2024-05-14 15:24:10 ET
Sonova Holding AG (SONVF)
Q4 2024 Results Conference Call
May 14, 2024 07:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Arnd Kaldowski - Chief Executive Officer
Birgit Conix - Chief Financial Officer
Thomas Bernhardsgrutter - Senior Director, IR
Conference Call Participants
Julien Ouaddour - Bank of America
Graham Doyle - UBS
Veronika Dubajova - Citi
Hugo Solvet - BNP Paribas
Oliver Metzger - ODDO
Robert Davies - Morgan Stanley
David Adlington - JPMorgan
Presentation
Arnd Kaldowski
Good afternoon and in the room here. Welcome to the sunny Stafa to keep the people on the call. I hope they also have a sunny day. Thanks for joining for the full year results, 2023-'24 of Sonova. I'm here together with the IR team and Birgit. Birgit will later go through the financials and will be with me on stage with regard to the questions and answers.
Regular disclaimer. Everybody knows the content. Therefore, I'm not going to read it, but please take note. We intend to spend about 35-ish minutes or so in the presentation, then we have ample time for Q&A. You all had a chance to get the material to be uploaded, therefore. There's lots of material in the background and the backup for people who want to dive deeper into numbers.
From a summary for the last fiscal year, a couple of highlight items here to keep in mind. First, the hearing care market has been for the full year, if we count the numbers in unit volume and assumptions on price back to historical growth rates. So somewhere in the 4% to 6%, slightly higher in the second half, significant regional differences. North America was clearly faster in growth than Europe. Although in many European markets, we see good growth, but Germany and France were more muted. U.S. and Canada, probably more a year-over-year effect because in the year before they really went deep under the high inflation environment. But I think we're through the inflationary concerns on our consumers, at least for the Hearing Instruments and Cochlear Implants, I'll comment in a second on the consumer hearing business.
From a Sonova perspective, when we met last time, we were at the end of the first half year, and we said we're expecting to pick up in the second half year, particularly in the hearing instruments business, and that's what you're seeing in the numbers. We ended on a positive note. The Q4 was even a little stronger than the Q3 performance. We don't share it in numbers, but at least in the voice over, I can say that.
And if you look at the numbers, the Hearing Instruments business and the Cochlear Implants business with a significant acceleration from their growth. And on the Hearing Instruments, even if you take out the contract loss from a large customer, which only was relevant in the first year. The audiological tier business continued on a strong growth rate, slightly lower. I'll comment why that is when I get to that business. And then the place where we have seen quite some difficult environment and headwinds was the Consumer Hearing business. And we'll get to the dynamics there between market growth and some product issues we had.
I think everybody remembers our biggest, allow me to say rallying cry was needing to build back momentum in the Hearing Instruments business after 12 months, which were more muted, not just the contract but also some temporary challenges we called it. When we look on the customer feedback and then also mirror in the growth rate, even while "only launched" additions to the Lumity portfolio was pretty positive. And so I think we delivered on that dimension.
Clearly, FX in the last year as in the year before, significant headwind if you look at the revenue as well as the EBITDA in Swiss franc. Only positive, and you've seen that in the guidance for the year, a slight positive year-over-year in the way we enter into the new fiscal year. Obviously, it's hard to predict. Otherwise, we would be doing other things. I guess, but in general, clearly, a better starting point than last year because there we could already see kind of the headwinds....
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Sonova Holding AG (SONVF) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript