SAUHF - Straumann Holding AG (SAUHF) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-04-30 16:26:15 ET
Straumann Holding AG (SAUHF)
Q1 2024 Results Conference Call
April 30, 2024 04:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Guillaume Daniellot - CEO
Yang Xu - CFO
Conference Call Participants
Daniel Jelovcan - Stifel
Hassan Al-Wakeel - Barclays
Maja Pataki - Kepler Cheuvreux
Graham Doyle - UBS
Richard Felton - Goldman Sachs
Julien Dormois - Jefferies
Veronika Dubajova - Citi
Anchal Verma - JPMorgan
Hugo Solvet - BNP Paribas
Julien Ouaddour - Bank of America
Robert Davies - Morgan Stanley
Oliver Metzger - Oddo BHF
Falko Friedrichs - Deutsche Bank
Presentation
Guillaume Daniellot
Thank you for joining this conference call about Straumann Group's first quarter results for 2024. Please take note of the disclaimer in our media release and on Slide 2. During this conference, we are going to refer to the presentation slides that were published on our website this morning. As usual, the presentation and discussion will include some forward-looking statements. The conference will follow the usual format. As shown on the agenda on Slide 3, I will first give you an overview of our strong performance in the first quarter. And then Yang, our CFO, will share details about the financials. After that, I'll provide you with an update on strategic initiatives and our outlook. As always, we will answer your questions at the end of the presentation.
Let's start with our highlights and move directly to Slide 5. We had a solid start into 2024, with revenue of CHF 644 million based on a dynamic demand in most of our business segments. We achieved a strong organic revenue growth of 15.1% globally or 8.1% in Swiss francs, taking into account the significant currency headwinds we again faced in the first quarter. Regional growth dynamics vary, with China being the highlight of this quarter, thanks to an exceptional organic growth, but versus a low comparison base. As a reminder, in early 2023, China still suffered from a lot of COVID-19 cases, and many treatments were postponed also due to the anticipated implementation of the volume-based procurement process.
The second highlight of this quarter was the official launch of our new iEXCEL premium implant line in North America in March, which I will come back to later. On the orthodontic side, we are continuing to strengthen our ClearCorrect value proposition with the launch of the new ClearPilot 8.0 software, which now provides clinicians with advanced [editing] tools. With these achievements and despite the fact that the following comparison quarters this year will be more demanding, together with remaining macroeconomical challenges, we are confident to confirm our 2024 outlook.
Moving on to Slide 6. You can see the regional organic revenue growth rate as well as the percentage of the regional contribution to the overall revenue of the group. EMEA, our largest revenue contributor, showed a solid 5.2% growth, which builds on a strong comparison quarter. Firstly, the Implantology business continued to drive good results, gaining market share in both the Premium and Challenger brands segments. Secondly, we are also very pleased with the performance of our business-to-business orthodontic brand, ClearCorrect, which grew double digit in the region.
On the challenging side, we still see headwinds in the doctor-led direct-to-consumer business, namely DrSmile. This is due to a macroeconomic environment that continues to slow down demand and our strategy shift from paid marketing to organic demand generation to prioritize profitability over revenue growth. In North America, we achieved positive growth of 3.7% despite a softening market and against last year's solid result. The patient flow has been slowing down versus the past quarters due to the continuing effect of the high interest rate, which impacted spending. We have seen that the consumer weakness that affected the pool of treatments in the last quarters, started to show in a broader range of implantology indications. While we are facing those increased headwinds from a demand standpoint, we are very pleased that we were able to grow through market share gains in both the Premium and Challenger brands segments.
In orthodontics, the improvement of the value proposition of our ClearCorrect brand is generating further traction in the North American market, which is a positive signal for further future growth. Looking at Asia Pacific, China significantly drove the exceptional overall growth of the region for the reasons we mentioned before. Looking at the Asia Pacific region outside of China, we are very pleased that we also achieved double-digit growth in already well-established markets such as Australia and Japan. In addition, new markets like Vietnam and India are picking up fast, and the orthodontics business also contributed with a strong performance in the region, although on a lower scale....
Straumann Holding AG (SAUHF) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript