030. We have set also our clear strategic compass to define how we are going to do this from a strategic standpoint than it was 4 major strategic dimensions, product dimension on the perform side, that was implant and orthodontic, 2 strategic customer dimension on the right side for the transform that was especially the winning target group's -- strategic target group that have been DSOs and developing consumer presence. That was very important at that time and enabled by 2 strategic then aspect of our, let's say, strategy that was, on the 1 side, double down on our culture in a sustainable manner and also, of course, starting a digital transformation that was very important in our eyes to be at the edge of the transformation of dentistry that we were starting to see then happening.

We have also doubled down and reconfirm our core belief. You know that our high-performance culture of [indiscernible] is central to what we do. This is what is about the customer focus that we have been talking before. Everything we do is really related to customer needs, developing that intimacy with customers to make sure we are doing meaningful innovation, being able to anticipate the trends, and that's why we have our culture about entrepreneurship, being able to take calculated risk and delivering on expectations. But doing that as a team, which is the [ we dimension ] and of course, supporting every [ individual in ] our organization to grow because better people in our organization are making better teams that are making better results.

Then this was the scene that we have done. And when we arrived in 2025, we said it's the right moment midpoint in between 2021 and 2030 to assess how we have done and if we are on the right path and how we are going to continue to develop. And that's what we have done during 2025, and that's what we're going to present to you today. If we look at the pure financial performance, then we are very pleased with what we have achieved, 16.2% CAGR between 2021 and 2024 in net revenue that translate in 9% CAGR in Swiss francs. And we see already some significant impact in the Swiss francs at the FX rate.

And from an EBIT standpoint, 18.5% CAGR for -- from CHF 591 million to CHF 983 million, which is, I think, 32.4% at -- then the fixed FX rate from 2021. The 30.6% is coming from the DrSmile restated P&L. You know that we have then divested DrSmile in 2024. Then this is the restated EBIT than profitability that we have done in 2021. This translates in a 3.2% CAGR from an EBIT margin progress, really demonstrating once again here the very strong FX impact that we're having in -- when we are then translating everything in Swiss francs, which is one of the aspects that we are obviously working on to be able to mitigate a part of this moving forward.

But all in all, we are ahead of our plan when it comes to top line growth and when it comes to EBIT margin development. Now when we look at how we have done from a strategic dimension standpoint, which is how have we delivered those results. Then we have really defined a very clear strategy for us, which has been very, very important that it cascaded very well in all the different sites and subsidiaries to have consistency in delivering on those strategic dimensions.

The first one is on the cultural side and while we have been growing significantly in terms of team members for reaching around 12,000 team members in 2025, our engagement score kept improving. We were 77 in 2021. We even moved up to 82 engagement score, which is placing our organization among the top organization in terms of corporate culture engagement and which is very, very important in our eyes because this is supporting our capability to execute in a very fast manner, but especially our capability to be agile with regard to a very volatile environment. We have been able to deliver 6.7 million smiles already, then we are ahead of plan as well, especially by a strong volume of implants sold that have been also very much ahead of what we have been planning.

When it comes to the top left quadrant, which is the implant side, very strong performance. We grew our market share from 29% to 35% on the implant segment, especially leveraging on the one side, the innovation capability of our organization but also leveraging a lot of multi-branding strategy, multibrand, multi pricing from a geographical expansion standpoint.

Looking at winning the strategic target group, you know that we have done a lot on the DSO side. We developed specific DSO team worldwide, we develop a specific way to address them, specific customized value proposition to be really a business partner, much more than an implant provider. And we have also here delivered double-digit CAGR over the period on the DSO segment, which is one of the significant growth driver also for us as an organization.

Finally, one of the aspect that has also been very strong in 2021, 2025 almost is this digital transformation. We have invested significantly in digital transformation because we believe that the digital aspect of dentistry is going to lead a significant way to select product, to use product in the future. And then we have significantly increased our intraoral scanner base with more than 50,000 scanners at the moment, still growing significantly. And especially, we have been able to develop and now make available to the market our Straumann cloud-based access platform, which is going to orchestrate the entire Straumann ecosystem that we are going to see later.

Then one of the aspects that we have been then behind our plan has been the clear line of development, where we are still having a 5% or a bit less than the 5% market share, especially because we have been investing and believing in 2021 into direct-to-consumer business model, where we have invested in DrSmile in May 2020, working very well until then the big period of significant inflation after the Ukraine invasion by Russia, making it then very challenging for a lot of consumer to well, I would say, acquire or buy those kind of aesthetic treatments. And we have seen that very quickly past 2022 that this business model is not going to be sustainable from a profitable standpoint, and that it needed to be in different hands that are having a clinical network and physical network to be able to perform. That's one of the reasons that we decided then to divest Dr. Smile to [ the Impress Group ] that we have done mid-2024. And this is one of the way where our total critical mass in clear aligner decrease as our direct-to-consumer, we have a significant part of it.

Then while we have been growing very well on the B2B side, I think we were expecting to be from a clear standpoint at a bigger part of our total top line. But obviously, the B2B is still a very interesting segment, and we are going to see how we are going to cut back here and being able to perform also to get those elements in green as well at the end of the period. Then all in all, you see a very strong development positioning us very well for '26, 2030 as we have a lot of strength that we can build on and a lot of area where we are already starting to transform to make sure that we can still develop very significant growth moving forward.

Starting from this strong base where we can see that while we have been delivering on almost all of our strategic intent, what was really important for us was also to reflag about what are the trends around us that we need to take into consideration and use them, obviously, as a tailwind instead of taking them as a constraint. Then when we have done that analysis with customers, with internal teams, we have defined 4 major trends that are impacting our environment and that are impacting our business and industry as well. There are 2 news that were not there in 2021, 2 that are accelerating and that we are going to continue to anticipate.

First one is we have all seen about what's happening around us. We are really moving from globalization to a much more fragmented world and fragmented environment. There is a lot of policies by major countries to try to restrain market access. We have seen that with lately the new Trump administration placing a lot of tariffs for a lot of import goods but we have seen that also in China, as an example, VBP is a way to restrict market access, also potentially in the next VBP 2.0 to favor local manufactured product. We see that also in different countries that are intending to do that potentially that we have heard. They are those kind of discussions that are happening in India also in Saudi, then meaning that we have a lot of areas where we need to be prepared to a very different way to do business when it comes to supply chain. The good news for us is that we have already anticipated this and you will see we have a manufacturing network, which is going to help us to be very resilient with regard to this new state of the world when it comes to then the fragmentation.

Another very important shift that we have seen, it's a shift in the competitive landscape. We have been used to have then the regular competitors that are mainly coming from Europe or North America. And we see a lot of competitors coming from Southeast Asia now and China. If you take, for example, an implant, we have seen Koreans are very strong competitors for the past years. But we have seen in the regenerative business, for example, Chinese companies being now very strong going against the leader of this segment. Intraoral scanning, we see major technologies that are coming from China that are very, very successful and that we are leveraging actually one of them by having anticipated this move. We see also in clear aligner, very strong competition coming from China as well. Then we need to be prepared to have very different competitive landscape moving forward and being able to embrace this as an opportunity instead of looking that only as a major risk offering.

We have also seen some 2 very important trends that are accelerating. And actually, that we are pushing further as well because we do believe digitalization is a very strong opportunity of differentiation. We have seen a lot of then the digitalization of equipment. We have seen a lot of software coming into dental, but this does not always been easy to use. With the introduction of AI now, which while it has been a buzz word, there is very clear application now of AI in dentistry, which is changing significantly processes, workflow and driving efficiency and profitability in the -- space. Being able to be ahead or leveraging this to differentiate and bring more value to clinicians and practice is going to be critical in the next period.

Last but not least, consolidation in dentistry continuing. We are seeing the dental service organization grabbing more share of the care delivery market. They are representing now when it comes at least to the implant side or in dentistry in general, around 30% of total dentistry and we see that everywhere. We have been talking about DSOs a lot in North America, but it's exactly the same in China. It's exactly the same now moving significantly in Europe and Latin America in the same. Then in all our regions, we can leverage all the processes and the value propositions we have already started to develop because those DSOs are really supporting significant also transformation of dentistry.

Why do we appreciate this consolidation is that DSOs are a key partner for opening the market. They are really also here to make sure that they are driving patient flow. They are investing in advertising for high-end treatment, and it happens that as implant and orthodontic are the most profitable treatment in dentistry, they are pushing also for those treatments versus the more classic, I would say, than tooth restoration or prevention. Then DSO is our partner of growth for us as an organization, and it's still a very important segment that we need to continue to lead.

And besides the trend in DSO consolidation, we also see dental laboratories consolidation as a response to this DSO consolidation as those large network of clinic are looking for consolidating their prosthetic work, and we see a lot of labs now getting together, and we'll see also the same trends in the lab space. Those are the very important trends that we are taking into consideration for setting up our 2026, 2030 strategy. And we have also additional trends but that are very specific than to dentistry that are going to be on this one, very significant tailwind.

We know them. They are the 1 -- the trends that are very traditional to our market, but are really from diamond -- that are the ones that are pushing our market to grow. That's why we know that in the next strategic period, we are all -- we are going to continue to benefit from the aging of the population. We see that everywhere. I think it's pretty explain and talk everywhere about the aging population of China, aging population of Japan, same a lot into then Europe, actually Germany, Switzerland, very significantly trend of population aging, with people wanting to get a really good quality of life and then having -- placing tooth replacement as one of their priorities in terms of spending discretionary income.

Something which is also important that we have heard a couple of times is that yes, but with hygiene improving, then maybe as [ DK ] will go down, then indication for tooth replacement will decrease. Actually, we see more and more implant [ indication ] coming from other incidence disease like diabetics. Diabetics is leading to periodontal disease, which is leading [indiscernible] to tooth loss. And that's why we are seeing significantly that tooth loss incident is not going down significantly, but because of also different reasons. There is higher awareness, and I think through all the information and, of course, Internet and so on, patients are seeking for what are the alternative for treatment.

It's pretty known that implant is gold standard and also that orthodontics could be done differently than brace and brackets, then patients are also asking for those high-end treatment, which is also supporting then the segment in which we are.

Rising affordability is also a trend we have seen. That's why emerging markets are really growing faster. We have more than this being trend, but we have also more patients capable of affording dental treatment, especially because not only middle class have been expanding but we have seen all sort of price of implant has been also decreasing in many geographies.

And finally, patients are asking for faster time treatment, more aesthetic because of that social pressure. I won't mention all social media and so on, but image is still something very important, more and more important in all the different than cultures and part of the world, which is also driving significantly opportunity for us moving forward. Then you see we are in a really interesting industry as -- when we look at the fundamentals, it will remain for quite the long period moving forward. And then this is where we are going also to base our capability to continue to grow.

The second aspect behind those fundamentals are also the fact that is also the fact that we are in very underpenetrated market segments. We said that many times, but we have been talking about implant for quite some time, but implants, when you look at the market, whatever the geographies, there is 220 million patients per year who can afford an implant treatment and that have missing teeth. And it happens that only 17 million are doing a treatment on a yearly basis. Then there is a very important reservoir moving forward about patients that will have the possibility to pay a treatment and will be able to undergoing this implant or orthodontic treatment as well. We will see it's the same. There are more than 600 million, for example, of patients with then the crowded teeth in the GP segment.

And when we look at the total ortho stats per year, which is 20 million, then only 5 million are done with clear aligners, then not only there is a lot of underpenetrated treatment on the orthodontic cases. There is also a lot of them that are still done with braces and brackets, at least on the adult side, that could be switched to clear aligner. And here, the market potential is also very significant.

And the third segment in which we are, which is digital dentistry. You have seen certainly that there are 2 million dentists out there, more or less, and everyone is going to work with intraoral scanners in the future and digital workflow. We assess that the market penetration is between, well, 35% or at least anywhere between 30% to 40% of intraoral scanner have been purchased by 1 practice. But tomorrow with the technology and a price level, we are going to see 1 iOS per chair. Then the potential of intraoral scanner in the next 5 years is massive. Meaning that, again, here, we can really benefit not only from the secular trends that we have seen in dentistry but by really very significantly underpenetrated segment, in which we are having a very strong value proposition to propose.

Then all in all, if we would like to look at numbers from an addressable market, we have somewhere between a [ 20 billion ] addressable market across all segments. And I would say on this side, this is all our core segments in which we have been acting in. The implant segment, you see here CHF 6 billion from a total value standpoint, 35% market share as of today. And we plan a mid-single-digit growth for the market between '26 and 2030.

And regenerative, which is really connected to surgery of [ natal ] implant, CHF 700 million with 15% market share and same middle single-digit growth. This is where we have our core strength. This is where we are bringing a lot of our innovation capability where we differentiate very significantly, where we have a lot of very strong connections with all clinicians with very strong brands, Straumann on one side, Neodent on the challenger side, completed by Anthogyr and Medentika, then very strong capability to keep growing this business on our side in still a very underpenetrated market.

On the right side, we have 3 segments in which we are in for quite some time where we have limited market penetration. The clear aligner side with a little bit less than CHF 5 billion market. We have around 3% market share here. And we believe still that it will be a low double digit in '26, 2030 when macro will be a little bit better. And this is really a segment where we do believe we have then the strong opportunity moving forward through significant transformation.

Digital equipment, especially IOS as I explained a little bit before, 5% market share, a little bit more now, significant growth on our side. It will be also double-digit growth in the next period. And we are going to see also we have a very new value proposition to bring, very new technology, which is going to allow us to accelerate our development.

And finally, CADCAM prosthetics, a very significant market, CHF 5.6 billion. We have less than 5% mid-single-digit growth over the period, and we are also bringing here a new technology with a strong partnership we have [indiscernible], but also leveraging the investment we have done on our digital transformation.

Then you see 2 different aspects when we look at our addressable market. On the left side, strong capabilities, strong market share, further development coming based on all the very strong development pipeline we have. On the right side, historically low market share in very interesting markets. But where for each of them, we have a new technology to propose. We are transforming our clear aligner with that partnership with [ Smartee and Florian ] will talk about this, which is going to change completely our competitive situation.

IOS, very strong also value proposition, which is new, just starting our [indiscernible] has been launched a couple of weeks ago, very strong new competitive situation and value proposition for us. And CADCAM prosthetic with a very new technology as well with at the beginning of disrupting potentially this workflow. Then you see that a lot of movement will come also from the right side, where there has been historically 1 space where we have been small progress, we are going to do then a very strong acceleration on those ones that will complement our core competencies.

Now we are 2 additional strong assets that we are going to build on moving forward. First, a well-balanced revenue across all regions. Now a very strong, of course, historical presence in EMEA with 40% of our total top line, 1/3 almost in North America with 28%, very strong development in the past 5 years in Asia Pacific with 23%. And this very significant presence in Latin America, very high market share, thanks to the Neodent brand in Latin America, representing a little bit less than 10% for our total top line. And we are able to benefit to all the different, of course, growth or dynamic growth in any of the specific region when it's coming, and it's also allowing us to have more resilience when we have a part of the regions which is not working very well or facing more macro challenges.

And I think mirroring this, we have also set up a very diverse and resilient supply chain than the network and especially manufacturing network with -- as you see here, we have manufacturing sites all across the planet, but especially more importantly, when it comes to our core business on implants. We have 1 important manufacturing site in and over in North America. Obviously, 1 central very important site in Villeret that we have visited yesterday in Switzerland, and we have just opened our [ Shanghai ] manufacturing site in -- than China that will also manufacture then Straumann Green and [indiscernible] of our challenging brand, then we have really the capability to be resilient when it comes to any potential supply chain disruption. And as we see then the volatile environment, this is also a very strong asset for us to rely on for the next period.

Exciting addressable market, strong assets to play with, then we are very confident to have a strong than '26, 2030 period. And we have also [ define ] very clearly the playbook with which we want to grow during this next strategic period. Three major then strategic dimensions for our '26, 2030 playbook. First one is expanding implant leadership, playing with our core capability to double down on the innovation and a very strong brand that we have on core segment. We are transforming our orthodontic franchise very different way of then delivering our value proposition, very strengthen -- significantly strengthened value proposition in that orthodontic franchise that will allow us to be very competitive, focusing especially on the GP DSO segment, and disrupting the [ chairside ] prosthetic.

Thanks to digitalization and all the capability to have very affordable imaging capturing devices, AI than the automated design and now 3D printing technology, which is arriving [ in all ] practices that can deliver now final crowns with new resin technology, which is just the beginning, but we'll have the capability to do one of the dream of clinicians has been doing a crown in 1 hour. And this is what we see coming in dentistry, and we want to be part of it.

At the end, we have a very strong vision and a very strong belief that market share gain will come from the very powerful combination of innovation and digitalization, product innovation and digital innovation. And the combination of both will create significant competitive advantage. To go a little bit more deeper into this is the innovation side is what is driving product excellence. This is what we are very strong at. This is our core competencies for decades with expanding indications, driving improved clinical outcomes, driving confidence within clinicians, even for pushing boundaries in indications and being able to simplify treatments in trying to reduce as much as possible all the different inventories while being able to enlarge indication.

At the same time, now clinicians are really asking for having accelerated treatment because patients want, well, a smaller time to teeth or shorter time to teeth, they want to have less appointment, which is creating, of course, profitability and efficiency in the [indiscernible] practice side. And as we have talked about DSOs, they are looking for standardization and driving scalability in their large network because they're having a lot of dentists that sometimes are doing surgeries or they're doing implant treatment of orthodontics in a different manner. Then being able to standardize and drive scale, thanks to digital technology is also one of the very important request in the market moving forward on which we have invested.

How do we translate this. I think we will see product innovation, which is something which is very important, but we have invested very significantly on the digital transformation side, as we expressed, I think, 4 years ago in order to digitalize the end-to-end treatment journey of a patient. That's what we call then the platform technology being able to link together all the different aspects of dentistry. And this is the Straumann Access platform that Thomas will present you in more detail after which and why cloud-based platform is critical in the period to come.

Because what we have seen before and what we had before the current period is we had a lot of digital tools, lot of digital equipment, CBCT scanners, intraoral scanners. But you have software being done but by different companies, then you have consumables like implant, orthodontics done by again, different companies and you have some software as well for monitoring treatment or doing clinical reviews that are [indiscernible] from other companies.

Then what was the challenge is that connectivity has been always a [ mess ] or challenging because you need to use like we transfer to upload some very heavy data file like [ Dicom ] data file. You have not software that are connected. You need to go in different websites, you have different logging, different passwords. At the end, we had digitalization that was like a huge potential opportunity but has never been transformed because of the cumbersome way to work with all those tools.

And the big, big differentiation now is that a platform, cloud-based platform is bringing all of this together. And it's making then you will see data exchange, easier collaboration, better. And at the end, when you have a digital experience, which is really positive, then you will be, of course, loyal to it. You will be sticking to it. And I don't know how many of you are using Amazon, obviously, but it's the -- we are used to say, Amazon is not in the distribution business.

They are in the 1 click business. They are in the customer frictionless business where you have in 1 click, you have all your data anywhere available. And then you go there because you know it's going to be easy, fast and convenient. And we do believe that in the future, the selection of the consumables at the end of the process will be driven a lot by the workflow to which to get there. And that's why, of course, it's really critical strategically speaking, to drive clinicians to the workflow of their choice, but that are going to deliver the value that they are looking forward and of course, being able to deliver and support them with the consumables that are coming from our side, meaning influence, meaning prosthetics, meaning clear aligners.

How do we make money with that platform? There has been a lot of, of course, investment from our side. Then we make money with, of course, selling digital equipment. That's why it was very important for us to have solutions, which is going to allow us to have a very competitive value proposition because the more you sell scanners, the more you have the capability to connect a lot of users on your platform. Then we have the opportunity, and we have already more than 50,000 users that could be connected to that platform, and we have all the open technology scanners that could connect. But a way to, of course, monetize those investments is also to have the opportunity to sell a lot of those intraoral scanner moving forward.

They are the software subscription fees because now we have our software solutions that are going to be on the cloud platform, where the clinicians can opt in, opt out as they want. It's not going to be the major revenue stream of this digital transformation because obviously, our goal on our side and the major revenue and strategic reason why we are doing this is obviously selling more implants, selling more prosthetics and more aligners. And then this is the way we monetize then this digital investment is obviously driving still significant growth and market share on the key segment in which we are in, and of course, leveraging all the digital technologies like IOS that we have been acquiring in 2023.

Then this is the new part of our organization, leveraging very strongly our deep expertise in product innovation. And we are going still to come up, you will see with Andreas with new surface, with new materials, with new design, and this is not stopping, but we are adding the digital competencies in order to ensure that we can multiply our results of innovation through the digital and the digitalization and the clinician experience, which is going to drive future choices.

Then at the end, what we're expecting from all of this, we have seen strong culture. This is a very strong differentiation with our high performance culture that we have been building up and still doubling down. Innovation from the product side, I as said, continuing strong innovation flow that were going to come in all the different segments. Digitalization, which is now kicking in as we have done those investments, the platform has just been released at the beginning of this year at IDS for EMEA. It was a little bit earlier in North America -- the starting point of transforming that clinical experience by connecting everything together.

Clinical evidence is really still for us, our trademark. This is who we are also when it comes to product. We are here to unlock the quality of people's life to unlock their confidence also because clinicians have a very strong confidence in our solutions, backed up by all the clinical evidence that we are doing from clinical research publications, which is a strong differentiation with some of our competitors.

And finally, a big asset beside our -- then the supply chain and manufacturing network is also the brands that we're having, recognized brands that are driving confidence that are seen as very reliable. That's why we are very proud of those Swiss rooted Straumann green quality of implants, but also obviously, Neodent being now a global brand recognized worldwide, which is also a very strong then asset for us moving forward. This is why we are confident that our ambition for 2030 is being able to deliver over the period a 10% CAGR average for revenue growth and being able to grow profitability by 40 to 50 basis point core EBIT margin per annum on average as well at 2026 at constant FX rate during the '26, 2030 period.

And I would say this is where we are, and this is our ambition where we want to be with a very differentiated and value proposition and a lot of new competitive capabilities in the segment in which we have not been strong so far and obviously doubling down on the core business in where we are going to gain shares. And for illustrating all of this and being able to give much more detail on each of those segments and those new competitive value proposition, we are going to have our teams that are going to detail a lot of this for you.

And as next in order to finalize the big picture on the digital transformation, then I will ask Thomas to present you more of the digital transformation.

So thank you, Guillaume. And good morning also from my side. I'm trying to do something which I did for 20 years. I show you what I did while you hopefully, as a user of our products, don't see it. So step in the back with the digital transformation we are bringing and picking up on what Guillaume said and thinking about why are we transforming the experience, especially the digital experience that our customers are having is when we talk to them, the feedback is more and more. It's not only the product but also especially this digital experience that is driving why they are consuming our products and how they can treat patients very good.

The core principles that we follow are essentially driven by simplicity, so take the hassle out of the treatment because what we are looking for is an improved quality of care, is a faster treatment and is an increased efficiency while you achieve that faster treatment, everybody involved in the process once that Guillaume said it as a patient, I want to be at the end of my treatment more quickly. I want my restoration done with less visits to the practice, for example. For the practice, they want to achieve that because [ share time ] is essentially what they earn money with. So if they have patients for a shorter time in the chairs, they get the time to actually treat more patients and grow their business. And for us, as a company, this is important since well, if they treat more patients and provide access to excellent care, then we sell more of our products in the end.

So this is what we are after, and this has been driving the principles under which we have been developing the cloud-based Straumann access platform so far to make treatment, especially digital treatment simple. We have co-created this with customers. So we even apply AI in that context. We have hundreds of hours of [indiscernible] interviews that we analyze for what are the problems that people actually have and if you talk to them, then they will often say, take the hassle out of it. I don't want to fiddle and fidget with stuff during the treatment. It needs to step out and solve all the complexity that I, as a dental professional, don't really care about dealing with.

So when you want to turn digital treatment -- well, dental treatment digital, first of all, remember the workflow that the patient journey that Guillaume showed you. So from the acquisition of the data that tells you the situation of the patient, through diagnosis and engagement, getting their decision to actually go for the treatment through developing a plan how you're going to deliver the outcome to actually performing the surgery. And then in the end, looking at a larger scale at what you did so this question of how do you even measure whether clinical outcome is good or up to standard. This entire journey needs digitization. There is a lot of data that is generated in that context, and it's growing like in every other area of life, but that data somehow needs to come to the people who actually deal with it. So connectivity, storage, data handling is a topic.

Security and compliance to regulation is a very strong concern. We talk to the information security offices of organizations that get questions from regulators, hey, you actually deploy a lot of scanners. How do you make sure that the data that is stored on these devices stay safe that it doesn't leak to the outside. It is getting deleted when it's not needed anymore. We invested a lot of effort into building traits into the platform to make that management very easy for the adopters of the technology. We see an extremely strong impact of AI into the automation of the treatment steps. I will have some examples in that context. Data in its raw form often is not even usable. You need to make sense of the data in that context and we see AI. We have also invested very early into the development. For us, a lot of the basic problems that you have in the digital treatment are solved in the meantime.

And then finally, simplicity as a design criteria has to do also with the user interfaces that you deal with as a customer. So how can you come to this mobile-like experience that we see today, where in the end, treatment delivery, treatment planning, collaboration with others becomes a one-click affair. And then I think one of the things that is very dear to our heart is openness in the platform. You see a lot of closed ecosystems out there.

And then if you keep an ecosystem closed, you don't actually manage to collaborate with others to bring partners to invite them to allow customers to do whatever they choose to do in their practice to automate and digitize this entire treatment workflow and we see a strong pickup also of customers using the open interfaces of the platform to integrate better into what they have chosen to adopt in the past already, which is a strong driver for customers to decide for a certain ecosystem to join and to stay with that ecosystem in the end.

Going forward or going through the entire steps of the journey. Every treatment essentially starts with data capture. So you need to know and the systems that you are later on going to use and the collaborators that you are working with needs the data for input. We have 2 major modalities that we use in the industry. One is X-ray-based, CBCT. So the traditional thing that revolves around your head, you probably have experienced yourself in a practice. This is very much standardized. The data exchange formats are known and it's relatively easy to integrate them. What we find extremely interesting for treatment going forward because in order to restore the dental situation, you need to understand the geometry and you need to get the data into the system. There was a lot of hassle that is an adoption burden to actually using intraoral scanners in the past.

So you needed to be actually very handy to do the scan right. And then you had the data sitting in the device and you were fiddling around with USB key, for example, to change to others. And what we have invested in the past is to reach a state where the handling of the devices has become so easy that our customers even describe them as life-changing experience in the meantime. So they say, picking up the device, just going for the scan without an elaborate scans strategy is so easy to generate the data and the systems being automatically connected to the cloud infrastructure makes it so easy to bring the data into the environment that we think this will drive adoption of the digital equipment going forward and consequently also the foundation for the digital workflows happening later on.

We actually see customers who incentivize even their hygienist to scan every patient when they come into the practice because they see that as a library of what the teeth look like and see that as a basis for all the treatments they can provide to the customers later on. So like I said in the beginning, data in its raw form often is more burden than something useful. The next step is you need to understand what is actually in the data. So if you have an image, this is just pixels, first of all, but what is [ tooth ], what is [ bone ], what is [indiscernible]. That's the question that you need to solve and clear before you can go on in a treatment.

So combining the data that you get from the CBCTs and the surface scan that you get from inside the mouth is one of the first tasks that the clinicians need to go through or technicians need to go through in order to prepare for further treatment and we apply AI to do the segmentation, to do the alignment to do the fusion between the data. We have processed millions of cases in the meantime. And we reach a level where in the high 90% digits, the automatic alignment and segmentation of data is accepted without human interaction. That's why we say, actually, this data preparation is done and forms a basis, a digital trend of the patient in the system that you can then use along the rest of the treatment.

Now when you have digitized your patient, the next step in the treatment is to engage with them. So you know what you roughly want to do, you need to replace a tooth, for example, you want an orthodontic treatment, but it's still the decision of the patient to go with the treatment that you propose to them. And for that, we work with Smilecloud, for example, integrated into the platform. So data automatically flows into the environment. And you can show as a clinician to the patient what the outcome will look like, what you proposed to them. And if you imagine that as a patient saying, yes to something that you don't know what it would look like is significantly harder than when somebody shows you in your own face.

And in the meantime, we can even do that in video. So you could imagine yourself what you look like after treatment with the system showing the difference from before treatment and after treatment. So as a patient, I would absolutely prefer to see that. But as a clinician, I have just created a problem for myself because how do I make sure that I actually will also arrive at what I promised to the patient. I gave them a promise. And this is what you see on the right side.

If you have the digital twin of the patient showing them something and visualizing something that is linked to the data set in the back that gives you the entire insight into the 3D situation, you can see the limits where you can move it tooth, for example, within the jaw. You can show how the geometry will look like. You can look at the details of wall thicknesses of material that you are bringing in and see the limits of what you can achieve. So with that integration and only through the integration of the data, you can make sure that you will be able to deliver on the promise that you're giving the patient when you show them this is what you could look like after the treatment. And again, something that wouldn't be possible if we hadn't taken the hassle out of getting the data into the systems, understanding the data and providing it in a way that it can be used for the further treatment steps.

Now logically, the next thing you need to do is you need to come to the plan to the actual treatment plan. And there are some treatments that are rather simple. But the more complex the treatment goes. So if you replace a full arch of teeth, for example, then you need to understand very well how you will do the surgery in the end in order to come out with the right outcome. And we built on 25 years of history on dental implant planning or surgical planning with customers planning hundreds of thousands of cases every year in coDiagnostiX, our system, for surgical planning, you see the digital twin of the patient being integrated into the system and functionality that is used thousands of times every week in the meantime, the system understands the data, and it has become hassle-free to project what the actual procedure will look like.

So customers can virtually extract the teeth, see what the socket will look like, and already have an understanding for how will the implant sit in that socket during the procedure, taking away the surprises that they might encounter in that context. Early studies have shown us more than 60% of time savings in preparing the data through AI to that case. And like I said in the beginning, also in this case, understanding the dental structures is accepted by the human users in a high 90% times of cases as well as the integration into the platform now allows customers to collaborate with AI agents and human experts who are planning. So we have data in a digital environment in which the AI can act on their data to understand it and help humans plan how they will execute the procedures that deliver on the patient outcome. This gains efficiency. This gains confidence and ensures better clinical outcomes, actually, if you are going into a surgery with a clear plan instead of not having that clear plan, obviously.

Now taking the connectivity of the systems into account and trying to make sure that you deliver excellent clinical outcome requires the data to also be usable at the situation where you are in the actual surgery. So we ask ourselves how can you augment clinicians and probably also the clinicians who aren't as experienced as expert implantologists to perform excellent implant surgery, and the industry's answer to that is guidance through the procedure. So much like a GPS system in the car. You want to know where you are during the surgery and ideally, the system to tell you what to do next in order to place the implant exactly like you have planned it.

Again, to deliver on that patient experience and what the platform allows us in this situation is we can generate static [ guides, drill guides ] that you put on the remaining teeth or that you fix to the jaw in order to guide you during the implant surgery but we see the adoption rising of systems that provide dynamic navigation so that use computer vision to understand where the tools and instruments are in comparison to the dental situation that was planned beforehand and follow exactly the implantation plan to perform the surgery according to the outcome you want to generate.

What we need in that situation obviously is again having digital data in that environment. And if you think about it in the past, again, you have been dealing with a USB key that you needed to bring to that system, how did you get to a fitting 3D print of that guide you needed in the mouth of the patient in the end. The platform now provides you the flexibility to deliver the plan automatically through the connected device so planners who have been maybe supporting you from a lab or even Straumann employees who have been supporting you can provide the plan, you select it on the device and you start the procedure, that is what digital transformation changes in the workflow when you come to the treatment step.

And then finally, I mentioned it, the question or how do you answer the question whether you actually perform according to standard. This is also an interesting question for us. How do the devices that we provide to our customers that they used to treat patients, how do they perform. So [ is their ] implant loss or in which situations do you have implant loss. And for that, as the last step as an example, we created what we call the implant registry, which allows customers to very easily with a very simple scan of the packaging of the device, and it's not only our products, it's thousands of products on the market, to enter it into a system. We built the largest registry of its kind. In the meantime, more than 90,000 patients and their outcome and their long-term outcome also are registered in the platform.

And with that, what you can do is go quantitative. So analyze the clinical outcome of what you are performing, analyze how you are performing according or against the expectation for the type of treatment that you are delivering. And all this in a very simple way, get the traceability, what you did get insights into the process quality of what you're delivering, and we can even start to normalize against the patient cohort that you are treating. So Guillaume has been speaking about an aging population. There is a difference if you treat the 30-year-old who had a mountain biking accident and broke their tooth versus the 90-year-old with a lot of comorbidities, for example. We see customers in the meantime, applying the process, looking at their clinician performance, looking at, are there systemic signals of where they need, for example, additional training in order to improve the clinical outcome that their entire population of clinicians can reach.

And with that, we also believe to provide better care and provide the insights to again improve on the process quality that our customers are providing to patients. I mean, in the end, wouldn't you also want to go to a dentist where you know somebody has been systematically looking into how are they clinically performing. So you get an almost assured almost guaranteed good outcome in the end.

So these are examples. I wanted to show you, we see -- we will see a lot more examples in the following hours with products being connected to the infrastructure, and how they make sense in the individual treatment steps to, again, drive simplicity, which drives time for our customers to treat more patients and thereby consuming the products we are providing and that customers have come to love so much.

So my takeaways are a little bit summarizing what Guillaume also introduced. The equipment and products we are providing to customers are going to drive the -- or bring the major revenue streams. We provide subscription, software and services on behalf of our customers that generate an additional recurring revenue stream. We drive efficiency gains through simplification, through automation or steps in the treatment journey that patients go through in their practices. This can generate up to 50% of free -- time. We have seen customers driving down from 20 patient visits during a very complex treatment down to almost half of it only. This translates again into higher equipment and product consumption.

The integration of a digital portfolio with the leading product portfolio that we bring to the market in implantology, we believe, is a strong argument for adoption. So customers are rarely deciding on just a software system, but usually, they want the digital experience to surround the product that they are using to treat patients. And it attracts new customers to the platform since the ease of use of the workflows actually is an argument to buy into it and start from the treatment journey that they have established already and go into additional fields. And what we absolutely see is a very strong adoption of AI use cases. So where we saw 2 years ago, maybe 2/3 of treatments were not AI-powered. In the meantime, more than 2/3 of treatments are AI powered in the hundreds of thousands of cases we see every year.

With that, I want to close and hand over to Andreas, who will talk about the physical products who are embedded in the [indiscernible] journey.

Thanks a lot, Thomas. [ Your applause ]. Thanks a lot, Thomas. Always a pleasure to listen to you and to what you envision and brought to life. Welcome also from my side here to everybody in Basel and to the people out there in the screens. My name is Andreas Utz. I'm leading the implant business unit in Guillaume's executive management team, and it's my pleasure to lead you through the chapter of expanding our implant market leadership. And I think I can start saying that we feel very confident about this chapter and about the dynamic growth we are going to generate over the next 5 years to come.

So if we speak about implant dentistry, I really would like to start with you in the very beginning. And this is what Guillaume already teased a little bit is it's about the penetration and the potential that this market is still owning to everybody, not only to the Straumann Group, but to everybody in this industry. We know from data that we have 220 million patients actually every year. This is incidents, not prevalence. This is incidence, 220 million patients every year that are potential implant patients and only 16 million out of those patients today receive an implant actually. So that's around about 7% to 8% of the potential patients.

So the penetration is still very, very low. It's very different in different geographies. We see in Europe as an example, penetration is around 15%, North America, probably 10% to 12% and some developing geographies, it's probably lower. And we see that this penetration, it's not a static number at all. It's developing. That penetration is growing every year. It's growing this year as well. And there are reasons for this penetration to grow.

So first of all, and it's been there already as patient awareness. So patient awareness is really increasing. And with this, the awareness of implant treatments and patients are seeking for implant treatments, then as well, patients are looking for aesthetic treatments and for fast treatments. And implant industry became much better and also having an answer for those desires of having fast and flawless and quick treatments for the patient's problem, also gearing patients more to implant treatments. Then provider base. We see that the provider base is still somewhat a limitation, and we see the provider base growing. So if there are more providers offering them implants, we also know that there will be more implants will be placed.

And then we also know that one of the customer groups, and I think this is very important. This is the DSOs, the big clinic network. Guillaume alluded on it already. They are focusing on big ticket and very profitable treatment and implant dentistry is very clearly one of the most profitable treatments in the industry. So these DSOs are focusing on implant industry. And with this also, they are driving the penetration actively in many geographies that they are very active and are helping us to penetrate this market even stronger. And I would also mention the financial means that are driving it. We see a raising middle class in developing countries, but we also see the increase of financial means, availability of financial means in many developing countries.

So this is a very healthy state to be in the penetration, still low penetration is growing, and we also know how to influence the penetration. So it's a very strong market to be in, and we don't see an end of the growth of these markets for the next years or decades to come.

Now let's look a little bit into our position and how we developed over the last recent years in implant industry in a bit more detail. So what you can see on the left-hand side is that we actually outgrew the competition by the [ factor 2 ] over the last 4 years. So we gained significant market share. You see that our market share was growing from 29% in 2021 to 35% in 2024, and the development is still continuing. So we saw a very strong trajectory of all our implant brands. We were outgrowing the market big time by the premium brand, but also our value brands were growing above average in the market. And still, there is a lot of room for us to grow. There's a massive opportunity still for us to continue to gain share in this market, as you can see.

On the right-hand side, what you see is that this is the subsegments, I would say, of implant industry, in the premium segment. Today, we own round about 53% to 55% market share when 2021. This was around about, I'd say, 47%. And in the value business, we made strong progress, especially based on geographic expansion and the strong portfolio of brands we're having. Today, we look at 18% to 20% that we are owning of this market where this was in 2021, it was only 13%. So a very strong trend line that we see in this and continuing to grow.

Now looking ahead, we also know what it takes to continue growing. And we know the playbook, what it needs to continue to grow. And I would like to structure my presentation in the next 25 minutes in 4 chapters that are, let's say, talking to this playbook. So first of all, growing market share and growing above competition and the market growth, we know that innovation is really the name of the game. And innovation is 2 things. It's product innovation, and I come to this, and it's digitization, and it's also about how to connect both because this is, I think, this is where the magic and the acceleration happens if we connect both of this. Then we know education is a very, very strong lever to success.

And this is why we are investing very intentionally in education, and I will also tell you why we do this and how we do this in this chapter. And then geographic expansion, geographic expansion has been a key driver of our growth and our success for all of our brands. Most importantly, I would say, for our value brands where we saw very strong geographic expansion over the last 5 and 10 years, I'd say.

So let's start with the topic of product innovation. And I think we can say with confidence that we developed ourselves to be the innovation leader in this industry. Very clearly, we brought a very strong track record of innovations to the market over the last 20 years, over the last 10 years, but also over the last 5 years. And we are not innovating for the sake of innovation and for the sake of bringing new products to the market. We are innovating for impact. And by impact, I mean, delivering better clinical outcomes, pushing clinical boundaries and by that, innovating to expand the market, but also innovating to increase, let's say, user friendliness as an example and create efficiency for the clinicians.

And we know [ as elective ] has been probably one of our star innovations that is still unparalleled today. It has changed actually the way we look at the implant dentistry today and what is possible today, I come to this. But also BLT, when we launched a bone level [ taped ] implant, and we launched the BLX implant, they have been super important innovations for us and have been super important for us, growing our customer base and with this also growing our market share.

And I think as a result, what you can see is that today for the Straumann premium brand, that we speak about now, 64% of the revenue we are doing today with the Straumann premium brand we do with products that did not exist 10 years ago. So this is why you can -- where you can see how important innovation is to drive a healthy growth and sustainable growth and differentiation, I would say, for the Straumann premium brand. And you see on the right-hand side, we have a lot of ideas how to carry this innovation and differentiation forward and how to fuel the health of the Straumann premium brand.

So if you look a little bit in the growth potential of our Straumann Premium brand, 1 lens that we can truly look into is actually the lens of the different implant types or product segments. What do I mean by this? So there are actually 3 different and you are certainly aware, 3 different implant types available in the market. If we look on the [ parallel walled ] implants, this is really the market we are owning. This is our heritage as a Straumann premium brand, and we have a very strong position there, and there is no one that challenges us in this position. Then the [ epical taped segment ] is actually the biggest segment. And with the introduction of the [ bone level tapered ] implant around about 2014, 2015.

We were starting capturing market share, and you can see that we have built a very significant market share in that segment. And then the fully tapered segment, I would say this is the fastest-growing segment here on the chart. This is where with the BLX or BLX has been such a key to unlock the potential for us in this segment. And we built, I would say, a solid presence there, but we still see a lot of room to grow. So if we combine those 2 segments, the fully tapered and apically table segment, we would have around about 40% of market share in the premium segment. And we feel very confident to grow the significantly this market share with the BLX with the iEXCEL system that I speak later to, this will be key to unlock this. And imagine, we add another 10% of market share, which is absolutely realistic. This would add another CHF 200 million of revenue to us every year.

But what has been driving really the key driver of, let's say, premium differentiation, fueling our customer base [ with is the growth ] and also the market share gains has been, I would say, 3 premium technologies that are still driving the growth of the Straumann premium brand today. All of those innovations, I think it's very important to mention, all of those innovations, they are proprietary. They are unique and they are all backed by a significant body of scientific evidence. It's -- from our perspective, there's no point in launching new surfaces, materials and implant designs when you cannot prove the performance of those technologies. We really want to prove the performance of those technologies, and we did so, especially with Roxolid and [indiscernible] but also with iEXCEL.

So Roxolid. Roxolid is a high-strength implant material. If you have a high strength implant material, you can design smaller diameter implants, shorter implants that have a much better performance or the same performance than bigger implants of another system. And if you have smaller and shorter implants with such a performance, you can use those for patients that have, let's say, a certain indication, and you can spare this patient as an example, an augmentation procedure. Now an augmentation procedure for our patient, it's painful. It's complex, it's costly, and it takes a lot of time. So it's nothing that a patient is really looking forward to have.

So if we can reduce the invasiveness, we are not only, let's say, having a strong value proposition to our clinicians, and they have to their patients, but we're also expanding actually the market because we can treat more patients that actually are not shying away from an implant but they shy away from an augmentation procedure. And this is really where Roxolid is pushing clinical boundaries.

At [ SLActive ], our unique hydrophilic surface, is a technology that is still unparalleled in this market and is also pushing clinical boundaries. How SLActive is delivering faster healing, so the implant is also integrating faster, which is critical in the immediacy cases that today are the trend. Patients want fast time to teeth. If you want to have fast time to teeth, you want to have an implant that is healing fast. Additionally, as SLActive is pushing boundaries also in very demanding case, as you imagine, diabetes patients, imagine smoker patients. All of those patients or cancer patients, all of those patients, 15 years ago, they have been contraindications or relative contraindications to implant dentistry.

Today, people using SLActive can treat those patients with confidence, and this is how we push clinical boundaries and SLActive comes with a body of evidence supported by more than 1,000 publications.

And then there iEXCEL. What iEXCEL does is really iEXCEL is delivering to all of the clinician and lab technicians out there the largest variety of implant types that we have ever seen in 1 system. What I mean by this? It offers you an apically tapered implant, a BLC fully tapered implant, the BLX and you get both on bone level and you get [indiscernible] level, which is the [ TSC and TLX. ] Now this is offering you great flexibility and treatment flexibility. And usually, if you as a clinician would like to have this treatment flexibility with those types of implants, you would usually need 3 to 4 systems in your practice, 3 to 4 systems with different connections with different surgical kits, adding a lot of complexity to you, to your team, to your lab technician, a lot of [ stop key stock ] keeping that you need to do for auxiliaries and prosthetic components and a lot more.

And with iEXCEL, we do all of this with 1 surgical kit that you only need, and we do it with 1 restorative connection. So with this, we reduced tremendously the amount of auxiliaries you need, the amount of prosthetics you need and the surgical kits reducing also the complexity a lot for the surgical teams and for the practice teams out there.

But there is more. iEXCEL is also -- it's the first implant that has been designed really specifically for the use and the application of the Roxolid material. Before, we apply Roxolid actually to existing diameters. With iEXCEL, we really push the boundaries. We now, as an example, have a 3.75 millimeter implant for all the indications that you can reduce invasiveness. And we have a very strong, let's say, 4-millimeter short implant as an example that you can use in very atrophied situations in the lower -- which is very unique and is offering an extremely valuable solution for those type of cases, again, pushing clinical boundaries.

The feedback on iEXCEL and on the concept and the combination of Roxolid and SLActive has been outstanding. We see extremely strong growth of iEXCEL in our customer base, but also outside our customer base. Only this year, we have already sold more than 1 million iEXCEL implants. The customer feedback has been amazing. And I think what we are very proud of and it's very important also to drive our growth and market share gains, 20% of iEXCEL users that we see today are actually users that we have converted from competition to the Straumann premium brand.

But enough of me, let's listen to 1 of our customers or 2 of our customers that's, Grant, our Executive Vice President for North America is interviewed on the success of the iEXCEL system.

[Presentation]

What was the biggest challenges you faced before using the iEXCEL platform? Maybe you'd be willing to share a little bit with us.

Before iEXCEL, the biggest limitation was the complexity and the consistency across the different systems, different connections, different [ proponents ]. There were too many parts and pieces. This sometimes increases the risk of confusion, especially when it comes to the margin of the [indiscernible] what's spanning, final impressions and depending on the implant type that was being used. And the last thing [indiscernible] large cases that is also resolved. It's basically that with process connection in the [indiscernible] buttons, we have type A, type B. So it was kind of confusing. Now we don't have this problem anymore. So I think these were challenges that we were facing before iEXCEL.

And also, I guess, what made the iEXCEL systems stand out as compared to some of the other solutions that you kind of used in the past before.

I will have the workflows because now I can from the patient perspective, I can communicate much better and use all the software to show the smile design before I even perform it, [ plan for diagnostics, ] place my implants with the guided surgery to the [indiscernible] Most important the workflow, whether I do a single, if I do [indiscernible] I can put my customized [indiscernible], which is ultimate [indiscernible] the business [indiscernible] my opinion, which the patient can feel well. And I can also take the implant impression [ to scan the patient ]. So [indiscernible] I can go from multiple, multiple visits and the lengthy way of trying to approximate the flaps and [indiscernible] placements simplified to visit [indiscernible]

This all comes down [indiscernible] satisfaction with the [indiscernible] and most important profitability because, yes, the Straumann system is the most expensive system. But you save money in the end because the workflow is such, but you reduce the number of visits. And hence, you increase your profitability. So the upfront [ investment placing yes, ] the implant that cost more than what the competitors [indiscernible] is not such an investment because you will save money by using the whole workflow, reduce the number of visits and increase the [ patient instruction and is profitability ]

Exactly. And also don't forget also that more options that we have, like why [indiscernible] implants, new tissue level designs. We didn't have any this level since the classic regular black-and-white -- implants. [indiscernible] offer the flexibility to visit protocol as well, especially for procedure restorations, new [indiscernible] design. We have more options now. We can design, we can select the [ height ], so we can customize it. And of course, more flexibility during the surgery as well as the new [indiscernible] system with [indiscernible]. So basically, I would say, simple words, simplicity, versatility and flexibility. These are all many advantages that we have now at iEXCEL.

And I will add efficiency because you would reduce the treatment [indiscernible] and the treatment time. That's what brings profitability [indiscernible] whether you are a business owner like me or if you're an associate, you save time and time, and time translates money to the dental business. .

So I really, really appreciate you sharing that perspective. And I think that's definitely some compelling arguments that you've shared.

So thank you, Grant. Thank you or partners and [ Constantinos ], very -- it's impossible for me to spell the last names of the both. But as you can see, 2 very different profiles of customers and 2 very different feedbacks, but very strong feedback. And both of them, we have converted those customers in the course of the BLX launch that we did over the last years. And you see that the iEXCEL is a very strong platform. Remember, we have -- I introduced this 2024. We are expanding the launch as we speak. And it's a very strong platform for growth for us for the next 3 to 4 years to come. And we have a full pipeline of innovation that strengthens and further differentiates the system over the next 2 to 3 years.

But we, of course, have also a very, very strong pipeline in place, I can say, for the mid and the long term where we're working, as an example, our new implant designs. We are working on future new surface technology, and we are working on a serious of disrupting workflow innovations that will also help us differentiate. I think [ Panos ] has summarized this very well. It's not about the initial cost of an implant. It's about how the long-term performance of this implant is combined with the profitability delivers you in your treatment. And I think that's a very strong statement.

So let's continue along this [ slide workflows ]. You have heard this now a lot, and I would like to bring you a very tangible example and move into my second chapter, which is digitization. So let's embark on a mind experiment weekly. Imagine for a second, you are a dentist and you own a dental practice. And you have this patient coming in your door that needs a replacement of a posterior single tooth, posterior single tooth. For you in your practice, if you are like others, this would be bread and butter because we know 2/3 of the implant restorations are single tooth and half of your patients, half of your implant patients would be [indiscernible] tooth.

Now to the patient, this is not visible to friends and family. So aesthetics is not so much a need, but it's efficiency, it's speed and it's experience that is a need for you and for the patient.

Now the question is, how can we help you to treat this bread and butter case that is 50% of your implant cases in the most efficient way. And I would like to introduce you a little innovation that combined with the digital ecosystem made a huge difference and actually Panos mentioned it, I think [ he said game changer ]. And this is actually the Anatomic Healing Abutment. The Anatomic Healing Abutment as such is actually a small little smart innovation that is combining -- what you can see here, it's actually combining a healing abutment, a conventional healing abutment and the scanbody, and it's combining both functionalities. But the product as such is actually not doing a game changer.

It would just be another scan body. But now connecting this product to Straumann access and to all of the workflows is really changing the game. And what we want to do by this is really to deliver product innovation because we believe 50% of the success is product innovation in the future that we are committed to deliver and 50% of the success will be also about driving the experience of the users. And if we combine all of this, this is how your treatment of your patient could look like. So, so far, you treated these patients in a conventional way, so you saw the patient coming in.

The first surgery, you really extracted the tooth and you place some biomaterial to preserve the socket. Then you let the site heal. And after a couple of weeks, you would reopen, you would do a second surgery, you would place the implant and you place a closure screw. Then in a third visit, you would remove the closure screw, you would place a healing abutment and you would again send a patient back home, third visit. In the visit number 4, patients will come back, you have to remove the healing abutment, you have to place the scan body, you scan, you have to remove the scanbody again, placed the healing abutment back in and you send the patient home.

The scan, you send probably via WhatsApp or via [ we transfer ], you send to your lab that is then working on the restoration. And then visit number 5, you would deliver the final crown and the whole process could take up to 3 to 4 weeks for a patient to have the final tool.

Now if we apply Straumann access and our little help of the anatomic healing abutment in the first visit, you would extract the tooth and now you have extraction socket. And because we have the BLX implant with Roxolid and SLActive surface, you feel very confident to place this implant immediately in the extraction socket with all the potential implant has. You surround it a bit by biomaterial. You place the anatomic healing abutment. You do the wound closuring and then you scan in the same visit; extract the tooth, place the implant, place the healing abutment. You will also with the SIRIOS, you will scan over the situation. What the SIRIOS will do automatically because it's connected to Straumann access, it will automatically upload the data file, the patient file into Straumann access. This is where your lab technician will immediately take the file and continue working on the case and might, as an example, order Straumann unique restoration.

The lab will finalize the Straumann unique restoration in the lab will provide it back to you into your practice that you are owning. And then in the second visit, only 8 weeks after, you are able to put the final restoration back in again. And then this is how much of a disruption such a little innovation, smart innovation, combined with our digital ecosystem is what we did now to you and your practice, we saved ultimately, first and foremost, I think the patient, we saved him 26 weeks. And that's a lot of time. Imagine the patient comes in late October and wants to have the restoration done before Christmas. It makes all the difference. Then we save you 50% of chairtime that you can use treating other patients on creating incremental revenue. And we have trimmed down [ the number of appointments from ] 5 down to 2 appointments. And then this is a very powerful example how much of a game changer workflow innovation can be.

Now this was a very straightforward case, [indiscernible] for you, 50% of your implant patients. But the same applies also to more complex treatments. There is a second in, let's say, indication that is very critical to our business, which is full large indication. 20% of the cases [ are for large ] indications. And the same logic actually applies for fullage indications where we have created these little helpers. It's scanning bars that is connecting the implants because a scanner cannot -- if you have a [ dangles draw ], you have 6 implants, the scanner cannot connect automatically these implants. So we build a bridge.

The scanner again scans over it, SIRIOS uploads the data automatically to Straumann access. Your lab technician takes the case, orders Straumann unique directly on the Straumann access platform, delivers the final restoration back to you. And what we did to you and your practice is we reduce your total chair time by 50%. We reduced the key appointments that are long appointments for you and for your patients, long and demanding, we reduced them by 60 minutes. And we have reduced the number of the processing steps from 19 to 10, which is really significant.

So you can see, this is the sort of innovation that is really driving and accelerating the growth of the Straumann premium brand, and we are big believers that this is a big source of differentiation going forward. And we have many more ideas how to progress this kind of innovation also speaking about same-day provisionalization, as Guillaume mentioned and other ideas that we have in this space.

Now let's move on to education. Education is a big part of our success model, as I said before. And what it truly does education for us, it generates growth in 2 dimensions. Number 1 is generating growth by educating startups, okay? With educating starters, we are fueling our customer base but we're also expanding the market. And we know from data that 60% of clinicians today, they are still using the system -- the implant system that they have been initially trained on. So 60% are still using the system they have been trained on. So it's a very powerful lever education.

Number two, education is very important to train users on our innovation. So driving penetration of our innovation into the market. Education is key to this. And this is also where we are converting of course, a lot of competitive accounts and are creating also growth for our customer base. And what you see here on the slide is really truly unique to the industry. I think I can say this. So we do education on different levels. We do large events like our flagship event, the [indiscernible] World Symposium or the aesthetic base or the Neodent symposiums we are doing. But we're also doing small physical courses, classic courses, we do remote courses, hybrid courses.

We have adapted education to the needs of modern dentistry and the users and the new generations and the new workforce that we see out there. And what you see on the left-hand side is the very strong impact that Straumann and the [ ITI ] are creating together. Every year, we are training more than 300,000 clinicians globally. The ITI, Straumann together. We do this in 7,000 activities from big events to courses. And I think 1 thing that I want to mention is the ITI still is very, very unique in this industry. It's the largest network of clinical users in the implant dentistry globally with 25,000 members, active members that are actively educated in the ITI every year. And the flagship is actually the study clubs. We have 1,000 study clubs around the globe that is really bringing education to the doorsteps of all the clinicians.

And the same, we also see for Neodent. Neodent is very strong in education, very active as well, 34,000 doctors trained every year in 1,500 courses. And I think the true flagship of Neodent is the ILAPEO. ILAPEO is an education side attached to an active clinic, so we can have a very interactive training there that people can experience in Brazil. It's a true success model that we now bring international. We speak about opening ILAPEO as an example, in India, in Malaysia and other countries to really fuel the growth of Neodent by education.

Now let's shift gears a bit. Geographic expansion when so far, you learned also mainly about the playbook of the Straumann premium brands, how we drive the Straumann premium by innovation, combined it with digitization and education. Now geographic expansion is really important for the value brands. And the value brands have been a big part of our success of the company to drive our growth over the past 5 to 10 years and geographic expansion was truly one of the big levers for this success, and it will continue to be so.

So let's start to look into our value brands. We are very happy and very proud. We have a very strong portfolio of brands when it comes to the value brands with Neodent. We have one of the few truly global value players that has its heritage actually in Brazil. This is where we also own the strongest market share but since Neodent joined the Straumann Group, we were driving internationalization strongly. And today, Neodent is truly an international success story. Anthogyr, Medentika are really known for excellence and they are very strong regional brands, and I come to Anthogyr and Medentika to them in a second.

What you see on the right-hand side is actually our status in the value segment broken down to regions. And what you can see is that we have a tremendous potential to grow with these value brands, especially in EMEA, but still also in North America and Asia Pacific, where I think we have a very solid and strong a dominating position already in Latin America, but very, very strong growth potential, especially in EMEA and Asia Pacific. Now what has been the success of Neodent in the past. You saw already 1 secret to success, this was education. Education has always been at the heart of Neodent, but there is 1 more lever also Neodent is very strong in innovation. And I would say Neodent is excellent and very strong also in responsiveness to customer needs. [indiscernible] proven to be very quick in turning around needs of customers into products.

This is why Neodent has built a very strong position in the GP segment based on its simplicity. It's built a very strong reputation in the specialist segment, delivering specialty implants like [ psychometric ] implants for very atrophied and very challenging cases, but it's also built a very strong position and profile for DSOs, being a very comprehensive portfolio, very easy to use and a great product to help DSO scaling successfully an implant business. So this is really what Neodent has bought, built a very strong position based on responsiveness and innovation, I'd say.

Then back to geographic expansion. So geographic expansion, I brought you this picture and what you see in the picture is that all the markets where we have around about 20% or plus in market share is great. And the purple markets are either we are not present yet or we have a market share below 20%. So you see we can still continue growing in North America in most of the gray markets, but there is a lot of growth potential in existing markets already that we are existing, but we still have a low percentage of market share. And this is all about commercial execution and education.

But then again, there is also the potential of opening new markets. This is often a regulatory hurdle. We need to register the system and get registered in regulatory approval like we just did for Czech Republic, as an example, for Kazakhstan and Georgia. But the main thing is we are very much looking forward to have Neodent and the approval in China in 2027. And we are strongly convinced that Neodent is in an excellent position to gain very strong traction in China, which is one, as you know, one of the largest implant markets in the world. So a lot of growth potential for Neodent.

So to close, I would quickly come also to Medentika and Anthogyr. Those 2 brands have really turned into a significant-sized implant brands, both Medentika and Anthogyr. I would like to start actually with Anthogyr. Anthogyr is a brand that has its heritage in France and is having in this home market a leading position today and is very strong, has a strong presence in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, but also in Turkey, but also Anthogyr has built a very strong presence in China and is very well positioned to continue growing China as a part of the VBP that we see in China.

Medentika is actually very similar. It's a prosthetic brand and an implant brand. It has a leading position in its home market, which is Germany, very strong position there, also has an excellence present in Western Europe and Eastern Europe and Turkey, actually, but also in these areas, there for both of the brands for Anthogyr and Medentika. In the European context, there's a lot of room to grow in terms of geographic expansion for both of the markets. And one of the strongest potential for Medentika clearly is North America, and we are just about to prepare market introduction of Medentika -- in North America, which we are looking into 2026, which will be a big growth driver for Medentika.

And the 2 highlights to close with is the Medentika [ ECO ] implant line that we have developed together with a local partner in China. And this brand, we are just about launching this brand. And this brand is geared towards helping the Straumann Group capturing market share in the Chinese market, specifically in the lower value and in the [ eco ] segment where we see a lot of potential based on the VBP to gain strong traction with an implant brand with German roots, Medentika, German engineering, but locally designed and manufactured with a strong local partner that will be a very important puzzle piece to our success in China.

And with this, I come to my conclusions. So first of all, I hope you have seen this. We have a massive opportunity in both premium and the value segment. And I think we still have to keep in mind that this market for implant industry will continue to grow dynamically for many, many years to come. Then innovation leadership is really driving our market share gains has helped us gain market share thus today and will also help us in the future. Then digitization will drive practice value creation and differentiation.

I truly believe the connection to the digital ecosystem and the innovation we are doing on the product side, is an accelerator to the growth of our implant system. I truly believe in this. And the multi-brand strategy is key for us. It's really supporting the long-term growth, the growth acceleration as well and to also expand our leadership position in the total implant market.

With this, I thank you for your attention, and I turn it back to Marcel. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your presentation, Guillaume, Thomas and Andreas. I have the pleasure to invite you now to a coffee break. Also for you, 160 people being online. I mean, grab a coffee, we will have a timer, 10 [indiscernible] minutes before we will come back. You will hear a sound outside, 10 minutes before we come -- should come back and 5 minutes again. So let's try to be on time that we can also listen to Florian, [indiscernible] and [indiscernible] , which I look very much forward to it. Enjoy your break. There are people outside who will show you products and solutions from our great company. See you later, guys.

[Break]

[Presentation]

Welcome back, everybody here in the room and also online. Online, you guys missed some nice presentation of our products outside, but it is what it is. So thanks for being back on time. I will not steal any of your time, as you told me, so I'll introduce our Head for Orthodontics. Here we go, Florian. Rock it.

Perfect. So welcome as well from my side. I hope you're all very well caffeinated and ready for what Guillaume explained before, a bit the right side. So my name is Florian. I'm responsible for the ClearCorrect business that we're going to speak first today about, but as well for the digital enabler business, and as well for the CADCAM prosthetic business. And we're very much looking forward to guide you a little bit through the tremendous opportunity that we see on the -- in these segments to gain significant market share going forward.

Well, the ortho business, then you have all heard in the Q3 results that we embarked on a transformation journey on the ortho side. Let me jump first into the market. And guys, this is an incredible market to be in, an incredible market. I mean, you see CHF 4.7 billion, CHF 4.8 billion market. It's a market that is almost already at the size. If you remember well, the CHF 6 billion implant market, and it's a market where we strongly believe in all market indicators as [ well showed ] us, this market is going to grow low double-digit over the course of the next years until 2030 from a CAGR point of view.

And when you look at this market growth and this market potential that Guillaume already mentioned in his presentation, it is -- it became really obvious for us, and we did a lot of market research in the last 1.5 years is the main drivers for this growth, it's going to be GPs and orthos, GPs and orthos. And that's why we, as an organization, decided that this is for us the sweet spot of the customer segment because it's the biggest intersection set that we have with our customers. We know the GPs. We know the DSOs, and this is from a customer acquisition cost point of view for us, the absolute sweet spot because we have existing relationship with these guys out there.

And you see our aspiration. We strongly believe that with everything that we are going to show you today over the course of the next 20 minutes or 90 minutes that I still have to explain you this very exciting opportunity is we really are convinced that we are going to grow significantly faster than this market, that we're going to gain significant market share in the aligner business. And very importantly, we will have the capability and the ability to translate this significant growth on the top line into respective P&L profitability. So very, very exciting.

Now when we talk about transformation, always 1 thing comes to mind. So what is going to change? Or how as an organization Straumann, are we going to multiply the growth we already have in this business? So what is really -- what I really -- the core things that matter. And for us, this change will come in 3 dimensions. And it's a lot about progress. It's about scale, it's about speed and it's about focus. The first part is the change in value proposition and the change or the upgraded value proposition. And you will learn a lot more about this over the course of my presentation later on.

And the second dimension, it's going to be the manufacturing side. And you heard a lot in the Q3 results already about our partnership with Smartee and we're going to get into this. But the scale in production is absolutely critical to drive down costs on the aligner side. And this will be a fundamental pillar of this transformation. And thirdly, this is what we call the high-performance go-to-market engine. And this is really split into 2 things. And it's around focus, and it's around speed.

First, focus from a geographical point of view. We have done our homework and we've really looked at all the markets in the world. And what we see is that there is a certain set of markets out there that really truly matter in the aligner business. And we're looking at these markets from a top line potential point of view, but as well from a bottom line point of view. And we've decided to truly focus and double down in these markets and not or exit from markets where actually we did not have the critical mass or we believe it's not the right place for us to be to truly create value and impact in these strategic markets.

And secondly, it's about organization. We really want to be a lot faster, a lot more agile to really capture the value of the market potential out there. And this is something where we really looked at our organization. We streamlined our organization. We harmonized our organization to truly be able to move in an agile and very fast way [indiscernible] when we look at our competitors, there are a lot of pure players to match the speed or even be faster on this side.

So you heard a lot about Smartee and there have been actually a lot of questions coming after the Q3 results about Smartee. So let me introduce this company to you again. So it's a company from China. It's one of the leading aligner companies. It's the last company at this scale that it's still founder led. And it's a company that has been around for a very, very long time. For more than 20 years, this company has learned their audience from the bottom up. They have done all the mistakes that you do in the aligner business. And they have now developed into a country -- a company, a very serious player that is driving innovation to the market.

We have seen this over the last 3 to 4 years, they have brought significant market innovation like the GS line, for instance, and they are really a company that has scale already that is really exciting for us. And when you look at Smartee, we've received a lot of questions from you guys. So what does this partnership really mean [ and what ] strategic partnership or whatever.

So let me put this into the right context. So when we look at Smartee and the partnership that we have with them, it's a technology partnership and a technology partnership in mainly 2 dimensions. On the very one hand side, you have the technology partnership on the manufacturing side. This is really, really important because we want to reduce our COGS. We have decided that we are going to outsource our EMEA production, our Asia Pacific production to Smartee and there as well supporting us in upgrading the rest of our production sites.

Secondly, the second big pillar of this partnership, technology on the workflow side and on the clinical indication side. And this is really important, and there were quite some questions after the Q3 results that came from you guys said, what does this mean technology? Are you going to distribute the Smartee now around the world? [indiscernible] no. The technology partnership means that we are taking very specific elements of Smartee and we are natively integrating this into ClearCorrect. So ClearCorrect is keeping all the differentiators that it has today, the go-to-market, the customer relationship, the planning, the service function, everything.

But there are certain bits and pieces, and I'm going to lead you through this where this really plays a significant role for us on the aligner side that we are going to integrate into ClearCorrect. So we are not going to distribute Smartee going forward. And that's a very powerful partnership.

But let's jump right in, and we call it the Straumann ortho digital ecosystem. And when you look at this, 1 thing comes to mind, I believe, immediately. Wow, it's exactly the same step. It's exactly the same workflow that you saw on the implant side, [indiscernible] on the prosthetic side that you saw in Thomas' presentation because that's what it really is, that's what digital dentistry is. You're starting from the capture, you have a diagnosed phase and you're always ending on the monitoring side. And this shows the incredible potential we have from a synergy point of view between our access and everything, what we are investing and our aligner business.

And you see here down there, that's the ClearCorrect doctor portal. It's the front end where you're landing when you want to do aligners with us. But in the back end, it's deeply connected as well with our access platform to create a customer experience that is really unique. So really combining this world between access and doctor portal.

And at every step of this journey on the workflow, you start with capture. And I want to really emphasize that ClearCorrect and Straumann Group in general, we're an open platform. We really truly believe in the openness of digital dentistry. So from a ClearCorrect point of view, we're connecting to all of the scanners out there. We have integrations with Medit and 3Shape and shining 3D and all of them to really truly give access to as many doctors as possible.

But then on the very left-hand side, and this is what Guillaume mentioned before, you see our SIRIOS family. So this is the SIRIOS family, and I will speak a little bit about this later on, has evolved through our acquisition of AlliedStar back in 2023. And with the SIRIOS X3 that you [ will see out there ], and hopefully, some of you could get a little bit the feeding for it. It's the first exclusive Straumann scanner. And what changes here or what is important for us on the -- particularly in combination with the aligners that we have end-to-end control. So we can actually have our own IOS scanners deeply integrate via access into our aligner world. And this is a huge differentiator because when we talk about GPs, and we talk about DSOs, they want options.

They want to have different ways of doing different treatments. And when they start with the capture phase and with the IO, they as well would like to [ do, yes ], they want to do an amazing aligner treatment, but [ it's why they want to ] do implant treatment. They want to do prosthetic treatment in these options that we can give to GPs and to DSO out there, it's fantastic. It's maybe not as relevant on the specialist side, but in the GP world, this full end-to-end experience in an open way plays a significant role.

And now we go in a little bit also how do we progress on the value proposition side and how do our partners that we have announced come into this game. We go to diagnose. On the diagnosed part, imagine now you are a patient and you walk into a practice. We have developed something as we call the case complexity evaluation. And we have done that in collaboration with our partner, Dental Monitoring.

What does it do? It actually uses the images of the patient and it gives you already an indication for traffic light system. Is this an easy case? Is this a case that I can treat immediately as a GP? Or is this maybe a case that is a little bit more complex where you want automatically to have a discussion with the clinical advisers or a case success partner? Or is it a very complex case, whereas a GP, you might end up in a situation that is not favorable, where maybe this is beyond the skills you have today that you rather would like to refer to an absolute specialist. And this drives confidence on the side because you know what you're doing and you know that you have the highest likelihood of success when you treat your patient. So really, really great and will significantly help us on the GP side.

Then we go to Engage. And on the Engage side, at the end, it's a lot about the yes of the patient. When you -- and we've developed something what we call the clinical outcome simulator. So you can have a lot of outcome simulation, you can render a nice smile. What is the problem with this that you're promising something to your patient that maybe is not achievable. And now here in combination or in collaboration with Smartee, we have a clinical relevant outcome simulator. So this software or this AI gives you a treatment 80% version of a treatment plan in about 10 minutes. So when you're a patient and you're sitting in the chair, you basically, the doctor, the clinician can have a conversation with the patient already and can significantly drive conversion.

And on the back end, it's going to help us because this treatment plan that was generated is so clinically relevant that our treatment planners afterwards are going to use it to finalize the full treatment plan. So a great way to drive conversion and of course, then the selling experience, what is really fantastic for our core customer segment.

Then we jump over to plan. And on the plan side, we've received a lot of feedback from customers that really want like the other very advanced players in the market, they want to have a CBCT integration. What does this mean? It's like you will see the roots of the teeth when you move teeth. And this is something that as well with our partner, Smartee we are now natively integrating into ClearCorrect in a very fast way to help the clinicians to plan the cases better and understand much better root movements and the teeth movements in combination.

And then you are in your planning phase, you have actually 2 options. You're receiving a treatment plan from us, you can say, I would like to in my do it myself mode, I would like to make a few minor adjustments to this case, but I don't want to speak to a treatment planning center again. So basically, I have an editor, I added a few things, and I send it to production and you're done. Efficiency. But then as well in some more complex cases, you want to have a more personalized service with our [ K success ] partners. These are people who are working with the treatment planning center who are trained on treatment planning, where you can have an on-demand video call. They are discussing the case with you. They're giving input according to the protocols. They help you get there.

And then when you finish the call, it's automatically sent to production. So highly personalized to overcome as well the hurdle of when -- when you have a certain level of uncertainty about the case and then really efficient because you don't have to do 2 or 3 rounds with your treatment planning center.

And then we go into treat. On the treat side, value provision, we are building on this super strong foundation, ClearCorrect already has. It's our proprietary material, , ClearQuarz. And it's really a material that has been accepted by the market in a fantastic way. It's staying significantly less, and it's a high performance, highly efficient material, particularly in combination with our high and low trim line option.

So what does this mean? It's actually moving the teeth a lot faster than comparable aligner systems. What for the patient translates to, I don't have to have 30 or 40 weeks, maybe I can do this in 25 weeks already. But as well here, we have listened to customers, and we are complementing the offering now because in some indications according to patient preference, you would like to have a scallop trimline. So the scallop trimline is when the aligner follows the gingival line. And this is an option for our trimline that as well now with our partners, Smartee, we're natively integrating into ClearCorrect. So from now on, you're going to have all the trimline options available. And interestingly, now working with our customers and clients out there, there's a lot of ways to combine them, so you might want to start with a low trimline and finish up with a scallo trimline. So we give all the options and the options are complete now.

And thirdly, and this is a very important one, what is the mandibular repositioning. So when you talk on the GP side [indiscernible], teams are very, very -- a very exciting segment that is growing that will drive a lot of growth going forward. But there's a certain clinical or orthopedic aspect as well to the aligner business, where you want to reposition the mandibular. And there's 2 major devices. You have your palatal expander or you have your mandibular advancement devices. And these are more advanced treatment options that take quite a long time with clinical studies, et cetera, to get there. And here, we are going to use as well our partner, Smartee with their very, very successful GS line, and we're going to include this natively into ClearCorrect, to truly compete the whole value proposition for our core customer segment.

And then we end up in monitoring. And we have something what we call the ClearCorrect Sync app, this is your integration, and this is your interaction with ClearCorrect on the go. Our customers really love it, and we are doubling down on this one. But today, the star of the game, it's really our ClearCorrect RemoteCare. ClearCorrect RemoteCare and some of you might know the company denture monitoring. They've been the trailblazers when it comes to aligner remote monitoring. And what kind of problem is this actually solving? When you do a liner treatment, and the patient goes home, sometimes the patient is maybe not wearing the aligners efficiently or something goes wrong, and you have as a clinician, you have to see these patients like with the wires and brackets like every 6, 8 weeks, but most of these appointments are like, ah, everything is okay, you can go home. Very cumbersome for the patient, [indiscernible] not a good use of the time of the clinician.

This technology helps you to solve the problem because the patient is scanning themselves at home and AI at the end is checking that everything is fine and you will as a clinician only see your patient when you really need to see your patient or is significantly improving their time.

Dental monitoring has been out there, but they are a super special, and specialists love them because they have all the options. You can imagine like when you're a photographer, and you look at photoshop, there's a lot of options. And I don't know how many of you tried photoshop. It's -- you can do everything with this, but you need to really know what you're doing there. And this is a bit the same on the dental monitoring side, the specialist solution with a lot of options what you can do. But at the end of the day, it's something for GP or DSO, that's far too much. So what we have done is, together with dental monitoring and a lot of voice of customers, we have created a completely new solution that is natively integrated into ClearCorrect, and significantly improving the ClearCorrect value proposition. But nobody better for you to tell a little bit the story of what we believe and what is really valuable here than our customer.

[Presentation]

Perfect. And we are really excited about this solution as well in ClearCorrect. So before we close, I would quickly like to double down on the customer segment side. We talk a lot about GP and DSO, particularly in GP side. So what are the 3 main hurdles to really for GP to access this kind of treatment? On the one hand, it's a lot about the uncertainty of selecting the right aligner case and managing aligner cases. I've shown you today that the ClearCorrect value proposition with the complexity evaluator, the outcome simulator and now with RemoteCare is actually solving this problem. And we truly believe that this will be a game changer on the GP side.

The second one is the uncertainty about what kind of technology I'm going to use, what kind of trimline, what kind of partner and here as well, you've seen a lot of change on the value proposition side. But overarchingly with our case success partners that are all in local language, handholding these customers to really be absolutely certain about what they do to drive confidence in the treatment. This is something where we believe we will be able to overcome this kind of hurdle on this side.

And last but not least, a lot of customers feel locked in today in the aligner world. You have your intra-oral scanners and you're only doing a aligner treatment, but on the GP side, they want to do implant treatment, they want to do prosthetic treatment. And here as well, we are bringing something between access, our Sirios X3 and [indiscernible] that gives you all the options, total optionality to access all of the treatments that you would like to do as a GP.

So in a nutshell, we truly believe that we are positioned fantastically to unlock the potential on the GP and DSO side, that is really the big intersection set with our Straumann Group core customer base. We believe that we have a go-to-market that will be efficient and focused to really deliver as well on the speed that we require. And we are transforming our manufacturing sites and manufacturing strategy and footprint worldwide to significantly reduce our cost.

And last but not least, our customers stay in the apps -- in the absolute center of what we are doing. And we believe that our go to market the way we have structured it will as well deliver on our big ambition on this side.

So with this one, I'm closing the auto side, and I'm very much looking forward to the Q&A later on because I can see already some faces that you might have one or the other questions.

But now we are actually jumping and fast tracking already into the next big topic. And if you remember well, we have 2 big sites, and I'm responsible more for the right side where we have the clear aligners and now we go into digital equipment and Cadcam prosthetics. And that [indiscernible] super exciting. And I will show you at the end of the day, what does this mean to really unlock value through access in our digital investment. And [indiscernible] mentioned before, it's about selling digital equipment on the one hand, and it's about driving prosthetic consumable revenue. And we are totally underpenetrated today in these markets, but we believe with the new technologies that are available right now, we can make significant inroads.

And again, everything starts with the scan. Everything starts with the intraoral scanners that is the gateway into the [indiscernible] and into the Straumann and [indiscernible] ecosystem. [indiscernible] mentioned this before, and I think it's just incredible to see this potential. We see a penetration of digital dentistry in clinics today already at 30%, 35%. This means the clinic has opted in -- for digital dentistry. This does not mean that you have an intra-oral scanner at every chair, but this is, at the end, a standard of care. And that's where it goes. There will be an intraoral scanner at every chair in the future period.

And we see this already on the DSO side. The DSO side, they have been the trailblazers of this because they are very early on understood the credit potential of efficiency through digital. And if you go to DSOs today, you will see armies and [indiscernible] of intraoral scanners everywhere because they really see it happening in there afterwards and affecting the P&L significantly. We believe we're in the middle of this S curve right now. This will significantly accelerate. And with more than 2 million clinicians out there, we believe that the market potential is gigantic.

But to capture this market potential, what is really, really important is that you really -- and you saw this on the implant side before from Andreas is you're able to capture and play in all of the segments. You need to be the premium, you need to have a premium solution, what is our [indiscernible] consistently innovating and pushing the boundaries with just what they launched is that diagnostics module where you can use an IO scanner to diagnose as well, carriers and everything. So this is really a deep innovation driver, and it's our premium segment.

But as well as 3Shape saw the need because from an access is becoming so powerful to deeply integrate with Straumann AXS directly because it's important for the customer experience at the end of the day. And there, they saw as well the need to further drive this.

And then we have our mid and lower segment or entry to the segment. And this is the serious family. This comes from the AlliedStar acquisition, where we have worked with AlliedStar together to create and this is the Straumann X3, an exclusive scanner solution only sold through Straumann. That is actually an Access scanner. It's like Access, Access and DX3. It's becoming 1 deeply intertwined. And from your scanner interface, you already can access everything you go to your liner treatment or your implant treatment, your prosthetic treatment. And it's positioned perfectly from a price value point of view.

And it truly delivers on the things that really matter for this segment. It's super fast, it's super accurate, slight way that has industry benchmark battery life because when you have intraoral scanners that are wireless and they're kind of out after 30, 40 minutes of battery, that's quite annoying in a clinical environment. And here, we have made a lot of effort to deliver really industry benchmark. But it's deeply integrated, like I said, with AXS. And all the interaction, everything what you do on AXS, you will see in your scanner interface in the future. And you're interacting with the platform. And sometimes you don't even have to go to the web-based AXS platform. You do this from your interface directly and this is really incredible.

What I showed you before about the outcome simulator as well is going to come on the Sirios side because it's really important, and this is -- you see how everything is going to step-by-step connect. And remember well, maybe from Andreas' presentation, it's actually nicely linking Thomas' presentation customer feedback, our X3 together with the Exact solution.

Andreas, mentioned the incredible potential of our [indiscernible] business that is really, really important for us to drive implant revenue. And now you've already seen the customers talking of how much they love Exact and Sirios. And next year, we're going to push it even further. We have developed in collaboration with the deep optical experience and expertise of AlliedStar together with our implant franchise, a completely new solution that will even make it faster and easier and more accurate going forward to offer workflow that will be guided through the Straumann X3, but you step-by-step do something -- the intellectual -- the artificial intelligence that is proprietary on the site will help you to redeliver this in record speed and that's innovation that's already going to come next year.

So -- and now, we have IO. How do we turn this into consumables? And now I want to really speak about the share side. You know that the prostate prosthetic size is element, [indiscernible] the lab sites where you already have heard from Andreas or Straumann unique access solution is when our CADCAM sites around the world are delivering incredible value for labs. But now let's talk about [indiscernible]. And Guillaume mentioned this before, there's always been a dream to have a full control grown in 1 hour. And this has been a dream for a very, very long time. And this dream is coming to reality through platform, through AI and the combination of this.

You can see that over in the coffee area, the SprintRay Midas. The SprintRay Midas is an incredible technology because it's clean. When you do chairside, usually, this is kind of a dirty process. Now it's crystal clear and for some of you that have not seen this, that's the crown. It's going to be -- you place it on your printer, and it's there in 10 minutes, you can do 3 of them: inlays, onlays, crown, implant born or [indiscernible] and this is going to revolutionize the chairside business. But now what is even more important is at the end of the day, it's the combination of this with our platform, because what we have done in the partnership with SprintRay is we've brought everything together. All of the workflows that we are using are natively done on AXS on the strong foundation that has -- we have been building over time.

In a record time of only 9 to 10 months, we were able to create a complete chairside workflow on our technology, on our AI to deliver something that has been unheard of before. And this is why we strongly believe that we will be able with the solutions that we bring to market on the IOS side, on the Midas side, drive significant revenue going forward as well on the capsule side, but as well as stock prosthetics. And you have seen from Andreas before, super exciting, our [ AHA ] innovation. Now you can combine this with this in the future, and it's just going to be an incredibly fast and efficient workflows that will really change the industry for quite some time.

So as I'm already 1 minute over time, 3 takeaway message. So we have the clear ambition to be a significant market player in the intraoral scanner market. We believe in intraoral scanner, we have a full portfolio with our partners reshape and our own produced scanners that are deeply integrated into our AXS solution.

And as well, we believe that chair side is ready for disruption, and we believe that we have everything necessary to deliver on this going forward. And we talked about the monetization of all the different investment that we've done, significant consumable revenue, both on the stock component side, if you look at your [indiscernible] or the capsules that you can see over there on the 3D printer side, this is going to have a significant impact on our top line and our profitability going forward. And with this, nothing would be possible without the right culture and right collaboration to get these kind of cross-functional things to life. And over to you, Arnoud, for the...

Always a great pleasure to speak after a high energy speaker like Florian. So I try to keep the curve higher. Warm welcome from my side, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Arnoud. I'm heading up the People Department in Guillaume's team. You've heard where we want to take the company and what great potential we have ahead of us.

What I'm going to do today with you is to guide you through how we ensure execution through our people and culture, which we believe is a unique asset, which we have. A unique asset in the sense that our high-performance culture is a true driver of success. It has helped us to navigate in the past through more challenging times that we have behind us in the last couple of years, COVID, the tariffs, now with [indiscernible] coming into play, and it will scale with us in the future, and it will help us to drive and succeed in the strategy that we just about to explain to you.

Now I'm going to zoom in on 3 topics. Quickly explain the framework that we have built and I can mention already now it's not a framework that is just on paper. It's just a concept. It's something which is manageable, it's traceable, it's trackable. And that's the second point I'm going to share with you. What are the specific initiatives and the key KPIs we track to see whether we create impacts on the actions we are taking.

Let me start with the environment. You heard in the introduction from Guillaume. We're living in a fast-paced volatile complex environment, which is also disruptive mainly driven by AI. This has all effects on our organization on our culture. How we react to this and what we believe is important. And what are the institutional answers that we're going to give? Speed and agility. We want to build an organization which is decisive, agile, flexible to react to this outside world into these outside challenges.

Collaboration is a key muscle. We are strengthening, and we are focusing on why, because the complexity and the confusion in the world around us is bringing us problems that we have to solve, which no one can solve on their own. It needs collaboration. It needs collective intelligence to find the right solution and to drive innovation.

The third important organizational competency that we are looking into is the readiness. When disruptive things like AI happen, it creates also a skill shift. And we want to make our people and our organization ready to perform not only today, but to also be able to perform tomorrow.

So let me kind of introduce to you our cultural framework that you see on the left-hand, nothing has changed, which means when nothing changes, it's solid, it's good, and we continue to do the same thing. You see the core beliefs that have been introduced in 2021, in the middle, you see the [indiscernible], what we call the magic triangle and center and front is our customers. So whatever we do, kind of we keep the customer in mind. Let me guide you through the 3 dimensions.

For us, it all starts with a strong I. What we mean by this strong individuals with the right skills, with the right mindset, with the passion for learning with the ability to take ownership and drive results. That's key for us. But it's not enough because if you have strong individuals, if they don't work together and if they do not form a strong collective, nothing is going to happen. And this is where the we dimension comes into play and where leadership excellence plays an important role. Leaders are expected and trained and kind of hold accountable to really bring these strong individuals together to form a strong we to create an environment where these people can collaborate, where they can speak up, where there's psychological safety, where all of the kind of the collective intelligence can happen.

Once you have this in place, you can drive the it, a strong result, a strong value to the customer, strong customer experience. This is what our cultural framework is all about.

Now I'm going to dive into each and every dimension to quickly show you what type of initiatives we focus on and what we drive and how we measure it. On the -- on the I dimension, it's about talent. It starts attracting and selecting the right talents. We focus a lot when we speak to talent and when we recruit talent, we pay a lot of attention to the cultural fit. This is key to us. We want to have people that have a good cultural fit, that have a learning mindset, that have a willingness to grow with us as a growing company, that have the ability to take ownership. Once we have kind of integrated these people into our family, it's about developing -- it's about developing our people to give them the skills they require today, but to also make them ready to take a next opportunity.

And this is in the third dimension of structured talent management. Structured talent management needs for us to be more independent from the markets to build our current talent internally and to build a strong succession pipeline for our most critical roles. The most critical roles being the most senior roles that have a strong impact and leverage on driving our strategy, but also critical roles in the markets. And I'm happy to share with you that for all the critical roles in average, we have more than 3 successors, which shows that we have a strong talent pipeline and the risk of execution or the risk of falling out on the execution is pretty much under control.

Then it's about building the right skills for the future. We have launched 2 years ago, a program which is called EDGE!UP, a beautiful initiative with the aim to create digital readiness in the organization, to help individuals to lower the hurdle to use these tools, to integrate these tools in their style and way of working. We have trained thousands of people around the globe. In many, many workshops, we have kind of created EDGE!UP days, working labs, interaction sessions, outside inspirations, created tons of learning materials, which are available on our learning platform. And you see the results, and that's the KPI. We track this [indiscernible] engage or in our employee engagement survey. We have a digital readiness score of 78, where people express, I'm confident in the digital skills, I have to do my job.

On the We dimension, it's about leadership in more detail. We invest a lot in our leaders to make them ready and you see some of the programs there [indiscernible], the Leadership Academy, where we invest a lot in the managers to be ready, to be excellent, to drive the people performance here. We have done great progress also on the manager effectiveness score in the last couple of years, 80%. We aim for 85% of our managers having this quarter in more than 70%.

The Manager Effectiveness score being a subset of questions. It sounds pretty basic, but we know from evidence and also from research that this is important. Do I set clear goals? Do I have development discussions? Do I give feedback? Do I really speak with my employees how their job integrates into the strategy delivery and to the bigger picture? This is really something we have invested a lot in and drive and continue to drive this as we believe this is a strong driver of the culture and of our performance.

Then on the engagement score, we truly believe that employee engagement is a really leading indicator of performance, of really driving something of retention because engaged people, they do more. They are more open to learn. They are more open to change. They are more open to go the extra mile. This is why managing and driving this employee engagement is a really important factor and driver to our culture and to our performance. And really proud about what has been achieved in the last couple of years. We have an engagement score currently of 92, which is 1 point above the 10 percentile of the [ Global Clint universe ], which is higher. And some of the key other factors are on or beyond or above the 25th percentile of the same universe like growth or culture, which are the questions here.

Now let me conclude. And what I want you to take home. Culture in Straumann is not just a word. It's not just a concept. It's not just a framework on paper. It's really something we have built that we drive, that we actively manage, that we really measure where we create the impact. Cultures are a foundation. We invest a lot in our skills and fueling our talents because this is the engine of how we grow. And then we have a strong focus on our leaders, which I just explained to you because they are the multiplying factors. They create the culture, they drive the talents and make them ready to perform. And when this comes together, we have a strong performance, not only today, but also going forward with the execution of the new strategy.

Thank you. And with this, I hand over to my colleague, Isabelle.

Thanks, Arnoud. And I think wow, I mean what the lineup we have seen, right? We have all the right products in place, the right strategy, all the right people to execute. So this is why we said, let's save the best for last, which is Guillaume. But before I hand back to him, I want to take you on the journey is what we've seen. We've done our homework, and I think we are well positioned to unlock the growth and drive the growth of the company further.

What we've achieved in the last couple of years was remarkable because if you look at how we actually stand here today compared to 2021, what we can see amongst everything, we are stronger and we are more diversified. And I think this is a very important remark, more profitable when we look at our organizational development.

Just looking at the major drivers we have seen throughout the presentations over the last couple of hours. In terms of product mix, we are more balanced. What you can see there in the lower corner, we have outgrown massively in our nonpremium in the challenger segment Andreas has shown earlier, with Neodent, but not only with [indiscernible] as well, which really means we're making huge progress in gaining market share and increasing the penetration.

When we look at the geographical mix, we have grown massively in Latin America and in to APAC, when you look at those 2 curves, which is something we really like to see because it shows we have done our homework in making sure we have the right portfolio and the right competency offering, not only in the very developed and mature markets, but in all of the other markets as well.

And then last but not least, the customer mix. We made significant inroads for the dedicated team to gain market share in the DSO segment. Why is this so important? I think we've seen that throughout the other presentations. They really help us to bring patients into the practices who beforehand thought implants, maybe not for me, it's too expensive, it's too fancy. But since they really go to market very aggressively, a lot of marketing, a lot of communication, they help us to increase our addressable market. And last but not least, I usually a very early adopter when it comes to the digital workflow. And all of this taken together, make sure we exceeded our growth targets, and we exceeded our profitability ambition.

And this is, for me, a very important message because very often, when I talk to you, when I talk to our investors out there get the question, well, why is your profitability going down? Is it the bigger share of DSO? Is it because your mix of products is not that good anymore? Is it because you have lower profitability in the emerging markets? And the clear answer, when you look at that is, no, it's not. We're growing in a very profitable way. And the only thing or the only factor that actually brought us down a little bit and as reported was the Swiss franc when we did the conversion.

What we are planning to do about that, I will talk about in the next couple of minutes, but for me, this is the one very important message. If we keep on executing like we did and with all of those exciting new innovations with a new setup in auto in the pipeline with a digital platform, the digital enablers, we are very well set up to make sure we can keep on growing as we did in the past, and we can do so in a very profitable way.

But of course, looking into how do we want to do this and other things that can be improved? I mean given I'm with the company for roughly half a year now, I get this question quite a bit. It's a fantastic company, can we still improve? Always. When we look at our player-learner mindset, I think we really want to understand what are the levers we can somehow pull and how can we make sure we do not only grow with around 10%, but we do that in a profitable way, and we do that in a cash accretive way to unlock the full potential of the group and make sure we can invest into our future.

So what I did in the first couple of months, together with a fantastic team, we somehow assembled our finance strategy and my CFO agenda of what I want to focus on in the years to come. And this agenda has the nice title of unlocking value. Really said, let's look at the company in a different way. And let's think about what can we do to make sure in each of those lines of the P&L, we increased the conversion as much as we can to make sure we can take the strategic decisions we want to take and invest into our future growth.

So looking at our top line development in constant currency, an amazing development over the last 4 years with a CAGR of 16%. We outgrew our markets massively. So what I always said when we prepared for the presentation, you saw the market somehow grew 15% since we started. We did this every year. And I think this really helped us to gain market share as much as we did. And I think to continue to do this. And Guillaume already showed our ambition level for 2030. We want to continue to grow around 10% in the next 5 years. And to do this, the most important thing is to keep the focus on innovation, the multibrands, we do have in the market to make sure we have the right value proposition for everybody, and to keep on increasing our market share, especially with the DSOs.

What we will do in addition to that? We will further strengthen our revenue management. What does that mean that we look in how we convert gross revenue into net revenue in a much more diligent way than we did in the past, and that we harmonize that much more than we did in terms of how do we handle rebates? How do we handle free-of-charge products? How do we build for shipping? How do we want to handle this? Because we believe there's a very strong avenue for growth for us in that as well. And we always do this little exercise in our sales meetings and say, "Hey, if we can only reduce the rebates we have to give by 1% for the entire group, this is equal to buying 150 CNC machines or this is equal to the OpEx of Italy and Spain combined for 1 year. And this, I think, is really that gives you an idea of the dimension we're talking about. If we really manage to get this program forward. And we saw some very nice and promising wings we've seen across.

And then last but not least, the fantastic things Florian showed us. With those new potentials, we [indiscernible] also the digital platform access we saw from Thomas earlier that we say, "Hey, we can bring more customers on, and we can really accelerate how we sell our core products by using that platform. But obviously, our P&L or cash flow statement does not stop there. I think what is important for us as well, we want to do this in a very profitable way.

So let's look at gross profit first. I think the development you saw here is very similar to what you saw in terms of sales, which I think is good news that we were able, despite all of the headwinds we were looking at to maintain a very high margin. But you can see here, we got a lot of headwind from the Swiss franc as well. So I think what is very important for us in the next couple of years to keep on executing on our local for local production strategy.

So if you look at it this year, we opened our new campus in Shanghai where we will now step-by-step ramp up all of the Straumann green product lines for the Chinese market as well as the [indiscernible] product lines we need to sell in China. What we did then as well, when we look at the tariff compensation effects, we significantly increased the products we can produce in the U.S. for the U.S. market, which really helps us to somehow make sure that the 6% move towards the 16% a little more going forward, and we do not lose so much in translation.

In orthodontics, I think I don't need to say more than what Florian already explained. I think from a financial point of view, this partnership with Smartee is wonderful. Because I think for us, it would have taken a really long time to get the same economies of scale and the same expertise Smartee already has. So directly, when switching over countries to their production capabilities, we really see cost per line coming down drastically, which means we hate substantially lower COGS and higher gross profit.

Last but not least, in terms of products, the Sirios X3 you saw right now, which is our own development through our acquisition AlliedStar, this comes obviously at a much nicer margin when you look at our digital business, then for us selling third-party products. And this is where we believe we have a huge upside potential too. Then last but not least, I already indicated, we are looking at this local for local production strategy. At the same time, we've significantly improved our global supply chain management capabilities so that we look at where do we produce, but where we have inventories on a much more global scale than we did before, which in the long term, will help to reduce cost obviously. But at the same time, we will see that in a couple of minutes, will help us with managing our working capital quite significantly if we, for example, look at product -- like our digital, too much digital for today.

Our regional distribution centers, we are currently building in all parts of the world. So that we say we do not need to have the same big amount of stock in every country anymore, but we bundle that on a regional level and really make sure we can use our products most efficiently and most value-accretive.

Next step would be to come from our gross profit to the EBIT. And I think where it really shows the first point you can see here is the most important one we need to work on. When you look at our EBIT, I think for me, this is the most important message is the EBIT growth was faster than the top line growth in the last 4 years at constant currency, which means a lot of things we have done were the right things to do, but we somehow need to make sure we do not lose everything on the way down for the translation in the Swiss franc because if you look at 18% over 3%, where is that coming from? Well, basically, when you look at the distribution of costs compared to the distribution of revenue, we're usually talking about 1% to 2% of our revenues in Swiss franc, compared to roughly 20% of our costs.

Can we move that in the direction towards 1% or 2%? Potentially not. But there are a lot of levers we can pull in terms of OpEx as well. And this is what we will focus on in the years to come together with a lot of other efficiency measures we take into place -- we put into place. But I think 1 very important 1 is our shared service initiative and other operational efficiency measures we put into place, which, on the one hand side, means doing more volume with the same number of people, but then at the same time, thinking about what are the right locations to put those people in terms of having a good cost leverage. But in terms of creating this natural hedge towards the Swiss franc a little better, so we can move from 2% to 20% to something much lower in that ratio and make sure we do not lose so much margin anymore going forward.

Having said this, I think one important message when I talk about the currency effect is when we look at those numbers, it is a translational effect only. For the transactional part, we are 100% hedged. So it means we're not losing money in terms of free cash flow, really cash on the bank. This is the translational effect because all of the revenues take place outside and we have costs coming in from outside as well. But it's not that we say it's actual payment transactions we do not hedge. This is more or less 100% hedged, especially for the big currencies. But this, for us, is really something to make sure we safeguard our margin, and can deliver this nice increment year-over-year to look into this a little bit more in as reported numbers as well.

I would say 2 more very important initiatives we are looking at is on the one hand side, introduction of a procurement excellence program. Obviously, we've done procurement before, but never looked at it on a global scale. So what we already see right now with the first categories we centralized, there's huge potential for the group in terms of direct material, but especially in terms of indirect spend as well. And this will be a huge benefiting factor for us in terms of OpEx going forward that we make sure we get the right organization, the right level of skills, the right focus in place to category by category, really manage our spend globally, which helps on the one hand side, obviously, to get better pricing, but on the other hand side, helps with alignment as well.

So I'll give you 1 example we had as a discussion in our factory yesterday when we were in Villeret. This is CapEx. But I think we looked into how do we buy CNC machines. And at the same time, use this discussion to somehow get an understanding of what are the actual specifications we need and what are the machines we need for the job to be done? And basically, what we did right now is now per CNC machines since we can use a different vendor, we only pay half of what we paid before, which is a huge thing. So this is where we said, for us, procurement, it's not just about reducing price, but really using this opportunity to make sure we buy the right thing, fit for purpose plus we leverage the scale.

And then obviously, last but not least, it's about having the right processes, the right systems, the right tools in place, to have the right data structures to make sure we can grow in a scalable way, and we can leverage the full potential of shared services or global business services at one point in time with the right OpEx intensity.

I think, last but not least, the cash flow. This is obviously for all of us, a very important topic for us as a company, but for you as investors, as analysts as well. And I think what is important to understand since we get a lot of questions, why is the free cash flow and the cash conversion coming down a little bit? In the last 5 years, we invested over CHF 1 billion into the company. So this number includes 2025 and this was to make sure we can deliver on our growth expectations.

I mean you saw Villeret yesterday with all of those nice new machines, but we have a complete new campus in Shanghai. We are in the process of building the single biggest factory we have in the Straumann Group in [indiscernible] at the moment for the Neodent plant. We significantly enhanced Medentica with a new factory that just opened this year. And I could go on for a couple of minutes. But having said this, looking into the future, it means for the next 5 years, we will need a lower CapEx intensity because come next year compared to 2021, we will have doubled the production capacity of implants in the group, which means we still have a lot of leeway. Of course, we continuously need to invest, because you can imagine a 10% growth number right now means many, many more implants compared to 10% 10 years ago. But with this production footprint, we now have and the production network, we are using flexibly, we do not expect that we need to do the same thing in terms of CapEx intensity again in the next couple of years. And in the period until 2030, we are now looking at.

Second big cornerstone, obviously speaking, the net working capital. I think this year with the tariffs has been a little special, and we are all aware of this. But we see generally, we still have potential to reduce our net working capital, and designed a designated program to look into all of those levers. One I already talked about with the supply chain management. We continuously enhance looking at regional distribution centers, for example, looking at what is needed where.

Procurement, of course, helps with the cost. But once you centralize helps with the payment terms as well. I think this is something very important for the future to look into 2 that we say, hey, it's not only about getting the right price, but we somehow need to make sure in every country to look at matching accounts payable or accounts receivable payment terms as good as we can because I think we need to be mindful in terms of days sales outstanding. This is very different in a lot of countries. And especially when you look at the DSOs, they have a very high purchasing power and this is where we very diligently look at countermeasures to be defined to make sure we maintain the strong cash conversion focus in every business and constantly increase our free cash flow conversion going forward.

Having said this, in terms of capital allocation, I think, as before, we said we invest into where we believe we see the biggest return. Given our high profitability, we already have, and we expect to maintain in the next 5 years. For us, priority #1 is to make sure we can reinvest into the business and finance the sustainable growth in a profitable manner. Of course, we also want to maintain the strong balance sheet we have to accelerate implementing the strategic priorities and pursue M&A in case the rate targets come up. And then last but not least, of course, maintain and increase our returns to the shareholders and increase the dividends with our earnings potential.

So having said this, I have 4 key takeaways. I think revenue, we feel very confident, we have a well balanced portfolio across products, across geographies, across customer segments to keep on executing this very high growth we have seen in the past. This is why we already said we plan to grow around 10% CAGR in the next 5 years as well, knowing this is a rather difficult challenging environment, but we believe we have done our homework, and we can execute on this growth. And we cannot only grow, but we can grow in a profitable and value-accretive way through all of those measures I've just talked through, which would lead to an increase of our EBIT margin of an average of 40 to 50 basis points year-over-year at constant currency.

So it means, obviously speaking, we hope we do not see the same currency effects again. But then having done our homework, we can mitigate a little bit more of that. Based on this higher EBIT generation, we expect to see a higher free cash flow conversion year-over-year as well. So to continuously improve this number due to the lower CapEx intensity and the lower net working capital levels. And with all of this, we believe we are very well positioned to convert the growth into sustainable value creation for the company.

Yes. And thanks for listening. And to give you a very good picture of what -- what we talked about and what to take home for you as well, I will hand back to Guillaume for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Isabelle. Thank you, everyone, for the presentation. And I have the pleasure to put everything together in the next 5 minutes or so. Then I think if there is the first message that I want you guys to take back home is that we are in a very exciting underpenetrated market of CHF 20 billion, okay? And we are looking at this underpenetrated market in 2 sides. The left side where we have very strong core competencies, where we have proven we can grow twice as fast as the market. And I think we have demonstrated with innovation capabilities with geographical expansion and education that we will continue to capture most of that growth opportunities in the next period.

What is very important with and what is rather new in the presentation today is that when you look at the writing side, which are somewhat, I would call, our new segments, we have completely changed our competitive capabilities by bringing very significant new technology and new capability to compete, which is unlocking a lot of those growth potential that was just in front of us in the past years.

And something that we have presented today is that around all those segments, we have created a digital Straumann ecosystem, which is going to benefit all those different segments by creating an environment and a digital workflow, which is going to drive not only better clinical outcome, but also a lot of practice efficiency and a lot of potential for scale and standardization for the critical target group [indiscernible].

If we look quickly one by one on our core side, I think we really demonstrated that we are keeping the investment on the product innovation very high, then we have really big expectations and we see AXL already winning market share, but we have also a very strong pipeline moving forward, be it material, be it surface, be it design to keep the amazing key story of meaningful innovation on the Straumann side. But our vision is very clear. The product innovation alone is not enough in the future. And it has to be upgraded by the clinician experience, which is delivered by our digitalization. And you have seen the example of the fast model where we can move from 5 appointment to 2 appointments, which is going to be the new standard of care when it comes to fast more replacement.

And this is, thanks to that very strong combination in between product, specifically designed to leverage the digital platform that has been created. And this -- it's a huge differentiation for the future, and it's going to be challenging for smaller organization to replicate. And I think this is very important to capture as an element because we have seen in the past a lot of small companies being able to copy or replicate some of implant design, but it will not be enough tomorrow because all those kind of investments in cloud-based platform into those workflows that are leveraging the digital capabilities are very costly from an investment standpoint. That's why we have been very clear in 2021 that we are going to start an investment cycle and we have been very excited today to share with you the outcome of this investment cycle on the digital side.

Education, as Andreas presented, is also one of the very important elements, not only to train on our innovation, but obviously to increase the pie because we know that in emerging markets, as an example, there is still a lot of clinicians to train for doing implant surgery. And one thing that I want to highlight also on the geographical expansion we have a core competency in product registration. Globalization, especially on Challenger Brands is coming just because there is a very strong investment and capability in registering in all the different markets, all those product portfolio. That's why there is almost only one or a couple of global challenger brands because you have a lot of those local champions that not have the capability from a financial standpoint to expand. And this is going to be even more important in the future, as you know that MDR came in Europe, which is making mandatory for every new product to be introduced in the European market to prove its clinical performance.

And a lot of those small companies have never invested in clinical capabilities. That's why we believe that our innovation will be even more differentiating in the future in markets where clinical evidence are now becoming mandatory. Then to paraphrase Andreas, we are very optimistic and confident about our capability to grow our market share and expand our leadership on the implant side.

The second aspect that we have presented has been the transformation of our auto business. And as Florian put it, it's about progress, it's about scale, it's about speed, and it's about focus. Progress is about strengthening very significant our value proposition with that smart key partnership. I will not again enumerate all the additional elements of our value proposition. Also I would say, upgraded with the dental monitoring capabilities, but we are really having a value proposition, which is significantly more competitive and will allow us to gain significant share in our focused GP segment. It's about scale because through the Smartee partnership, we are going to leverage manufacturing capabilities at scale from Smartee and especially automation, that has been possible, thanks to the volume they are doing.

We were looking at doing automation, but at small scale, the return on investment is obviously not sustainable. It's not easy. Then we are going to benefit from that scale and automation for driving significant profitability moving forward. And it's about focus and speed in decision-making by having a much more streamlined organization on the go-to-market side with very clear expertise that we're going to drive strongly.

And then we went on the digital equipment and digital prosthetic and it's where a lot of new technology we are bringing as we speak, just now in addition to our platform that we just launched the this year for EMEA end of last year in North America and Latin America, then we are bringing new digital capabilities with our [indiscernible] scanner super well positioned for the current expectation of the market. Once again, dental service organizations are looking at standardizing and scaling their activities, but they want to do that in a cost-effective manner. But this is why our current IOS in addition to our partnership with [indiscernible], but it's really at the moment, very well positioned to supporting this digitalization of the DSO side, because you can do digitalization at a much lower cost than was possible before. And they want -- and we were discussing about that ecosystem. They also want to look at the quality of the dental surgery that have been done. And through all data gathered in 1 platform, they can have access also in all their clinic network to exactly know how they are performing.

And what is very interesting, we are in the -- we are arriving in the area of [indiscernible]. Based on the data we are going to have on their capability to do surgery, their capability to do prosthetics. We'll be able also to assign or propose specific education based on the indication they treat or being on the area where they need to improve. And this is what our digital capabilities is going to allow us moving forward.

We have best-in-class connectivity for then all the different tools and softwares that we are proposing. And last but not least, we are at the beginning of disrupting that prosthetic workflow where the crown in 1 hour or the inlay in 1 hour is going to be possible. And one can say it was possible before, because it was with a [indiscernible] technology. And for acquiring a system for share side prosthetic, it was around $150,000 because the [indiscernible] scanner technology, the software technology and the milling technology are pretty expensive. Now we can offer a full system [indiscernible] the accessibility and the affordability of such technology is really changing the game here. That's what was strong expectations that not only this technology will help strong efficiency on the practice side, but it is at the -- it's affordable for every single practitioner in all the markets where this technology is available.

And as well -- growth picture and our playbook is very exciting, and we are really looking forward now rolling out all those technology, and you understand why our edge up campaign that Arnoud presented is really important because we need to have our entire team understanding, embracing promoting digital technology and it's not so much about digital technology. It's especially the benefit at the practitioner side. And we need to demonstrate that technology, the complexity we handle and simplicity is really what we give to customers.

Then at the end, from a conclusion then, of course, we want to translate after those significant revenue growth opportunity into profitability, like Isabelle presented, increased manufacturing and supply chain efficiency, a lot of opportunity to care about our gross margin from investment in automation, but also from partnering where it's necessary, driving operational excellence on our processes and our strong culture in order to keep this entrepreneurial mindset, this agility, this fast decision-making, which is also afterwards from a huge engagement being able to execute very strongly. And then with this, being able to unlock free cash flow to fund our future growth with improving our net working capital and being able to mitigate, of course, this very strong Swiss franc contra effect.

At the end, what we commit to when we have our big picture ambition for 2030 is what we expressed and the 10% CAGR average on a revenue growth standpoint and 40 to 50 basis point core EBIT margin on average per annum that we are looking for based on the plan.

And thanks for listening. Really happy to have shared all of this with you, and we are looking forward to answer any questions you may have on all the different part of the strategy.

Thank you very much for all your presentations. Florian, Arnoud and also Isabelle and obviously Guillaume. We will now go into Q&A. We have colleagues with mic. I see many hands up already. We will first take the questions here in the room. We also have people asking questions online. Please, as always, state your name and your company and then the question.

Veronika Dubajova from Citi. I have got two questions. And maybe just a quick clarification, if I can, on the guidance, first and foremost. And then my 2 questions. The guidance is from 2025 as a starting base or from 2026 as a starting basis about?

2026.

Okay. Got it. That's very clear. So then my 2 questions. The first one is really Florian and Guillaume. Obviously, lots of exciting opportunities. I'm wondering if you're willing to quantify your market share ambitions for the 3 businesses on the right. And sort of as we look at the current position that you have, what do you think is realistic by the time we get to 2030, if you willing to put some numbers on that, that would be great.

And then my second question is for Isabelle on the margin guidance. Obviously, ortho business is driving a pretty substantial margin improvement within the time frame as you've committed to bringing it to breakeven by 2027. Just trying to understand is that getting reinvested into the business? If I kind of look at the cumulative margin improvement, Ortho should explain 2/3 of that, and that suggests that there is not a ton of margin upside elsewhere? Or are you being cautious and conservative?

I will maybe try to unpack the ambition on the clear aligner side. When you look at -- if we are somewhat a bit independent from the market growth from that perspective, we are expecting our Ortho business to reach low double-digit percent of our total top line by 2030. I think that's a little bit then somewhat doubling our current weight of ortho in our total business. And if you want to translate on -- from a market standpoint, I would say it would be reaching double-digit market share in the GP segment. We are expecting the GP segment to be somewhat like 40% of the total business. And we think that if you take this into consideration, then we should reach almost low double-digit share on the GP specific segment.

When it comes to [indiscernible], I think we have not really then define market share per se, but I would say I believe by that 2030, we will be above double digit. And I would not say any market share when it comes for prosthetic because the market does not exist per se. Then it's really here a game of making sure that we are making this technology penetrating the market, being seen as a very good solutions moving forward. And then based on this, I believe there will be new mover potentially in this space, and then we can talk about market share. But at the moment, together with partner, [indiscernible], is really opening up a very new segment into chairside prosthetic.

And towards your margin question, Veronika. I mean, there are a lot of different elements, obviously, you have to take into consideration by modeling of 5-year margin, right?. I mean you're correct only looking at basically next year or the year after, that we expect a huge tailwind from Ortho with the Smartee partnership. But this is not something, of course, that will be replicated every year going until 2030. And you can imagine just looking at ortho, we need to reinvest into the business at one point in time as well to make sure we can absorb the growth Florian was talking about. Because if you're going from 3% market share, we said we want to significantly increase market share. You need to hire new people in sales and train them, wait until they're efficient. So all of that is modeled in there as well.

And if you then think about what Andreas presented, this will come at a fantastic additional margin, too. I think what is important to understand, we're starting from a very high margin already, right? So point one, we really need to make sure we have everything into place to defend this very high margin. And obviously, there are a lot of headwinds we are confronted with as well. So look, on the one hand side, the increasing share of the DSO, we like that, obviously, because they help us increase penetration and digital penetration. But you can imagine that those huge organizations have a very different purchasing power. So this is why we continuously have to look into things like reducing our COGS, for example, to make sure we can maintain the same margin level to begin with and then add on top of that with all of the innovation we bring to the market.

And same, I think what we cannot forget is the VBP in China. We expect to see something like that every 3 years from now on. And obviously, given the size China has, this puts pressure on the margin, too. We need to absorb elsewhere. And this is why we're confident with all of those initiatives we put into place from Smarty over the operational excellence, over our operational footprint we now have with different locations. We did our homework in a way that from the very high base we are growing from, we can deliver this 40 to 50 basis points per year on average.

Just to comment in addition to Isabelle that I'm fully aligned with, we also want to create a condition to be able to choose. That's very important for us. We are in front of potential fast-growing opportunities -- then if we see opportunity to double down in some area, we want to be able to reinvest in the business, as Isabelle has said. Then if everything is, yes, unfolding as planned, I think we will have that option to choose to potentially give it even more on the EBIT side or doubling down for multiplaying top line. And I think that flexibility is really something which is important from leading a high-growth organization.

[indiscernible] from Dreifus. I've got one for Isabelle and one for Florian, please. Isabelle, you say that the transactional FX is 100% hedged. Will that roll off at some point? I mean you've committed to 2030 ambitions today. Is it hedged to 2030? It sounds quite long. If you could just put some clarity around that. And following on from that, if all the FX impact is purely translational, does that mean, therefore, that 100% of the EBIT becomes free cash flow with full conversion rate? And then for Florian, on the clear aligners, Align Tech are 56% of the market, and they grow low single digit. And you see market growth to 2030 is low double digit, the way you see it. So what am I missing here in terms of market growth given that there's such a substantial part of the market?

So let's start with the hedging. I think for the transactional part, I mean, obviously, we don't have visibility on our transactions till 2030, but we have a very clear guideline on how we handle this, which is basically that we anticipate our exposure for the next 6 months and then make sure we are 100% hedged. But majority of what we're looking at is on the one -- it's usually only intercompany transactions, given we have very empowered organizations in the countries. So we're either talking about intercompany loans or intercompany transactions. And there, we are very diligent to make sure we do not lose actual money. Around the translational impact, can this be brought down to 0?

For sure not because we still have a headquarter in Switzerland, and we have a huge factory in Villeray, you saw yesterday. We are not planning to change that. But we are obviously questioning for every investment we need to do, every position, we need to hire, does it make sense to have that person or that kind of investment here in Switzerland? Or is there a better location in the group? So what this should do is when you look at the EBIT bridge I showed to basically bring the 3% closer to the 18% to somehow close that gap because it will be a little more in line with our revenue ambition. A direct impact on free cash flow, you would not see in terms of having something in the free cash flow lines. But obviously, just because you have a higher EBIT or EBITDA to start from in the as-reported numbers. But when you look at the categories that actually determine the cash conversion, you have in there, it's the CapEx and the net working capital. So in terms of hedging, this will not be one of the biggest influencing factors.

Okay. And like always, I mean, we are not commenting on our competitors directly. But from a Straumann point of view, we believe we are very well positioned with the value proposition we have right now. Focusing on these 2 customer segments [indiscernible] side, we believe significant growth is coming from. We believe we are perfectly positioned right now in this area and obviously as well on our strategy side, there is a certain [indiscernible]. I mean you know that the market has, I think, -- it's obvious that the market has become significantly more competitive with a lot of market entries, [indiscernible] you see smilers in this market. And in a competitive environment it is about the value proposition that you bring. It's about the customer relations that you have and we believe that in our core customer segment, the potential is significantly there to outgrow this market.

And based on the market research that we have done, we believe that with lower interest rates as well in North America and in the whole world, this more susceptible treatment to this -- to the interest rate level will become -- so the whole macro will help, but we believe that this segment is going to return to double-digit growth, and we believe we are very well positioned from a value proposition point of view.

Yes. I think you were -- when we have our growth on the segment, and I said that for everything, we are not talking about the growth right now. We have been always saying it's a growth on '26 to '23. Then we do believe that -- and it's the case also from our competitors on field, believing that this over the period will grow low double digit also because of a better macro moving forward.

Oliver Metzger from ODDO BHF.

It's Oliver Metzger from ODDO BHF. So one quick question on the guidance. So historically, we had a big M&A contribution. You also mentioned M&A. So regarding this 10% growth, which M&A factor have you baked in? Second, about the overall competitive landscape as well as the market segmentation. So we know in emerging markets, it's primarily about discounts, so very cheap implants. And you also mentioned in this context, okay, you see strong competition from China rising. given the stronger competition which comes in, do you expect that the emerging markets move up sales or move more towards value implants over time? Or do you expect they remain discount? And having said this, excluding Europe because MDR is something special, but do you see that, for example, the very aggressive competitors will gain and traction will make a more fierce environment for you also in this, let's say, growing markets?

I will take the one on -- first on guidance or ambition. There is no M&A included into this one. And M&A would then come on top. That is all about organic growth for achieving this guidance. That's very clear on this side. When it comes to implant, I think, Andreas, do you want to take a first shot at this one? I'll be happy to complete. [indiscernible] switch it on.

Okay. So fierce competition, I think if it comes to, let's say, the developing markets where you asked the question, is there a fierce competition coming in that will make our life more difficult. I think that the truth is that all the competitors are trying at the moment. I think that the competitors that we are seeing globally present, they are trying hard to be successful in Europe and North America, and we don't see this trend becoming more aggressive and more pronounced. And we are very confident that with what we have in place, the pipeline, the commercial execution that is also key, the education that we spoke about, we can handle this, and we are very well positioned to defend this and to build further market share there.

I think if it comes to emerging markets, I think your observation is correct. Many of those emerging markets are today a lot of value plays. But also there, we see that a premium segment is developing. We see this very strongly in China, where there is a significant potential for all our brands, so for the Straumann brand in the building premium segment in those geographies. But also, of course, we are very well positioned then with our brands like Neodent and the other value brands that are key to success in those markets.

Yes, I will add 2 things on Andrea's point. We have always had those very aggressive players. I think Korean implants and Israeli players, Turkish players have been there 5, 7 years ago. And I don't think it has changed significantly for more aggressive pricing. The second thing, what I would consider that we have seen now in the past, I would say, 9 to 12 months is that thanks to the clinician experience, we are gaining value implant users back to premium. and we have not seen that for quite some time.

And I think it was very well captured by Dr. Panos, which was not -- it's not about price, it's about value creation at the practice level. And he was saying that the implant -- the Straumann implant could be the most expensive. If I can have 2 appointments instead of 5, then I'm better off with a Straumann implant than anything else. And this is really our strategy when it comes to premium. It's a lot about value creation. And this is going with service, with digitalization and with a lot of different, yes, I would say, eco environment that we are driving this value creation to dentists. And it was a lot required by specialists before, but we see a lot of GPs now being very interested by the value creation we deliver with our platform and the digital workflow. Then I think this kind of approach is also rebalancing the pure implant pricing when it comes to the product dimension only.

Susannah Ludwig from Bernstein. I have 2 questions, one on China competition and 2 on the prosthetics market. So I guess, first on China, you talked about specifically players in iOS and orthodontics. Are you also seeing the emergence of strong implant players in China? And I guess with that, how do you see the maturity of the dental market in China? And what is sort of Straumann offering in terms of building out the infrastructure in that market?

And then second, on the prosthetics side, do you guys feel that sort of with the current technology, you obviously talked about a much cheaper price, but do you think that you have the right offering to catalyze the shift to chairside? Often, the prosthetics are talked about more as an art. And so having sort of a lot of different offerings, I think, is important, particularly when we start to talk about front teeth and not [indiscernible].

I will come to China. I think the Chinese company has disrupted different places, not so much on the implant side yet. I mentioned a lot of Koreans that have been there for quite some time. One of the challenge now of the China market is that with very, let's say, cost-effective pricing, it's also challenged small company profitability. then that's one of the reasons why Chinese company on the implant side have not been able to invest a lot in innovation, go-to-market, education, then we are not seeing at least yet, as we speak, the emergence of a very strong player as a Chinese market. Now this is true as we speak. Tomorrow with the VBP 2.0, if they are also having a favoring local manufacturing and local company, this might change. But that's one of the reasons, and I think it's very important that we anticipate all potential options for us.

One, we have our local manufacturing production now, local production that have been localized that have been licensed and that have been, if I can use this word, equalized. That means we have approved by the Chinese authorities, the fact that our Chinese production is equal to our Swiss production, meaning that we can apply the same pricing. We are the only international company in this case be for VBP 2.0, which we believe, in addition to the local manufacturing of our new Medentica line will open up a lot of options to play depending on what the VBP 2.0 is going to be about. That's a little bit how we want to make sure we leverage our Chinese capabilities from a local basis to play also in this market and make sure that, yes, we manage a little bit the solution from that new potential competition coming up. [indiscernible], do you want to take that up.

I mean the question was do we believe we've perfectly positioned, and the answer is yes, definitely. Because there are 2 [indiscernible] on the one end, I alluded to this that [indiscernible] that we're significantly playing [indiscernible] explained that end of 2024, we launched this already in North America with unique offering that will really cater to this kind of needs and we will do so for many years to come and [indiscernible] love the offering that we have on the table. On the chair side, yes, 3D printing is not on the [indiscernible] esthetics yet. Is it going to get there overtime? Yes, we strongly believe so. I mean, it starts with temporary and then it become fine, et. cetera.

And if you look at the innovation pipeline that we see on the [indiscernible] side [indiscernible] what we see in the market as well [indiscernible] development is evolving fast. Obviously, these are permanent teeth. So the registration time line takes some time. But do we believe that the workflow and the system to make it clean, easy and simple will really transform chairside dentistry on the prosthetic side. Absolutely, yes. And I think we are perfectly positioned right now with the lab side and our technology partner and our platform.

Julien Ouaddour from Bank of America. I have one quick follow-up on Veronika's question about margin. If I understand correctly, your aspiration for margin expansion, is it a little bit front-end loaded in '26, '27 like with the savings and then maybe it's a little bit more like muted after. Question on clear aligner. So the market has proven to be a little bit more complex, competitive, macro sensitive than what you initially thought in 2021. You're taking some assumptions in your new aspiration, both on the market and on the share gains. I'm just wondering, in the case clear Aligner market remains muted for longer or just -- I mean, you can't really deliver on the margin. Can you still comment on your 2030 aspiration for the group 10% growth CAGR and on margin?

And last question on buyback. You mentioned better free cash flow, control working capital, less CapEx. You have like a pretty strong balance sheet. I mean, like I was wondering, sorry, why would you haven't discussed any push on buyback for the next 5 years? Like is it something on the table? And if not, why?

We'll take the first one, then I think you guys can follow. I think we have -- our ambition is we talk about 40 to 50 basis point average. Then obviously, there is some moment where it might be a bit higher, some moment where it might be a bit lower, and it will depend about of course, then some of the macro, but also our capability to execute on those sides. Are we going to say that it's front-loaded? No, I don't think that we are going to say that. But do we have the opportunity short term to improve our EBIT capabilities? Yes, with regard to what we have presented.

Now I think we don't want to plan and already guide for the next 1 or 2 years because this is not the goal of these sessions. But I think looking at how we are going to enter into 2026, we'll be able to deliver what is our guidance perspective for 2026 and what it would mean for the next 12 to 18 months. But obviously, the partnership with Smartee will help here. Aligner, Dana, you can take it, but...

Yes, go ahead.

Good. No. And I mean, if you look at -- and even if the market stayed muted, I mean, we have a market share roughly in the 3% range. the potential that is out there in the market is tremendous. And we have been growing in the higher double-digit range for quite some time. It's about -- and I said this, I think, it's multiplying the growth. The potential is there. Now we have the value proposition. We have the right go-to-market with the right agility and the right focus, plus we have as well room for a more, let's say, competitive environment when it comes to a COGS level because it is becoming more competitive. So we strongly believe that we can deliver on our doubling the weight ambition in the overall revenue with the offering and the setup that we have right now.

Talking about the vision, I mean, I think we presented today, we do have very ambitious growth plans. And this is why we reiterated the capital allocation during today's presentation. which means we invest into what we believe brings the biggest return for our investors as well. And this is, first and foremost, our organic growth. And you can imagine if you want to grow double digit, like around 10% with the company we currently are, you need to reinvest back into the business. And to execute on all of those strategic initiatives we presented, this will require allocation of cash as well. And this is why as we speak, I can confirm we do not have any plans to do a share buyback.

Richard Felton from Goldman Sachs. First one, maybe for Florian. You mentioned taking some of the specific elements of Smarty's capabilities and integrating with ClearCorrect. What is the time line for that process? And how quickly can you have a more comprehensive set of products in the market? That's the first one. And then second question to Isabelle. You outlined the clear opportunities to drive better free cash conversion. Could I maybe sort of ask you to push on a little bit more color on the scale of benefit on CapEx or working capital as we think about assumptions and modeling?

Okay. Can I take the first one? I think that's a good one. So the -- maybe take it apart. So the first manufacturing side, I mean, this is already starting early -- not early next year, but already December, January for EMEA and Asia Pacific on the one hand. And secondly, I think there's a lot of value propositions that I've shown you, complexity evaluator, et cetera. This is already going to come in end of Q1. So we -- it's not something that we have a partnership and now we're discussing how to do it. We have been working on this for quite some time. And this is obviously a combination of SLActive and our own software development teams to make this happen. And the first solutions will come to life and accessible for customers already early next year and dental monitoring already started now.

In terms of free cash flow conversion, I mean, we deliberately looked at the conversion part to send a strong signal that we believe free cash flow conversion will grow over proportionately to the improvement in terms of margins in terms of EBIT margin. And to think about that is, I think, more a decrease in terms of intensity we need for both the CapEx over revenue as well as the net working capital over revenue. And if you estimate something like, let's say, 50 basis points per year, I wouldn't say you are not too wrong with that.

Hassan Al-Wakeel from Barclays. Firstly, on implants, can you talk to whether you think the growth in this business will be more skewed to the value side of the business over the coming 5 years compared to what we've seen over the prior 5 years? Or whether you think -- whether you expect to see a similar rate of premium share gain given recent innovations? And on that, the 20% of XL users being new customers is good to see. How is this compared to other product or platform launches in the past?

Secondly, over the last year, you've announced a lot on the digitization agenda, such as your partnership with Sprint Ray. Can you talk about pricing dynamics whether this could get more competitive to your mind? And to what extent do you think we are at an inflection point in terms of penetration and how meaningful contribution this could be in 2030? And then a final one on the guidance for Isabelle. Can you talk about how your midterm targets bake in buffer from a softer macro environment such as the one that we are in today?

So I'd start with the implant business, and thanks for your questions. Let's start with your second question, iEXCEL and the new customer acquisition rate we find with iEXCEL. So it's truly comparable what we see to previous launches like BLT, BLX in a tendency, it's higher even what we see compared to BLX. So we see a very nice traction of growing our business with iEXCEL. And I think this is also a part of the answer for your first question that is do we -- are we confident to continue to grow the premium brand same pace relative to value brands in the future, and we are confident to do so.

And the part of the answer is that we really see it's what Guillaume, what you said, and I really want to underline this, we feel very confident that with the Straumann premium brand, we can also convert users today that are today using value brands. And with this also accelerate the growth and keep the growth momentum on the premium side. So I would say what you saw in the past is pretty much what we expect also to happen in the future.

Okay. And I will take the digital side. And obviously I mean it is becoming more dynamic from a pricing point of view when you look at iOS and that's [indiscernible] what we've shown you, it's a lot about being able to play all of the different price points and as well having your own and Isabelle alluded to this our own iOS manufacturer where as well we have a different gross margin profile on a product to really be able to unlock the potential and [indiscernible] to connect as many customers to this platform as possible to really drive the adoption.

And you mentioned [indiscernible] partnership, that's exactly what -- and I mentioned this before in one of slides as why we've hooked this up to [indiscernible] because we have the full workflow control. And it's really about what kind of value can you create in the workflow, how can you shape your own workflow and how do you capture workflow at the end. And we did not want to have because the Sprint MIDAS is as well available through Henry Schein and other companies, but that's a generic version. We have created a specific version where as well the capsules that you get are directly linked to us. So it's like you have the Straumann MIDAS with the Straumann capsules in a unique workflow where the value lies in the workflow and maybe the specific price if this MIDAS is maybe $1,000 or $2,000 more expensive, actually your return on investment is very fast because the workflow delivers so much efficiency that we don't have to enter into this me-too price war of distributor business.

Maybe we can say from the question also from Asan, we are still seeing this business as being a low double-digit contribution of our top line in 2030. Once again, I think this is from a business model standpoint, we think we have a lot to win from a top line standpoint with digital equipment in the next period. But the clear underlying business model is growing our ortho share and our implant share. The trap with digital equipment is when you have done a good year, you need to do exactly the same. And growing year-over-year means more volume and more capability to sell more scanners. Our goal is really enabling our workflow and selling much more of our differentiated solution. Then we want to keep our capability to significantly land grab the space and being able to connect with all open scanners out there. And we believe that with our value proposition of Serus X3, we are super well positioned for digitalizing DSOs, digitalizing GPs and so on. But still, the business model is a lot on the consumable side.

And regarding your question towards our ambition level, did we explicitly figure in a softer macroeconomic environment? Let me -- I will try to answer that from a different angle because when you look at Straumann, I mean, what we do best is take challenges and turn them into opportunities, if you ask me. So if you look at 2025, we are delivering on the guidance we gave beginning of this year, despite all of the tariff impacts we saw, despite VBP kicking in a little earlier. And this is, I think, what we gave ourselves as targets for the year to come. I mean we're very well aware of the world we're living in. We are very well aware of all of the macroeconomic challenges of the headwinds we have because of the markets we operate in.

But having taken all of that into account, we strongly believe we can deliver this around about 10% CAGR growth for the 5 years to come with a higher EBIT margin of 40% to 50% on average -- 40, 50 bps on average. I think what is important, as Guillaume already stated, we are looking at a CAGR, and we're looking at an average EBIT margin improvement. That obviously means there will be some years where everything is playing out in our favor, and we can significantly outperform. But there can be years like we look at this year where you have a VBP and tariffs and a lot of unexpected things piling up, where we will potentially be slightly below. But this is why we say on average, we strongly believe that this is manageable for us.

Brandon Vazquez from William Blair. Guillaume, first for you. If I look at the history of Straumann and the brand that you guys have built, if I look at Rock Solid, Selective, XL and implants, these are internally organic generated products. You build these brands and the things that you do. And if I look at a lot of the other areas that you're entering now, a lot of it is partnerships. And so the question to me becomes like, can you be a winner in these spaces? Is there something different about those spaces that would allow you to win in them simply in partnerships rather than bringing them inside, investing the R&D needed to make -- to be the real winner.

Second question, slightly different topic on the clear aligners. Look, if I look at the top 3 or the 2 of the 3 initiatives to transform that section or that segment, 2 of the 3 are focused on cost. And we have a lot of competition coming in the space, including some in China that are very low cost. Question here being, is this a coincidence that turning this around is based 2 to 3 pillars here of lowering cost? Is this simply an environment in clear aligners where cost is going to be kind of your biggest leverage in gaining share over time?

Yes, very good question. Brand power is really strong in dentistry. It's all about driving reliability, at least when it comes to the brand, we develop also very strong customer intimacy by developing solutions that people ask us directly, and we have been building a very strong relationship. And this is one of the reasons that not all of our solution will be built on partnership because IOS is going to be our own.

Then -- and this is one of the major, of course, acquisition we have done to keep our destiny in our hands when it comes to the digital workflow and especially in the entry side. And we believe that with Sirius, we are creating a brand that is also going to have a lot of value in the future when it comes to the entry point of the workflow.

Secondly speaking, maybe you have seen we have branded our platform. It's called the Straumann Access platform because we believe that this platform will drive, as we have seen with the doctor, a lot of value per se. And we want to market the platform as a very significant differentiator for our organization and bringing this platform at the center also of our value proposition independently than the segment you use. We do one partnership with Smarty, but Smarty will not appear in what we do. We are just very transparent to everyone about how we are executing on our transformation, but it's going to be ClearCorrect brand. It's going to be the ClearCorrect material, which is our specific ClearQuart. It's going to be the ClearCorrect Portal, which is going to be -- which is our platform, is the ClearPilot, which is our planning software, and it's going to be our -- then ClearCorrect box. Then everything is ClearCorrect branded.

And this is significantly differentiated versus what is existing. And I'm with you, we will keep going to develop very strong brand. It happens that with some, we are going to do, especially what we have done with FreeShape and in Sprint on specific partnership that are going to deliver technology that we don't have but would take too much time to develop. But other than this, all the brands we have been talking about, IOS, clear aligners and so on will be our own brands, and we will keep building up strong brands. But I think it's a very, very important point as we really strongly believe in brand power for premium pricing and from further differentiation.

Okay. Then I take the next one. I would actually object like all 3 initiatives are driving cost savings and all 3 initiatives are driving top line. Because if you go from the value proposition point of view, the technology that we have shown will not only complete the portfolio, but as well drive back-office efficiency, what is going to reduce operating cost. On the logistics side, on the production side, you're looking at it, okay, the aligner COG is lower. But if you're fully automated, your service experience is going to transform radically. So you're going to deliver an aligner in 3 to 4 calendar days. What you can only do at scale and with a lot of automation. So your value proposition on the delivery of the aligners is huge. I mean you have to wait 2 or 3 weeks in Japan or other countries where to receive your aligner case, that's really a problem. But if you can have -- or you lose an aligner, you cannot wait 2 or 3 weeks. So this is a real value proposition as well on shop line side, what we're doing from a manufacturing partnership on this side.

And on the go-to-market side, yes, it's focusing on a country that really matters doubling down. Yes, save some cost, but as well cost that is reinvested in the markets that really matter, creating critical mass on this side and creating an even better customer care and even better case success partner network where we can significantly as well drive the top line through this because it's always product, it's the service and it's the experience that need to go hand-in-hand on this side. But to summarize as well what you asked before is like, yes, the aligner market will become more competitive. And if you're out there and you have really high operating cost with all the competition that is coming in, you as an aligner company in the long term will have a problem. But we believe now with everything that we changed, we're perfectly positioned now to really attack this market in the right way and gain the market share according to the ambition that we put out.

Maybe I will add one thing, Florian, which is, yes, cost in this business is very important. If you look at the business model, we are talking mass customization. Then mass customization, every product is different than from a pure business model standpoint, and that means it's rather costly to manufacture. You don't have a line where you are going to produce thousands and thousands of implants and you are able to do economy of scale like this, which means that scale is critical because that's where you can automate. Otherwise, your mass customization is going through human labor and then you are not able to compete.

Then for us, it was very important to find scale and scale is the proxy for cost. And that's why I would turn it this way. It's really we needed to be successful to find scale to be able to leverage all the strength that we have, which is the synergy with our implant business on GPs, our capability to act fast and make sure that we are leveraging our digital ecosystem that we have created. But if on the back end, you don't have the profitability and the efficiency to deliver at really lower COGS, then we would not have been able to compete. Then it's not so much COGS, it was really scale to leverage what we have done. And I think we have a really good now setup for being competitive and profitable on that space.

Harry Gun of CII. A very simple -- sorry, follow-up questions on your FX impact on margins because that seems quite significant. So my first question is the most impact seems to be happening in the gross margin like a COGS area. So why is the impact so large if 0% of the impact is transactional? And then what percentage of the COGS is in Swiss francs? And what exactly are they? And are the regional gross margins very different for your business?

So a lot of questions baked into one. So let's try to go into the big drivers of the translational part. So you saw an impact in -- although when you look at the differential, so you basically were around about 16% growth adjusted at 2021 FX and then around about 8% for revenue as well as for gross profit. So we do have an impact in COGS. Where is that coming from? Well, basically, we are producing in Switzerland, right, when you look at Ville. So a lot of cost for the product itself occur here in Switzerland, whilst the revenue is somewhere else. So with the consolidation taking place, I mean, from a transactional point of hedge, this doesn't really hurt us. But you can imagine this EUR 100 million, let's say, euros or dollars worth of revenue are much lower now, but the cost base still stays the same in terms of COGS.

And the same thing we have being headquartered here in Switzerland, looking at our OpEx, right? So a lot of headquarter functions are based here and a lot of things we're currently looking into if we can move them somewhere else. But it's really purely if you think about the group P&L, where do we have our revenue and where do the costs occur? You really have this ratio of 20% of cost in Swiss franc. And this is true for the COGS part. This is becoming better already starting next year with the Shanghai campus, obviously, and the U.S. being able to produce for themselves. And we have the OpEx part, which is majorly the building you're currently in. And this is really -- I mean, if you look at it, 20% of our global cost in Swiss franc, this is massive. And you do not really have the leverage anywhere else, but it's pure translational.

So basically, the 20% will just go down from here and then the impact will just go down. So if you could just simplify it, if the Swiss franc appreciates by 1%, how much impact did it have on your margin in the past? And how much will it have going forward?

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Yes. Let us look into that and give you an indication. On top of my head, this is quite difficult given there are so many -- because I mean, you cannot say across all currencies, given we have quite a big exposure towards the U.S. dollar, towards the euro, to the Chinese RMB. So it's always a little bit entangled. But we will look into that and give you an indication.

David Adlington from JPMorgan. Just on the revenue side, your 10% organic growth ambition, maybe you could break down your thoughts geographically rather than by business unit. And should we read anything into the fact there's a '26 base rather than '25, i.e., could you be below the 10% ambition next year? And is there anything with Chinese VBP 2 or the Smarty deal in terms of revenue recognition that means we get a rebase effect next year? And then maybe just on the margins very quickly. Your ex currency, your margins were above the top of the previous 25% to 30% range. It looks like you're expecting less underlying margin expansion over the next 3 to 4 years. What's changed in the business? Is it getting more expensive to grow? Or is it because you've got more growth coming from newer areas that require more investment?

I will take the first one. You want to follow up? Yes, I think very schematically, we are going to say we see over '26 to '30, high single digit in very mature regions like EMEA and North America, and we see double digit in Latin America and Asia Pacific. That's, if you will, a little bit the big picture from that '26, '30 period from an overall top line growth approach.

And looking at the underlying margin expansion, I mean, what we guide for is pretty much what we delivered over the last 4 years. If you look at the FX corrected numbers, we went from something a little bit above 30% corrected for DoctorSmart to 32.6%. So if you do the same exercise over the next couple of years, is we say we are quite confident we can maintain this growth momentum we have seen with all of the initiatives we put into place. So from our -- how we look at it, it's reiterating what we've done before. Although, I mean, we've seen this at constant currency, somehow gets lost in translation a lot of times. This is why we decided to guide on increment year-over-year.

Is the '26 question in terms of why '26 is base rather than '25?

And given we have our '25 guidance out in the market already, right, we are very much confident we will deliver on those targets, which is pretty well aligned with what we guide for today. But given we said, okay, let's look at the first years of our strategy execution, do this midpoint and then let's guide for the next 5 years. There was no specific thinking behind if you're aiming at that, that '25 will be a year that somehow doesn't fit in, but it's really just reiterating our strategy starting from next year.

It was purely because when we look, we said we are at midpoint, then 2021, 2025, we look at the next period, which is '26. We have talked about just midpoint assessment. That's purely more this kind of approach from cutting really our strategic period into 2 equal parts.

So just a quick follow-up on David's question. Is there then putting Smartee benefits aside, any reason why 2026 should deviate materially from 2025 on margin? And then on innovation, over 1/3 of your revenues today are coming from products launched over 10 years ago. So what are the product categories where you have higher share of legacy products? And is there a plan? Or is it even possible to phase out legacy products? And could this help increase your price mix? And Guillaume, I think in your prepared remarks, you mentioned that other countries than China could implement VBP-like policies. So I'm just curious if you could elaborate a bit on the sales exposure to those countries, give us some time line? And to what extent is it reflected already in the guidance for the 2030.

Starting with the margin. So I mean, generally, there's no massive deviation we see for next year compared to this year. I think, I mean, big unknown we are all aware of is the VBP in China, and we will hopefully know more how it will actually play out. So meaning what is the new price point we are looking at and what are the products that are in or that are not in, hopefully, somewhere in mid-Q1. So this for me is still the biggest uncertainty when looking at 2026. But answering your question directly for me, there's no other reason why there should be a deviation towards this year.

When it comes to the 1/3 of our business, which is new products, old products, sorry, it's mainly on the implant side. It's mainly Straumann and it's mainly our legacy line, which is our tissue level, where we own somewhat 80% of the overall segment. Those are customers that are very loyal to us, that are very long-term users and that are also then looking at being developed from our teams, then we are not looking at changing this because dentistry being very conservative. If you start removing this, then you open up the opportunity for them to look around about what would be available. Then I think we have a very, very loyal customer base that we want to keep and that I think which we are losing around 8% to 10% of this business every year from people switching to more advanced portfolio. But I think this is a very captive and very profitable segment that we are keeping.

Now we are, of course, every year looking at what we call our -- then the slow mover and that are now some SKUs that are not going to be used on a frequently basis. And as part of our efficiency program, we are looking at them and removing, of course, those ones from our portfolio to increase manufacturing efficiency. When it comes to be VBP like, I would say there is not so much country that are implementing VBT, so to say, but that are starting to I would say, recommend local manufacturing for market access. There is nothing which is set in stone yet, but we have seen some of those discussions in India, some of those discussion in Saudi, as an example, in order to favor local investment from a manufacturing standpoint. That's the 2 only countries that we have heard about.

But obviously, this is something that we are strongly looking at and considering in seeing how this would develop if this is really something which will materialize to have access to those markets, taking into consideration that those markets are very interesting for a future growth standpoint. Closer to VBP, I would say, but a bit more interesting than VBP, Sweden is, for example, the next country in Europe, which is going through implant reimbursement. They are going to set the price for a certain category of people, and I don't remember the entire detail, but it's people over 60 or 65 years old. It's going to be too implant reimbursed for overdenture treatment. That is exactly what has happened in Korea.

Korea is so much developed because there have been some government policies that have reimbursed implant treatment for a specific category of people for a specific type of treatment. And we are going to see those kind of reimbursing policies to really benefit from the category of people that are needing that most. And for sure that it will significantly increase the volume of the Swedish market moving forward, and this is currently under preparation, which should be executed by the beginning of 2026.

And we have taken everything into consideration for our long-term ambition, knowing that this is really depending of any kind of government taking power in the different countries with regard to the social or liberal kind of agenda that they are going to have on the health care side. When it comes to China, it has been very clearly the fact that it has been in the 5 years plan of the Chinese government, the previous 5 years plan to be able to decrease significantly health care cost for the Chinese households as health care and real estate or, let's say, rental has been the 2 biggest amount of spending that they are having, which is somewhat blocking the rest of the consumptions and of course, fueling the consumption growth. And this is what has been the theory that has been applied and very well executed in all the different health care segments of China. And this is where the VBP has been executed at least the first time in 2023 that we're seeing in 2025 now happening for execution in 2026.

Daniel [indiscernible]. So just to make sure that I got the right interpretation, the 10% growth, it looks like you have so many door openers across the segments, doesn't need a major innovation until the end of the decade, being it in implants or aligners? Or do we have a special on the cake later? That's the first question.

If you look at all the different segments and the significant growth we have, you need to have innovation. I think Andreas put it very clearly, innovation is the name of the game. And to the question to [indiscernible] before saying, how do you expect premium or non-premium growing or it has to be with innovation. We expect to deliver the same outmarket performance than versus the past period, and it has been with innovation. We have started benefiting from the launch of BLT. We launched BLX. We are now going to benefit from an iEXCEL launch and another innovation on the premium side during the sequence during 2026, 2030. Same for Challenger. We have a very strong system that will come also during the period. We are going to see that on IOS as well. Then yes, innovation is at the heart of what we do for market share gain and delivering on this ambition.

Okay.. And last question on Smartee T. I understand your rationale, but the Chinese side, I don't really get -- I mean, they are not stupid. They don't do it for free. So they produce for you 20% cheaper. They give it to you and you sell it under the ClearCorrect brands in your territories. I understand that there are different lines, high line, low line Scallop, but the Scallop are more popular in Asia where they are anyway. So I don't really get the rationale for them, if you can elaborate a bit on that.

I will let the different stream line explanation to Florian. I think it's simple. And I would say it's a huge opportunity for us as an organization. We were looking for scale as a partner, and there are not many. And it happens that Smartee, which is still, as Florian clearly expressed that, it's still owned in majority by the founder. -- and he spent a lot of, of course, of investment of his own money and energy to start building this company more than 20 years ago. And he has really been able to become a significant player among the leaders in the Chinese market. He was having when we met him, no plan and no investment capability for internationalization. Then his benefit is having someone who is going to do the entire internationalization of the technology that he has been setting up and he is going to have revenue he would have never had otherwise.

That will obviously very significantly increase the valuation of his organization by increasing significantly in top line and obviously increasing significantly on the EBIT side because he's going to manufacture for us but he will not having any cost of sales and 0 cost related to this incremental sales that you will be able to recognize at a lower price level, obviously, because it's more as a kind of distributor-like revenue with 0 cost associated to this.

Then we have been really, I think, we met each other with each of us having a significant opportunity of value creation on both sides. And it's where at this level of partnership, this is really what you must have, and we have really aligned interest in what we are doing from his side for company valuation and for our side for being able to deliver a very competitive value proposition. And from [indiscernible], yes, he has trim line that I think most of the customers are used to and this is one of the huge opportunity, but I think the choice of trim line is actually a new significant advantage when it comes to ClearCorrect, right. And this is something that is [indiscernible]. No, I mean, [indiscernible] line is actually the most dominant [indiscernible] line in the whole market. Now you see in Europe even align technology for instance or other competitors, Angel Align, they only [indiscernible] line. We know that some of them are launching our low trim line as well. The [indiscernible] trim line is very, very prevalent in the North American Market and Brazilian Market and in the European Markets.

And I think like [indiscernible] extremely nicely, they're the big players in China. They see how much internationalization costs when you look at Angel, for instance, with your legal entities, with your planning centers, local language, et cetera. And I think Mr. Yao as a founder, that's why he complemented us very well is like he wants to do this in a smarter way. And I think together with Smartee and Straumann, we can really play a significant role going forward.

Julien from Jefferies. Three questions on my side. The first one is partly a follow-up to what you mentioned, Guillaume, about reimbursement increasing the share or the penetration of implants versus conventional treatments. I'm just curious whether you guys have a sense of how the penetration of implants versus conventional treatment has evolved over the past decade and how you see that evolving into the next decade? And maybe what are you doing in terms of lobbying the market maybe with clinical evidence or anything like this that would accelerate this move?

The second question is on the value implants. There is a pretty steep difference in market share for value implants on your side between North America and LatAm versus Europe and APAC. So just interested in what -- is there a specific strategy or initiative that you plan to have to increase your share in value implants in those underpenetrated markets for you guys?

And the last question is on orthontics. I think you mentioned that 40% of the market right now is probably in the hands of GPs. That's actually probably higher than what I had in mind. So just curious how you see this evolving? Is this really GPs taking a bigger share of that pie going forward? And what's the reason behind this, please?

I will start with reimbursement. I propose Andreas to take the value expansion and Florian also then on the clear aligner side. I think it's -- Julien, it's a very good question, and I don't think we have done enough on the lobbying side when it comes to bringing more reimbursement. But as you know, public policies right now is much more on shrinking those kind of reimbursement than increasing it, even though you see Sweden is having a different view. It's obviously because at the end, the total cost of treating those [indiscernible] and those very important challenges on oral health is having a systematic consequence of global health. And I think there is clear evidence of this now.

We may not have, let's say, pushed that enough in lobbying activities, and this is something that we are really thinking about, especially associating insurance companies with this. And that especially for the European side, that should be really significantly developed because when we see actually the very strong health of the EMEA business is a lot related to that caution effect given by reimbursement, either by then the private insurance sector, which are driven by the employer or by also the fact that you have some still social public policies that are reimbursing a part of the implant treatment.

Then when you compare what's happening in North America or in Asia Pacific, where you have a big up and down from a macro standpoint, we don't see that in EMEA at all anymore. Then this is something that we need to push from our, let's say, overall agenda, and this is something we are working on because before we were not having the data on how much [indiscernible] is done and how much implant is done. And actually, the beauty of all those digital strategies that we are getting those data now. And we will be able to see how much of those 3 unit bridge are failing, are working and being able to compare a lot more data that we have done in the past. And what we can see, this is exactly what we have noticed with our freeShape partner when we look at data from a global standpoint, there are 6 to 7x more alternative treatment done versus an implant treatment. Then we have so much to do still to grow the market and train dentists doing the gold standard, which is implant treatment.

Yes, I think value side.

So on the value side, you're correct. I mean, looking at LatAm, I think the success formula is easy. I mean this is the home market of Neodent. Neodent is really owning the Brazilian market and is having a strong position there still expanding. I think the success in North America was somewhat a product that is very much geared to immediacy and full large indications. And also, we gained a lot of traction in the DSO space based on a very strong sales execution and education that the North American team did. They did an amazing job there. I think APAC, the topic is twofold. I think it's registration. I mean there -- I mean, you see the biggest value bucket in APAC, which is China. We are waiting for the registration to happen for Neodent and that will make a big impact, and there are other registrations that we are waiting for.

And the second part is in APAC, we were focusing all -- a lot of our activities on the premium brand so far, and we continue to do so. And additionally, we will also focus our, let's say, go-to-market, but especially also education pieces for educating starters more and more on Neodent and the value brands there and with this driving penetration in APAC. And I think EMEA, there's probably not one EMEA. I mean EMEA is -- I think we have a very strong penetration already. We see markets like Italy and Spain, where we have a lot of traction, a lot of market share with our value brands already. And then we see other markets like Germany and maybe U.K. and the Nordics that are more premium markets that are less -- also less immediacy markets. And in those markets, I would say we have a bit of a time lag. But also there, it's all about go-to-market and education that will do the trick over time.

Okay. And then on the auto side, so your question was why do we believe that GPs actually are going to contribute more to the growth going forward? And it's a very straightforward answer. GPs see a lot more patients. when you're in a specialist practice, you see usually a lot of children where you can obviously do your aligner treatment on children as well on mixed dentition. But the older the patient grows, you would not, let's say, in the 30s or the 40s, you go to an orthodontist to do this kind of treatment maybe when you've seen something in advertisement about this and, okay, where do I go? But the GP is much more able to identify potential cases for the aligner treatment or aligner therapy.

And then -- and this was last but one slide is there were certain -- or there are certain obstacles to adoption. So they need confidence because for them it's not a one-time stop of this patient, it's a lifetime. Usually you are not changing your dentist all the time, unless you are moving around the world, right. So they need the confidence that doing the right cases, so that's why [indiscernible] this kind of complexity [indiscernible]. This is what you can easily do or he are helping you to do this. We're hand holding you. And if you create this kind of confidence you really have already [indiscernible] the first step.

Secondly, it's about selling this kind of treatment. So [indiscernible] with these kind of outcomes simulator technology, but as well other means to reconvert the patient afterwards. [indiscernible] what we have on the implant side, but then as well the confidence, the [indiscernible] capability, and this would increase and with AI and [indiscernible] it will become easier and easier, easier to do. That's why we beleive that on the [indiscernible] side they will contribute significantly more growth in the future.

There is one last question left online. Let's take this one and then close the session. Chorus Call, could we please have Vic?

I really appreciate you putting this day together. So a couple for me. Maybe perhaps you can talk about the puts and takes around your EBIT margin expansion goals and how we should think about peak margins for Straumann. And then my follow-up question was on M&A. You highlighted M&A included in your updated target plan. But I'm missing just curious how you think about the targets for M&A adjacencies and current valuations in the market.

Let's start. I think EBIT margin expansion, we've discussed quite exhaustively already. So I think, I mean, the building blocks we saw were really in terms of getting all of those operational and organizational excellence things into the organization to make sure we can grow in a more value-accretive way. But then on the other hand side, it's obviously the innovation we have seen Andreas presents. So usually, when you launch new products, you come in at a higher margin. It's all of the ortho improvements. So I think it's a mix of a lot of things we can do to positively influence and then combined, obviously, with the headwinds we see in the market with the VBP in China taking place with the DSOs on the rise. So I think all of that is baked into that guidance and the volatility we're trying to manage with giving an average guidance over the 5-year period because we are quite confident we can deliver on that one.

Yes. When it comes to M&A, while M&A is still a very important part of what we do from scouting for assessing the space. But once again, I think the thing which is important is that we can achieve our 2030 ambition without M&A from the model that we have been building. Now every M&A for us that would accelerate our strategic agenda is obviously on the list. And we are having regular analysis and discussion and also making sure that we can scout new technology that will allow us to disrupt some of the segment that we have seen.

Then best example is obviously the [indiscernible] or some potential then partnership like Smartee or then the Sprint. And there are some M&A opportunity here that we are looking on a regular basis together with some of our partners, together with the Board and each of our business unit and regional leaders. Then yes, M&A is still something very important we are looking at. We don't have any, let's say, imminent target as we speak, but we have a lot of potential improvement of our strategic agenda that we are assessing at this moment in time.

And when it comes to valuation of M&A, then it depends a lot about where they are located, what is the current than the market positions and their current potential of development, then I would say it's really depending target by target and especially making sure that we can have a very clear plan of shared value creation, this is what we are looking at, especially. With this, Marcel. Can we close?

We can. You will have the last word. So just everybody here, you're invited to our flying lunch. People [indiscernible] -- the colleagues will still be outside. We also have some colleagues of the Management Board being there. Thank you very much for coming. It was a huge pleasure. Thanks for being here, safe travels back home. And the last word is yours, Gill.

I think it's time to go. Then a big thank you for everyone coming. Big thank you to the team for the preparation and for everyone setting that up. I think it's always quite a lot of work for us, but it was really exciting to share all the news, the excitement we have with everything is coming, and we are looking forward to see you in all that different meetings and one-to-one and congresses that we are going to share. Thanks again.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Straumann Group Q3 2025 Results Conference Call and Webcast. I am Valentina, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions]. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Guillaume Daniellot, CEO. Please go ahead. .

Thank you, and good morning or afternoon to all of you. Thanks for attending this conference call on the Straumann Group's Third Quarter Results 2025. Please take note of the disclaimer in our media release and on Slide 2. During this conference call, we are going to refer to the presentation slides that were published on our website this morning. As usual, the discussion will include some forward-looking statements. As shown on Slide 3, I will start with the highlights for the third quarter. Isabelle will then cover the financial details. And afterwards, I will share strategic updates and our outlook. We will be happy to answer your questions at the end of the presentation. Let's start with our highlights and move directly to Slide 5. I'm really proud of our teams globally for the great progress they made this quarter and how they are demonstrating agility to adapt to different market dynamics.

In the third quarter, our revenue reached CHF 602 million, representing a strong organic growth of 8.3%. For the first 9 months, we achieved CHF 2 billion, which is up 9.6% organically. Building on this strong performance, I'm excited to announce the important steps in our orthodontic strategy, which includes new partnerships that will enable us to transform our clear line of business and unlock the full potential of our ClearCorrect brand. Later in the presentation, I will explain how we will accelerate innovation, increase profitability and strengthen ClearCorrect's position for sustainable growth together with our strategic partners, Smart Tea and Dental Monitoring. On the digital innovation side, one of the highlights of the third quarter was the launch of our new Senior Anthogyr scan. These marks another major step in strengthening our scanner portfolio across all price segments and our digital ecosystem through its full integration in our Straumann access cloud-based platform. On the operational side, we are very pleased to announce that our new compass in Shanghai is fully operational by now and delivering first commercial products to the Chinese market. With this, we have significantly strengthened our supply chain resilience ahead of the upcoming VBP 2.0, which is expected to be announced end of this year. These achievements strengthen our foundation and create the opportunity for continued growth, supporting our confirmed full year 2025 outlook of high single-digit organic revenue growth and a 30 to 60 basis point improvement in the core EBIT margin at constant 2024 currency rent. Now turning to Slide 6 and the regional development. I would like to start by highlighting that EMEA has once again achieved an excellent organic revenue growth with 11.2%. This success was driven by a strong execution across all businesses. including double-digit growth in orthodontics and strong traction from our recent innovations in our core implant segment.

The Straumann brand continued to gain market share while our challenger brand, Neodent and Anthogyr also grew strongly, reflecting our ability to serve different customer segments across different price points. In North America, we delivered solid growth in a still volatile environment. Organic growth accelerated to 5.7%, reflecting strong execution and growing adoption of IXL implant systems and our digital solutions. From a general perspective, patient flow remained rather stable during the quarter, even if we could witness some initial pocket improvements. In Asia Pacific, the significant slowdown compared to the previous quarter reflects 2 very different dynamics. On the one hand, in China, we have seen a significant slowdown due to the initial effect of VBP 2.0. Some patients have studied postponing treatments and distributors reducing inventories. On the other hand, markets outside China continued to grow strongly, especially India, Thailand, Australia and Japan, driven by robust patient demand and expanded access to clear through intensified education activities.

Finally, Latin America once again delivered a remarkable performance with 18% showing double-digit growth across all segments. Our channel and Neodent remains the key growth driver, while the Straumann premium brands, our orthodontics and digital businesses contributed strongly. Therefore, overall, our regional performance highlights the strength of our strategy and our ability to execute with discipline and agility across markets. with each region contributing with good growth despite varied market conditions. For this, let me now hand over to Isabelle who will take you through the financial performance.

Thank you, Guillaume, and hello, everyone. Let's move to Slide 8, where you can see the revenue bridge for the third quarter. Our reported revenue increased from CHF 586 million to CHF 602 million, which represents a 2.9% growth. The franking exchange rate effect of CHF 30 million is still very significant, but lower than in the second quarter. Overall organic revenue growth led us to 8.3%. As already mentioned by Guillaume, EMEA, our largest region, was once again the main growth contributor. Accounting for roughly half of the total increase in revenue, followed by strong performance of our Latin America region, which contributed more than 20% to the group's growth. Despite the currency effect, which we still expect to have a top line impact of 470 to 490 basis points for the full year. Our underlying business remains very strong. reflecting both the strength of our brands and our disciplined execution across regions. Continuing with Slide 9, let's talk about our assets to mitigate tariffs. As you know, new tariff regulations have added cost pressure to the business. To contact this, we have continuously implemented a set of mitigating measures over the past months. In the short term, we have increased inventory levels in key markets and adjusted logistic flows accordingly to secure continuity of supply chain. Thanks to these mitigating measures, we could sustainably reduce the effects of tariffs to around CHF 20 million to CHF 25 million for the full year 2025. For next year, we are increasing the share of locally produced finished products, including local assembly and packaging lines to reduce tariff exposure and improve supply chain efficiency further. For next year, we currently expect a similar impact from tariffs of around CHF 30 million.

With this, we are protecting our margins while maintaining excellent service levels. Finally, a quick reminder on our capital allocation priorities on Slide 10. Our first priority remains reinvestment and sustainable business growth. Followed by maintaining a strong balance sheet and selective M&A to accelerate strategic execution. With continued earnings growth, we also aim to maintain or increase our dividend over time. So in short, we invest where the return on capital is higher also from a shareholder perspective. With that, let me hand back to Guillaume for the strategic update.

Thank you, Isabelle. Let's now look at the key strategic highlights of the quarter. As shown on Slide 12, our total addressable market is estimated at around [ CHF 20 billion ], spanning across implantology, orthodontics, digital equipment prosthetics and regenerative solutions. We currently hold roughly 12% market share with this market, which leaves us ample room for further growth. especially with new dedicated opportunities now to play in extent. Moving on to Slide 13. I'm very excited to share important strategic developments, which will transform our orthodontics business. To reshape our [ C-Line ] of franchise and improved performance, we are focusing on 3 pillars. First, we are building a very competitive and differentiated ClearCorrect value proposition, delivering a superior customer and patient experience. Second, we are strengthening our manufacturing capabilities to increase profitability. And third, we are prioritizing strategic markets to accelerate future growth and establish a leading position especially among general partitioners, Innovation remains at the core of our strategy to accelerate growth and improve profitability in this orthodontic segment.

To achieve this, we are partnering with Smartee a global orthodontic leader that will help us bring new solutions to market faster and with greater efficiency. Smartee is a leading clear aligner organization with more than 20 years' experience known for its innovation, quality and clinical excellence. Smartee is the ideal partner for the next phase of our orthodontic growth. It will increase the ClearCorrect value proposition through expanding education and product options. This includes new clinical capabilities such as treatment outcome simulation tool, mandibular advancement functionality and multiple streamline options to address a broader range of clinical needs and customers.

As part of the partnership. Smartee will also take over full ClearCorrect production for EMEA and Asia Pacific regions, 2 of our largest and fastest-growing geographies. This transition will enable faster scaling, higher efficiency and significantly lower manufacturing costs through Smartee's fully automated state of your production facilities. The production for these regions is currently based in Marcela and Germany, which is planned to be phased out by early 2026. This partnership unites the complementary strength of 2 industry leaders. By combining ClearCorrect's global commercial reach with Smart's world-class technology and production capabilities, we will achieve the scale, cost optimization and margin improvement needed to build a profitable orthodontic business.

Moving to slide 14, in addition to Smart partnership, we will further strengthen ClearCorrect's value proposition by expanding our long-standing collaboration with downtime monitoring. We are partnering on a unique AI-powered remote monitoring technology, which is directly and uniquely integrated with the ClearCorrect doctor [indiscernible] . This innovation enables clinicians to monitor cases more efficiently and help general practitioners manage treatments with greater confidence and convenience. It enhances the overall experience for both practitioners and patients and supports our ambition to drive broader adoption of clear aligner treatment among general practitioners in our key strategic segment. Going on the foundation of this new value proposition and the more cost-effective manufacturing capabilities for Smartee, we have also implemented a focused go-to-market model design around the key growth markets. By concentrating our sources in high potential profitable markets and aligning our Octo organization under one integrated structure, we can operate with greater agility, increased efficiency and better customer focus. This approach strengthens our engagement with general practitioners and DSOs and MC's execution discipline and support sustainable growth. With all these developments, ClearCorrect is becoming more versatile, clinically advanced and efficient strengthening our competitiveness and supporting our ambition to achieve a leading position in the global orthodontics market in the future.

Let's now move from orthodontic to implantology on Slide 15, where innovation, education and digitalization continue to drive our leadership. Let's start with our premium brand, [ Straumann ] and its latest innovation iEXCEL. This high-performance implant system is becoming one of the most successful product launches we had in our recent history. iEXCEL combines 4 implant design in one system with a unified positive platform, a single connection and a single surgical kit. This unique offering simplifies workflows reduces inventory and especially give clinicians true intraoperative flexibility, enabling design implant changes on the spot during surgery without changing instruments. To further differentiate, iEXCEL is also coming with [indiscernible] active, 2 of our unique and most advanced technologies enabling minimally invasive protocols and faster osseointegration. We are really pleased to report that we have already sold more than 1 million iEXCEL implants, which is a fantastic milestone that shows the strong confidence clinicians placed in this system. This success reflects our innovation and execution strength within the Straumann premium brands, which continue to drive market share gains and new customer acquisition. One of the greatest example of a new customer acquisition with iEXCEL is the Mano Clinic in Portugal, which recently chose to partner with us and transitions its portfolio to Straumann.

The decision of this highly respected intent-focused DSO highlights our comprehensive solutions and digital capabilities create real value for clinicians and patients elect. Together, these achievements demonstrate how our focus on innovation, digital integration and close customer partnership continues to translate into that tangible market momentum. Let's move to Slide 16. Our comprehensive education activities are key to improving market access, building stronger partnerships and gain market share. In the third quarter, we continued to expand our partner education network and deliver hands-on courses, particularly in Asia Pacific. These programs, allocations to refine their surgical and restorative skills gain confidence in [ immedia ] protocols and operate digital workflows. By investing in education we not only raised clinical standards, but also reach new customers and strengthen our market share. And with this further reinforce our leadership in implantology. In addition, we engaged with thousands of dental professionals in the third quarter at major events, such as the DSO CEO Summit in Boston, where we held strategic discussions on expanding access to care and driving efficient growth through partnership.

In addition, we demonstrated our latest innovation at the EAO Congress in Monaco and the international aesthetic days attended by more than 1,400 emissions. Let's move to Slide 17. At this event, we have launched our new SIRIOS X3 Anthogyr scanner, which is another very exciting innovation. This new iOS is our new generation wireless scanner that combines exceptional scanning speed, accuracy and economics in a lightweight compact design. Position in the mid-price segment, SIRIOS X3 strengthened our IOS portfolio, together with the entry level of SIRIOS and the premium Trio solution by free shape enabling us to serve the different market segments. The first reactions from clinicians have been really, really strong. early adopters highlight the ease of use and the effortless integration into our digital platform for an access.

This launch further strengthens our position in digital dentistry and marks another important step in expanding our creation base connected to our stromal ecosystem. Moving to Slide 18. Actually, thanks to our competitive digital portfolio, we are then continuously growing our [indiscernible] user base who are then benefiting from our simpler, faster workflows through the cloud-based from an access platform, which will further drive growth. A good example is our fast mono workflow, which is a streamlined, simple free step approach that helps to restore a posterior case quicker and easier. The solution uses fewer parts and reduce significantly share time by removing appointments, helping dentists with more efficiency to deliver highly reliable clinical outcome. Another one is the latest from an exact innovation, which support the digital [indiscernible] workflow. It significantly helps clinicians treat patients who need a full set of new fees by guiding them through each step from the first digital scan all the way to the final restoration.

It simplify what is usually a complex process and saves time both for the dentist and most notably for the patient. Turning now to Slide 19 and our progress in China. As mentioned before, we have seen a significant slowdown due to the initial effect of VBP 2.0 as some patients have studied postponing treatments and distributors are reducing inventories. Despite this early impact, we are well prepared for the implementation of VBP 2.0 and have taken proactive steps to strengthen our local setting. First, the ramp-up of our Shanghai Campus has been completed, and the site has received all necessary licenses for local production. This milestone allows us to manufacture Froman and Anthogyr implants in China, reducing lead times and improving cost efficiency. Secondly, as you know, in the past years, our business in China has been driven primarily by our premium brand and supported by not in the value segment. Now to be prepared for the VBP 2.0, we are continuing to broaden our implant portfolio to serve all the different price segments.

Therefore, alongside our [indiscernible] and onto tier brands, we are developing a new brand for the ECO segment, together with a local partner, ensuring we can meet customer needs on the lower price points. In parallel, we continue investing in education and training to support clinicians in adopting digital workflows and building their implantology expertise. These initiatives will help shape a sustainable growing environment implantology market in China based on clinical excellence and patient trust. With these steps, we are well prepared for VBP 2.0 with the right infrastructure, brand portfolio and local capabilities to continue growing and supporting our customers in this strategically important growth market despite any VBP 2.0 decisions.

Moving to Slide 20. We strongly believe that our culture is what truly sets up the part in an environment that is becoming more complex and volatile, our culture is what enables us to adapt faster execute better and stay close to our customers. As a company, our commitment goes beyond business. It was very inspiring to see more than 5,000 colleagues from around the world come together over several months for the Smile movement, the global employee initiatives that UN!Q team to make a positive impact beyond dentistry. Through local activities, volunteering and fundraising the Smile movement celebrates our shared purpose of unlocking people's lives by creating slides. This year, our collects turn that purpose into action rising over CHF 0.5 million for the Straumann Group Foundation through their collective energy, a true reflection of passion and dedication that defines our culture.

Let's now move to Slide 22 to talk about the outlook for the full year. With our diversified portfolio, strong brands and continued focus on innovation and execution, we are well positioned to keep delivering sustainable and profitable growth. Despite ongoing macroeconomic uncertainties and the impact of tariffs, we remain confident and confirm our full year 2025 outlook. High single-digit organic revenue growth and a 30 to 60 basis point improvement in the core EBIT margin at constant 2024 at currency rate.

Before we close, let me highlight our upcoming Capital Markets Day, which will take place on [ November 25 ] in Basel, Switzerland. This event will give us the opportunity to take a deeper look at our market priorities, our innovation road map and our ambitions. I look forward to seeing many of you there, either in person or online, and to engage in inspiring discussions. And with this, we are happy to take your questions. As usual, we kindly ask you to limit the number of questions to 2 in order that each participants can have a chance to put their questions within the available time. Cisco can we have the first question, please?

The first question comes from Julien Dormois from Jefferies.

Yes. I will limit myself to 2. Starting with China. Obviously, the key topic investors have been focused on in the past few months. So just wondering if you could try and quantify what's been the magnitude of the decline in China in the quarter. And how we should think about Q4 because this will obviously have an influence probably start influence, I guess, on your -- on the development in Q4. So just in to hear your thoughts on that -- and second one is on the U.S. wondering you have mentioned stable patient flows in the country with some pockets of improvements. How do you see that playing out in the fourth quarter and into '26. I know you had previously commented that you were expecting maybe stronger growth in 2025 versus '24? How do you think about this guidance at this point?

Yes. Thanks, Julien. Then I would say, first, the third quarter in China, I think you more than 2 questions even with Q3, Q4 and 2026, but we'll try to cover that. We have seen a significant slowdown in China due to an early and initial impact of VBP 2.0 as we said, ahead of the potential lower pricing of influent treatment by the Chinese government that will be setting that potentially by the end of the year. we know that patients are starting to postpone treatment and distributors have started regency inventories and even a little bit earlier than planned, meaning that in Q3, China has been around flattish. What does it mean for Q4? It means that as the VBP 2.0 FX will increase, obviously, [indiscernible] will be postponing treatment and distributor will be continuing destocking, meaning that, obviously, the China and APAC will be moving in the negative side in the fourth quarter.

Now when you look a little bit further despite the fact that we will have a obviously, a bit more in China and APAC, more challenging quarter, Q4, Q1, while then the VBP will be implemented, we believe that they are quite for 2026, reason to be positive about China moving forward. First, because -- we are the only international premium brand with local manufacturing, all licenses and equivalents obtained for both than our Straumann brand, also our Anthogyr brand and our partner brand, meaning that if there is any aspect of the VBP that will somewhat support local manufacturing. I don't think there is any other company best place than we are. Thanks to our 4 brands, position also at the different price points. We don't know exactly how the price will be played in the VBP 2.0, but we believe that we will have all the different brands and portfolio to be able to benefit from any of the faster-growing segment moving forward.

Finally, we also think from the fact that the pent-up demand from Q4, Q1 will also support the rest of the 2026 and that China is still something that we need to keep remembering, it's a very, very underpenetrated market, then we still believe that there is a lot of potential growth that needs to be unlocked moving forward. Not only by the price effect that the authorities are trying to play, but also through education that will significantly continuing to invest on. Then obviously, we see China as a future backloaded 2026, but still as being growing moving forward. Now when it comes to NAM, North America, we have been very pleased with what we have seen in the third quarter. And I would impact that in 3 points. The first one is that the market indeed is remaining stable, even though we see some patient segment that have been willing to go for treatment more than we have seen in the past quarters. One of the aspect is also because -- and that's the second point, having the DSO making more investment to create patient traffic as we have been alluded to in the past quarter, then driving faster patient flow and faster growth in this customer segment.

And this is a significant area of development versus the past quarter, and we are pretty well positioned on the DSO side in North America. And thirdly, this is also important to note that we have also improved some aspects of our sales execution, which is delivering continued market share gains. And it's a lot about leveraging our strong innovation such as iEXCEL, where we see higher growth. And we have also our differentiated workflow, which is supporting significantly practice efficiency that has been driving new customer acquisition. Then I would say there is a part of the market, which is a little bit coming better, but also some improved execution on our side that we are seeing as sustainable. And how it's going to be 2026. I think at this moment in time, obviously, it's not easy to express because we have seen that very volatile but we see 2 positive things from our side.

The first is that we have innovation that will keep us delivering above market growth. Not only on the implant side, but also, obviously, on the [ general ] side with our [ CROs X3 ] and future capability to scan fullage with a very high precision that I think will be very appealing with the specialist segment. Our iEXCEL will continue to deliver growth, especially because it's going to be supported by additional portfolio line extension. Like VLC 4.0 that has been requested by the North American market, also new pros decline with specific laser technology to texture the store face differently that will continue to significantly differentiate IXL as the best-in-class system out there. And

I would say that finally, as you have heard, everyone expect another [ '25 ] rate cuts in the next meeting by the Fed. That while it will not change yet completely the market dynamic because it needs an additional, I would say, 75 basis points, then it will send a positive message that should influence consumer confidence as we have seen, that has been one of the effect that has slowed down the market in the first half. Then all in all, yes, we believe that if it continues like this, we have a lot of very good dimensions for expecting a better now moving forward. Sorry for the long answer, but I hope it covered all the different points that you were asking for.

The next question comes from Susannah Ludwig from Bernstein.

I have 2, please. I guess just following up on China. Could you share whether this is more patients pulling off on procedures or whether it's more of a reduction in inventories? And then how many months of inventory do the distributors typically hold in China? And then second, on the partnerships with the orthodontics, I guess, can you share more of that prefactotential ophthalmic impact. You've previously noted that more scale is needed to get to profitability in that business. So that's with these new partnerships. Where do you see sort of the potential for the orthodontic profitability moving?

When it comes to China, I think it's -- we have seen both effects playing at the same time. And this is what we have seen also in the past 10 where you have really this combination of attack, then you have -- at the beginning you have -- it starts by the patient starting to postpone some treatment step by step. And then obviously, when the distributors are deciding to reduce inventories, this is where it accelerates significantly because this is where they are obviously stopping ordering at the same rate, and this is obviously what is having the biggest impact at the end.

Then this is what we have seen at the end of the quarter of this third quarter. And that's what we believe we are going to see increasing on the fourth quarter because this is what we have seen also in 2022 Q4 that has significantly impacted our last quarter of 2022. The inventory, they are carrying, generally speaking, it's a 3-month inventory. Then this is what we had in the channel mid than -- Q3, and this is what will decrease significantly during the fourth quarter. When it comes to our orthodontic partnership, we are obviously very excited by this. We have said a couple of times that we were needing to invest significantly in increasing our value proposition as we are seeing also new competition coming in. And we have especially expressed a couple of signs that we were needing to reach scale in order to be able to drive sustainable profitable growth in the future. And that's why we are really, really excited to announce the Smart partnership because it will really help us to progress on both sides that are critical for the future of our orthodontic franchise.

As expressed a little bit in the presentation, the first point of the Smartee partnership is to significantly improve our value proposition. This volume proposition is going to be increased through the Smartee technology that will allow us to have new clinical capabilities. And I think those new clinical capabilities are really significant. They are major ones. We will have, for example, CBCT integration in our planning. We are going to have different streamline options -- we have a flat streamline at the moment, which are high and low, but we are going to have a scanner streamlined in the future, which is one of the major expectations of a lot of clinicians we met because this is what they are used to. We are going to expand indications in the mandibular advancement functionality as an example, which is also going to allow us then to go to more advanced users that we were not able to do before. And finally, something which is important to increase conversion rate and supporting the GPs to convert patient case, we are going to have that modern treatment outcome simulator, which is very important, obviously, to present to the patients what should be the clinical outcome.

Then if you put all of this together, we are going to have a very unique differentiated value proposition. That should allow us to really accelerate significantly on shares in this segment. And the second aspect that we have really significantly highlighted is that Smartee we've been one of the leaders in this field and especially in the Chinese market, is really helping us to gain scale, then we can then benefit from their scale and their automated manufacturing side. in order to significantly lower our manufacturing costs. And this is what will help us obviously very quickly in the next than -- 12 months to reduce our costs on our existing volume, especially in EMEA, in Asia Pacific. But also for all the different new customers and new business we are going to do, it will be at this new profitability side. And that's where when you combine those 2, it's a very kind of an exciting transformation of what we do that will bring both top line and bottom line some significant development.

The next question comes from David Adlington from JPMorgan.

Sorry to focus on China again. But maybe just a slightly bigger picture. There's a lot of moving parts for next year with respect to obviously surprising headwinds but volumes, you're going to have some pent-up demand on potential restocking? Maybe sort of bigger picture, do you think you can grow both the China business and APAC next year? What do you think is going to be a year of consolidation. And then secondly, in term terms of impact on margins from the shift to Chinese production. Obviously, lower cost of production in China, but you are going to be left with some potentially stranded costs at your Swiss facility. Just wondering how we should think about capacity utilization there, whether you can reduce that capacity in Switzerland to offset that production utilization?

Yes. Thanks, David. And to point, yes, we believe we will grow in China next year. I think at the moment, this is what is our assumption and our belief. Now once again, as you know, there is no VBP rule out there yet. Then it will a lot depend on what VBP 2.0 then will be designed and how they will set new price and how they will try to define this new policy. Then that's the first point. And I would say it's still assumptions because, as we have seen, the rules of the VBP 1.0 are really significantly reshaped the market. Then we can only talk about what we assume some of the VBP 2.0 could be. And from our assumptions, the price cut should not be significant. It has been very significant in around 1.0. We don't expect then the authorities to do another major cut because it will also significantly challenged the profitability of clinical practices directly and it would potentially be counterproductive to what the Chinese authorities are trying to achieve, which is more access to implant therapy.

The second aspect, if price are just adding a small than the cut, it's a lot about how volume obviously should grow. And we still believe that there is a significant market potential in China. There is a lot of patient expecting implant treatment. And there is a lot of dentists that are trained and are able to deliver it. And that's what the important reason as well from that very underpenetrated nature of the China market that we believe after the rules have been then published that we will see patient flow getting back to a good dynamic and a good level, and that would allow us to grow in China. And based on those assumptions, we believe China and APAC will grow in 2026. And when it comes to your questions on our [indiscernible] manufacturing, our our assumptions right now, and the calculation is showing that we should have a 20% lower COGS on our China campus versus our Switzerland manufacturing site. That would be one of, of course, very good than the consequence of getting started now with this manufacturing side. And secondly, something which is obviously important those days, it's helping us to hedge our Swiss franc exposure by shifting a significant part of those manufacturing costs from Swiss franc in Chinese RMB.

And the thing to be just for China or at do you look to export from China elsewhere?

Yes, that's a good question. For the time being, we are really looking at China for China. But in the future, as depending on how the different supply chain will play and the different also trade deals will be implemented. I think this is also something that we could consider for the future. to serve other markets in China.

The next question comes from Richard Felton from Goldman Sachs.

Two questions from me, please. So first of all, a more general follow-up on margins. And I suppose any early thoughts that you can share on some of the moving parts on margins into 2026. You called out tariffs on the call. We know you've got VBP, maybe there's some offsets from growth from China manufacturing and the changes to orthodontics that you've announced this morning. So any early thoughts on how you're thinking and planning for margins in FY '26, please? And then the second one is another follow-up on China. Could you just remind us where your market share is in China today and how that's evolved since the first round of VBP being implemented?

Well, it's a bit early to talk about 2026. We have our Capital Market Day for this, but we can allude to, I think, the big margin effect has been for us, obviously, the geographical mix, and we believe that [indiscernible] Mix will be then a tailwind next year because we expect North America tend to be better, while China will be obviously more on the lower side when it comes to growth contribution. -- and then that would be a positive effect. The second thing is from a manufacturing standpoint, we are also then improving thanks to then the manufacturing site in China, which is also another positive effect. We are expecting Well, we are expecting a very positive effect starting by the implementation of our partnership with Smartee on the ortho-side. And also the fact that we are going to significantly prioritize the high growth market, then we have significantly let's say, be weighted on the negative side by our profitability, negative profitability of our of ortho business and we are going to start seeing a significant transformation already in 2026 and even better in 2027 as we had a high double-digit million of losses on our ortho business in the past or until now, and this is going to change significantly.

Finally, we hope also that on the tariff side, we can see some -- a little bit improvement if it could turn on the positive side for us. We know that there is some positive discussion in between the Brazil and the Trump administration, which would be one of the most important part of our carry for next year as Isabelle express which is around CHF 30 million, but I would say something like a big chunk of it is coming from our Neodent import that would also significantly help. And that's why we believe that could be really the interesting by driving some significant margin development on this side. Isabelle you want to add anything on this side or.

No, perfectly covered Guillaume.

And the second question was, sorry?

[indiscernible] Since we repeat on what market share do we have?

Yes. that's an interesting question. We have -- because as the market has evolved very, very significantly, and there is no official data in China. What we know is that we have a very significantly increased our share when we see the different development of many companies around us in China, we are leading by far what we could call the premium segment, and we progressed also on the challenger side. But still, on the value side, we represent a very, I would say, a pretty low share still. I think Korean companies are still having the lion's share of the challenger segment together with some of the growing Chinese companies, but this is one of the way where we also expect through this very interesting new portfolio that we are developing with our Chinese partner, the possibility to have a very important inroad in the segment where we are underpenetrated.

The next question comes from Daniel Jelovcan from Zürcher Kantonalbank.

I'm not sure actually if I haven't heard, has a smart collaboration, does that include any financial engagement by you. I'm not sure if I hear on -- fully up to date. And the second question, your DSO CEO Summit in the U.S. Can you put a bit more flesh on the bone for your key takeaways, which you have observed yes, basically, that's it?

Yes. Thanks, Daniel. I think actually, yes, very good question. Yes, this is a strategic partnership, then we have taken a nondisclosed share, which is, I would still say, a small share on Smartee from an equity standpoint. We want to demonstrate our commitment to this partnership. This is going to be, of course, a very important part of our ongoing strategy on the Clear Line of business, then yes, we -- this is coming with financial equity participation in Smartee. The second side, when it comes to our DSO CEO Summit, Yes, I think this is a very, very important meeting for us. First, to still be very, very close to this critical target group for dentistry in general and for us, in particular, as we believe that we are here trying to be much more than just solution provider, we are really wanting to be a true business partner in supporting them achieving their goal. Then what we can say here on the DSO side is, one, it will significantly going to continue gaining share from provide a care standpoint. They are continuing investing in technology. Then they are the target group, which is really supporting digitalization of dentistry, because they see the significant benefit they can get from an efficient workflow being able to help their dentists enlarging their indications and doing that also in a faster manner, still delivering high-quality outcome.

Then they are a strong partner for increasing the digital penetration of entity. Secondly, they are also one of our strategic partner for growing the pie. They are the one being convinced about the fact that infant treatment is the growth standard of tooth replacement. And then they are doing all the necessary advertising and patient communication that are helping us to still bring intent as the preferred solution and increasing not only patient flow, but also treatment acceptance when they are there. And we are developing tools to help them in this perspective. And third, I would say this is also and we see more and more than very important customers that are expecting a very high level B2B service level, meaning that it's all about how we can implement a very connected and interlinked supply chain. They are also expecting very strong cybersecurity capabilities when it comes to being able to link our platforms then DSO will continue to put barrier to entry to small organizations. Because when I see the investments you need to do to be a preferred partner to ensure not only high-quality clinical outcome with clinical evidence, but a lot in the background to support the efficiency of their supply chain, the security of their IT setup, this is really something that small organization or local or regional organization cannot do.

And that's one of the reasons we are close to them, developing what it takes to lead the DSO segment and will help us to really be seen as the best potential partner for helping them achieving their goal.

That was very in depth. So the DSO segment in the U.S. is actually growing faster than your mom and pop, let's say, that -- is that correct?

That's correct.

Now we can hear you again.

Next question?

The next question comes from Oliver Metzger from ODDO BHF.

Questions. First one is also on North America. Also in addition to the previous question. So obviously, versus turn to the better, you also reported some patients for improvement. You talked a lot about the supply side with the DSO situation is improving. How do you see it from a demand side? Can you see that actually also there is more flow coming from patients demanding single tool proof replacement versus more complex procedures. Second question is on your strong performance in Europe. You highlighted the iEXCEL launch and with respect to success of that. Can you just give us comment about how does patient volume has behaved in Europe in your view? Thank you.

Good morning Oliver, as we expressed the patient demand has been rather stable. Then -- and I think on all then the indication, it has been the same. We see then the single cases being done on a [indiscernible] basis. But once again, not more, not less than the previous quarter. We have seen a little bit more of large indications being done in the third quarter. But once again, nothing that would support that we would say that we see a significant change in patient flow. It's still stable, but it's a little bit improving because I believe that the fear of inflation is reducing in -- among consumer. Then it's not so much that -- we see for the time being, for example, a better eligibility to patient financing, we don't see that yet significantly because the rates are still not changing enough in order to open that yet. But we see a better confidence for patients to engage in the treatment in some areas. Then that's the -- anything that we have witnessed in the third quarter. That's why we are still cautious in saying that it will develop from a pure market standpoint, However, we think that what is sustainable in our side is really improved execution on our side, but also all the significant traction we are getting with our innovation.

We see iEXCEL, having very significant higher growth rate than the rest of our portfolio. And as we are launching some additional portfolio extensions. We believe it will continue sustaining this very interesting market share gain and new customer acquisition. 20% of the iEXCEL customers are new customers that have never been customer from Straumann. And that's one of the aspects that we can really see that it ends delivering over market performance. When it comes to Europe, I think Europe has been really -- still delivering a very, very remarkable growth rate. And when you look at the reason for this, we expressed in the past the fact that there is, first, the affordability of implant treatment in Europe is much higher than in North America. The price level or twice less than U.S. Again, price for an implant plus crown in the U.S., it's going to be between $4,000 to $5,000 whereas in Europe, is going to be around EUR 2,000 to EUR 2,500. Then I think affordability is higher. There is more support from a reimbursement standpoint. Either private insurance or social security from a natural public support. And that's a lot of explanation to to explain why Europe is behaving better than North America in a more kind of a challenging environment. And additionally, we have to say that iEXCEL is participating also here as gaining superior traction than the market.

And all the different businesses are growing very significantly. Orthodontic Clear Line food, the synergy we have with our core business around GP target group is also growing double digit. Digital is also growing significantly, then we have all the different aspects of our portfolio, which is supporting the Europe performance. And finally, something which is also important to consider. That's why we believe it's a sustainable capability to grow with all the different geographies are participating to that significant growth. As much as mature market like Scandinavia, Germany, U.K., Spain, for example, in the third quarter, but also very significantly Eastern Europe with Poland, Baltics, Romania and I can also list the distributor market that has been also very strong in the third quarter. Then it's not only one place, which is doing well, that may faith is the entire geographies, which is really supporting this very, very strong development.

The next question comes from Brandon Vazquez from William Blair.

I wanted to -- I'll ask 2 of them upfront here. The first one is just going back to the partnership with Smartee, Guillaume, you had mentioned that you're kind of in the operating losses right now. Can you talk to us, given, of course, this partnership is in part to improve profitability in this segment. What does operating profit or loss look like in 2026 as you flip that business over to Smartee. And then the second question is maybe a little bit more about North America. Encouragingly, it looks like North America actually improved a little bit. despite the fact that consumer sentiment here has been pretty weak still. You've talked a lot about investments from DSOs?

And maybe I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about what are those investments from DSOs that are improving North America results somewhat cautiously, I would say, the problems here are a little bit more macro, less commercial strategy, but it sounds like the partnerships that you guys and what you're seeing from the DSOs is that improving commercial strategy alone might improve North America?

Yes, when it comes to the the Smartee partnership. And I think something that is to make it clear because we had also -- one of the question is we will recognize revenue, obviously, because it's a distribution partnership and a manufacturing partnership because they will do that for 2 major regions of us, which is then Asia Pacific and EMEA. Then yes, we had very significant operational losses because we have been investing very significantly on our technology, but also on the manufacturing side. And what we have seen that with our scale, it's very, very difficult to be able to go to profitability. Then when we say we had a very significant double-digit million losses from an operational standpoint on our ortho business. We expect this to be divided by 2 already by 2026, and we expect to be breakeven in 2027, which means that -- and obviously, afterwards, creating very positive then profitability moving forward, thanks to what we are putting in place. Not only in manufacturing but also on growing demand with technology and having a very sharpened go-to-market approach. Where we are now very structured in a clear business unit approach that would allow us to have speed but also efficiency.

Then -- which means that from a profitability standpoint, we expect a significant effect in the next 18 to 24 months, that should be seen on the bottom line as well. When it comes to NAM on the DSO investment side, yes, they are doing, I would say, 3 kind of investment. The first one is then growing their network. It's still from a DSO standpoint a way to grow inorganically. Then it's creating new practices. There are some DSOs that are doing that by acquisition. But we see a lot of DSOs that are also creating de novo clinic because it allows you to implement all the processes and all your strategy in exactly the same way than all the rest of the network. Then you don't lose time to convert than the existing clinicians to your old processes that are not used to to potentially use this kind of brand of material or whatsoever, then you can standardize your approach very efficiently by creating de novo practices, and we see a lot of this ongoing and not only in North America but also in other geographies.

The second investment they do then is on the organic growth this time and being able to invest into new patient flow. They are doing than advertising. And in North America, we have seen then new campaigns that have been launched to create this patient demand that has been much less the case in the first half not knowing how the U.S. economy will evolve and with a big fear of inflation that would reduce the capacity for patients to pain. It seems that this is the risk of significant inflation is starting to reduce significantly even though no one knows exactly, but that's the perception that we have, then there is an increased investment done in direct-to-patient communication for bringing them to the office and, of course, being able to drive patient acceptance. The third investment they do in standardization and digitalization of the entire network. Being able to drive then all [ entranscanning ] driving workflow that will drive efficiency and especially one way of doing profile is amping as them to have a very clear perception of the cost of one procedure and being able to have more an analytical perspective of their performance. Then we see that the investment in digitalization is now increasing and we believe that we will be able to benefit from this. There is a free kind of investment we see from DSO in North America, but also in other geographies that could help us making sure that it's on growth moving forward.

The next question comes from Hassan Al-Wakeel from Barclays.

Two, please. Following up on China and particularly '26. Guillaume, when we met last month, you commented that you see double-digit growth in revenue in China as possible in '26 given low penetration -- is it your current base case? How are you thinking about share gains in the mix? And what's the current price assumption on the decline? And then secondly, can you talk about iEXCEL performance in the U.S., particularly? How much did it contribute to growth given you called out the particular strength in EMEA. I think last quarter, you highlighted that iEXCEL was 15% of implant sales. How is this trending overall and by region in Q3, please?

Yes. Thanks, Hassan. Once again, I will express that China 2026, I think it will a lot depend on the VBP rules. And what we are looking at is, we have different scenarios, obviously, as we have been in then the 2023 to prepare what the VBP can come up with. Then one of the positive scenario is obviously still having a low double-digit growth that could come out from China in case we see limited price cut which is around 5% to 10% and adding obviously, significant volume growth with a pent-up demand coming from a low Q4, low Q1 2026. And adding up to the 3 quarters of the year that we'll see a healthy patient flow and having the capability for us to keep gaining market share by adding our 4 different brands, Straumann, Anthogyr, [indiscernible] and our new Medentikaline on the ECO segment that would be able to take share and also potentially being favored by local manufacturing. Then we have a lot -- again, as options to be able to play what the rules will be from VBP 2.0. But now being able to say we will grow double digit in China and Asia Pacific 2026. It's too early to say, and we will be able to express that in our guidance based on when we will be able to say that early 2026, when the VBP rules will be out, and we will have much more visibility on how we are going to play this new regulation.

But once again, there are options for us to grow low double digits, there are options also to have a lower growth rate based on what will be coming. On the iEXCEL side in North America, yes, I think what we can say globally and without having a first a specific North America Prism. This is representing -- iEXCEL is representing already 20% of our implant green premium sales, then we -- this is really a testament on -- the -- the loyalty, the traction that we are getting with the system and the repurchasing that we're having with this. North America is also around those numbers with a very strong penetration about our existing users and our new users that are also being captured in North America. And one of the major reasons why we are growing faster than the market is the new customer position that is done through iEXCEL on the premium segment. We benefit also on new customer acquisition on the challenger brand with Neodent, but I think we are still growing faster, and we see in constant market share gain in North America on the premium side that we can really monitor on a regular basis and that we can confirm once again. The simple thing which I think I will highlight here that will help or that will continue to ship on the growth of iEXCEL is that all the evolution and innovation on the process side will be available only with the iEXCEL connection, which is the new to it. That means if you would like to benefit from our new angulated screw channel on customized abutment as an example, if you would like to benefit from our new laser textured value-based for easy and efficient respiration.

And especially, if you would like to benefit on our new workflow, which is the one I presented the fast motor with anatomic heating apartment which is allowing you to do the restoration with one point less with the patient, you have to use iEXCEL because it all comes with the new connection. Then there is a lot of our strategy from future innovation that will also drive the penetration of IXL and then making our customers benefiting from the latest technology.

The next question comes from Julien Ouaddour, Bank of America.

The first one, I mean, thanks for all the color on China. But just me being picky with [ Akmamodeling ], but you mentioned sort of back-end loaded growth for next year. Just wanted to confirm, is it because 1Q '26 is likely to remain negative for the market. I believe the VBP implementation at [indiscernible] may start only in 2Q? And also, you you talked about the Shanghai Camps benefits from local production and this cost advantage probably fully offsetting the price cut for next year. But given the, let's say, the full ramp-up is expected for 3Q, could we see some gross margin pressure in H1 and a bit more back-end loaded recovery Second question is on Korea line. You mentioned the ambition to achieve leading position in these markets. I think today, you have 3% market share. Completion is pretty fierce. What's your mid- to long-term ambitions for correct? And do you fear aligners becoming a kind of like commodity products and a price war could maybe slow down a little bit the most expansion target that just set within the partnership?

In fact, that's 4 questions. But we'll be happy to answer the first one in Q1 2026 China I think here we cannot express phasing in 2026. It's too early from exactly Q1. When we say backloaded, is obviously, first, when you look at comparison bans, we are going to have a very high comp base in the first half and a very low comp base in the second half. And first, obviously, from a growth rate standpoint, mathematically, you are going to be backloaded anyway. The second aspect also is that the Q1, we've given a lot about the Chinese authorities communication about the magnitude of the change and especially when they are going to finally give reasons, which is not really clear at the moment. If the VBP reasons will be given when I say reasons, it means that they will present the rules in December. The companies have to do their bidding about what kind of pricing they want to do. And then afterwards, they are publishing reasons of who is than selective who is not selected in the different category. If they are able to express it fast enough and the implementation of the new rules are going to be done during January, then the first quarter can benefit from the pent-up demand directed. If the information about the results of the VBP 2.0 will be done later in the year, which has been done a little bit the case in implementation.

It has been done after the Chinese New Year in 2023, meaning that we have started to see everything being executed by the beginning of March, then that's where you have a Q1, which is rather weak because still then waiting for all the new price to be available. Then I think this is a lot depending on how this is going to be played out. And that's why it's difficult to answer exactly your Q1 perspective. But we are expecting at the moment from an assumption that Q1 will be weak. We are going to have a Q4 and Q1 that are going to be weak because it's going to be frozen by the VBP effect, and that we will benefit from those new rules moving forward.

When it comes to the Shanghai Compass, yes, I think we don't expect -- and we'll see the price decrease being bigger than our -- the COGS gains that we are going to do. This is one of the reasons why we believe that the price cut would not then affect significantly profitability of our China business, thanks for providing everything mainly from China. But this needs to be confirmed with the VBP 2.0. When it comes to Clear aligner commodity, I actually don't think so. There is already a very significant competition that we see out there -- but as we expressed without scale, it's pretty challenging to play in this environment. Than what we have seen in the past, we have seen a lot of small companies trying to come in and play in the Clear Liner business and actually being wiped out because of the lack of scale and the lack of capability to gain significant market share. Then yes, there will be price competition that we are seeing at the moment. Yes, it will continue to become a pretty competitive market, but we still believe that I would not go to commoditization because of all the technology which is going to go with it. And we have a midterm perspective to be able to reach 10% of this market in order that we can really start to become a significant player and being able to deliver the growth that we are looking for.

The next question comes from Veronika Dubajova from Citi.

I'm going to try to keep it to 2. One is I was hoping you could circle back on the tariff commentary that you made at the beginning of the call. I think on this first half conference call, you should have expressed the hope that tariffs would mitigated fully this year and then you'd have an impact as you move into fiscal '26. I know you mentioned the [ CHF 20 million ] to [ CHF 25 million ] number for this year. So should we understand that as you are no longer expecting that to be mitigated to fully or at all? Is this something that's appearing in the P&L? And I guess that's a pretty meaningful headwind, obviously, in terms basis points. So I'm just curious where you are finding other opportunities to offset this to maintain the margin guidance for the year. So if you can talk through that. And then sort of CHF 35 million number for next year. I guess, is there any mitigation? Or is that including the mitigation efforts. So if you can talk through that, that would be helpful. And then I'll ask my second question because it's for Guillaume after that. Maybe we can just get the financial but out of the way first.

I'm happy to elaborate on that and I think excellent question. So earlier, we said we will mitigate all of those tariffs, and it will not change our guidance. And given we just reiterated our guidance, we still stand by this. So the effect of CHF 22 million to CHF 25 million still to be shown has been mitigated this year. On the one hand side, of course, we mitigated the full impact of the tariffs through all of the supply chain route changes we put into play through transferal of production activities of finish products to the U.S. for especially the Taman Green products. But in what we're currently preparing for packaging and finishing lines for Neodent products as well to be prepared for next year. And I think as you remember from the call, we had for the half year results, we already shipped more or less all of the demand we have for this year in July and August. So we have some time to implement those mitigating measures.

How are we mitigating on the one hand side, of course, by implementing this, but then on the other hand side, by looking at different other measures to improve our profitability in terms of production, but then in terms of OpEx savings, where we have very strict guidelines and reiterated them for the remainder of the year. So all of this impact can be mitigated. Same hose potentially for next year as well. As you can see, the number we are looking at the CHF 30 million, the ballpark number we gave you is very similar to the amount we have for this year, although we will see a full year impact -- so this CHF 30 million is, I would say, the worst-case assumption in case everything remains as it currently is. So major factors behind the 50% tariff on all imports from Brazil and 39% tariffs for all imports from Switzerland. And having said this, why is the amount very similar because we put all of those mitigating measures into place already.

So the finishing lines for Neodent plus the acceleration of transferring [indiscernible] branded products faster than expected to our campus and and over close to Boston. And having said this, we expect a very similar mitigating results for next year when we will see this year.

Okay. So the way to think about the CHF 30 million, is that the gross impact and the net impact in terms of what we have to think about in the P&L is going to be substantially lower?

Yes, potentially.

Okay, potentially. Okay. That's very helpful. And then my second question is for you, Guillaume I guess, just your confidence in the China midterm growth rate. And I know I see you have a ton of uncertainty in the short term. But I'm just curious, kind of once we're through VBP, how are you thinking about that sort of growth rate in China on an underlying volume basis, I think, obviously, we've done this year from volumes growing double digits to single digits, so not growing at all. Are you confident that it's just the implementation of VBP? Is this a market that's maturing? And I would love to get your thoughts on how you think about China volume growth on a 3- to 5-year basis? And what underpins that confidence?

Well, the confidence in China is just based on the fact that -- on the one hand, you have a very underpenetrated market that will continue to grow. I think this is the most important foundation of the growth expectation that we have. And the second side is that we believe that we have one of the company the best place to be able to benefit from that increased market penetration. Because we are having a strong offer on the premium side that will continue to be, I think, interested in being the only one being localized once again, but there is no other premium competitors that will have local manufacturing, which received license and equivalent, meaning that if there is a condition in the VBP to support local manufacturing companies, I think we will benefit from this.

And the second aspect is that we have set now additional portfolio for then the value segment where we are significantly underpenetrated and where we should be able to also meet some significant demand growth. Then I would say that's those 2 aspects. On the one side, I think the market has the significantly capability to grow. And summary, we are well placed to be able to take a fair share of this growth, which is making us confident about that development. Now it will obviously again depend of than exofactor, which are the VBP on the one side, which are the macroeconomic factor on the other side. But if we would like to look more on the midterm, and we are going to talk now in a 3 years' time frame because this is the kind of VBP period, which is going to happen every third year. We believe that for the 2026, 2028 then period, we are expecting something which is low double-digit growth, something around 10% to 12%. That's a little bit the perspective on how we are looking at it.

Last question comes from Piral from UBS.

Just standing in for Guillaume this morning. We have a super quick one. On North America, just given the green shoots that you guys have seen in Q3, would you expect the U.S. to be sequentially better in Q4?

I think this -- it's very difficult to be very system -- clear or precise on this question. We expect a good growth rate in North America in Q4. First, because we see a really good development. Second, because we believe that the market conditions are helping a little bit also macro, at least from a consumer confidence standpoint. And third, we have also then than the comparison base, which are helpful here. Then I would say we expect North America to be a significant growth provider in the fourth quarter. Is it going to be better than Q3, at least we expect the trend to continue then to be at least equal or better is what we are expecting.

Thank you for joining us today and for your continued interest in Straumann Group. We look forward to seeing you again soon and wish you a pleasant rest off today. Have a nice day, good bye from [indiscernible] .

Ladies and gentleman the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing chorus call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.