Sonova Holding AG (SONVF) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

2025-05-09 18:25:05 ET

Sonova Holding AG (SONVF)

Q4 2025 Results Conference Call

May 09, 2025 07:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Arnd Kaldowski - CEO

Matthias Dullmann - Interim CFO

Thomas Bernhardsgruetter - Senior Director, IR

Conference Call Participants

Maja Pataki - Kepler Cheuvreux

Hassan Al-Wakeel - Barclays

Hugo Solvet - BNP Paribas Exane

Veronika Dubajova - Citi

Robert Davies - Morgan Stanley

Oliver Metzger - ODDO BHF

Niels Granholm-Leth - Carnegie

David Adlington - JPMorgan

Shivansi Gupta - HSBC

Presentation

Arnd Kaldowski

Good afternoon here in lovely Stefan, unfortunately, not the best weather, but hopefully enough to share on information, warm welcome to the people on the call, on the dial-in. I'm here together with Matthias Dullmann, our Interim CFO, to guide you through the presentation, you already had a chance to see, but I know more importantly, to have enough time for Q&A at the end.

Thomas will come up and explain the process on the Q&A when we get there. If we can move on to briefly the disclaimer. I hope everybody took note. Am I? Are you clicking?

Am I clicking? Look, I -- this is not the first time I'm here, but I didn't check out where the clicker is. The standard disclaimer, please take note. Obviously, the fiscal year 2024-'25, the last time we were able to share in that breadth and depth of our numbers is exactly half a year ago. Lots have happened.

And I'm very proud to present on everybody who works with us at Sonova, the results of the last half year because when I look at it overall, I think it's a good results; and b, it's a good tee up into the next fiscal year. Although I think we all have taken a note that there are some bumps in the world with regard to macroeconomics, but I think we're positioned to handle those from a capability perspective, but also from an economical setup for the year.

So on the highest level, when you look at the numbers the way we have looked at them, we have been able to produce solid growth and particularly proud to see market share gains across all 4 businesses, which is holding market share gains at the places where we had them in the first half year and improving towards market share gains in 2 of the businesses, where we were in.

Good growth on the hearing instruments side relative to the market. Audiological and Cochlear Implants in CH nicely picking up growth versus first half year. I'll unpack a little bit where that comes from. And our Cochlear Implants business, in particular, when you look on the system side, which is really the new patients choosing AB for Life with a nice market share growth from the instrument side.

Looking on the main driver on the product side, given the size of the business, continued strong response from customers to Infinio Sphere. Focus is obviously now more on how you see that in the numbers versus what is KPI A, B and C or a product launch. I'll have a couple of comments there. But we hear the continued strong feedback on the significant improvement in noisy environments.

We have very positive feedback on the product overall. And I think it is the main reasons why we see a Hearing Instruments, good growth rates and it also contributed to the audiological care because it's easier for our retail colleagues to put the strong product like this in front of customers.

I think it was a second big question mark in the room after the first half year, which was are you able to step up your profitability so that you get for the year to good place. And some of you have rightfully talked around the number. We explained our logical bridge. Now it's easier to say we did. We have seen a step-up in basis points first half to second and EBITDA adjusted by 600 basis points. That's higher than normal between first half, second half, and we were able to realize a 130 basis points in EBITDA margin year-over-year for the second half year.

And I'll cover some of the elements as I go through the presentation. The second indicated that not your number when we came out of the first half year having seen some revenue weakness, particularly audiological care, having seen some areas in the OpEx in general, where we didn't like the momentum in a negative way for the financials with too much OpEx growth. We have embarked them on some structural changes, which ultimately, you don't see in the number except for the restructuring cost because when you start them in Q3, they materialize or the actions mainly implemented Q4....

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