Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our results presentation. Let's get underway. As always, we are starting with our mission. Our mission serves as a guide across the company, but there are two important points. One is the purpose that sits in our mission enables us to attract outstanding people. The other thing it reminds us of is the long-term nature of our business and the long-term nature of our strategy to help more people hear and be heard. I wanted to start the presentation today with a look at our 25-year financial history. I'm doing that to put in context the F2025. As we've already seen, our sales were below our expectations for 2025. It's really a question of how do we respond? I want to put the how do we respond to lower sales in the context of history.
If you look at these charts, I'm starting on the left with our R&D. That investment in R&D, that's the most consistent chart on this page. R&D has increased year -on -year. When sales have gone down, that R&D investment has continued to lift. Our first response when our sales are not where we expect them to be is to make sure that we protect R&D. We do that because it's the core of the business. It enables us to retain our market leadership position, but it's also the performance of our products that sets us up to give the evidence to drive growth. I'll come back to that. When I think about Nexa, which I'll also talk about being a 20-year development, it's that consistent investment in R&D over 20 years that enables us to produce a product like Nexa.
OpEx after R&D is then the next least variable chart on this page. Again, pretty consistent growth. You can see we do pull OpEx back further than we do R&D. We lift OpEx more than we do R&D too when sales are going well. I think you'd expect that. We do moderate our spending, but we do try to protect in the OpEx is the investment in growth. Protecting that investment in R&D, protecting the investment in growth leads to the two charts in the middle, which is the long-run history of growth in Cochlear implants and the long-run history of growth in revenue. The consequence of protecting the growth spending and the R&D spending are the charts on the right, where there's more variability in profit, which is what you'd expect, than there is in our spending and than there is in our sales.
That response to lower sales, which we saw this year than our expectation, is to protect investment in the core parts of our strategy that drive our long-term growth. We do that because we've got a market that's less than 5% penetrated, and we do that because we have confidence in our future. I want to talk to two key aspects of our confidence in our future before we get into the detail of 2025. The first of those is the Nexa system. Launching now around the world, we started the development of Nexa from concepts in 2005. It was early in Chris Roberts' tenure. Jan Janssen had just taken over R&D at that time, and Jan shepherded this product over the last 20 years. It's absolutely a breakthrough product. The world's first and only smart Cochlear implant.
In our view, perhaps one of the most sophisticated neural stimulators in any therapy. What does it bring to our patients and our professional partners? I want to make sure we had benefits upfront as well as potential into the future. I'll get to the potential into the future in a minute. Right upfront, because we've been able to, with new electronics, make the power transmission more efficient, we can have a smaller battery on Nucleus 8. It gives a full day battery life. Nucleus 8 was already the smallest processor on the market by quite a margin. It's even smaller again. We know that consumers are very interested in cosmetics and the size of the processor, and we have extended our advantage in terms of having the smallest processor with a full day of battery life.
The map on the implant, which we call SmartSync, the ability to get back on air quickly, is important both for recipients and for clinics. What happens up to now is if someone's processor breaks, they either need to schedule an appointment with the clinic, go into the clinic, they get a new processor, the clinician loads their map, and the map is the unique settings that encode sound for their auditory nerve. It's different for each person. They load that onto the processor and the person goes away hearing again. In some parts of the world, we've got the map in the cloud, so they call us. We load the map in our warehouse onto a processor and ship it back out to them. There is a process that takes the recipient time, takes valuable clinic time. It is often not reimbursed.
If you think about this from when people go on holidays, for example, particularly with children, they're worried they process a good break, they could lose the processor, so they go into the clinic and they get a spare. They get a loaner just in case. You think about all this clinic time that is taken up, even when processors are reliable, they're not billable and add no value. Now, with the map on the implant, all someone needs is a blank processor. We can ship a blank processor, clinic can ship a blank processor to them, no clinic time, appointment time needed. People going on holidays can take a new spare with them. They've got an emergency. If they don't need it, they send it back afterwards. Savings in clinic time and savings for recipients.
One of the things we're able to do with the amount of data that we now collect on clinical practices, we can see that over half the appointments that are made in clinic are for people after the first year of having their implant. Those appointments are really about just routine checking and maintenance. The more we can reduce them, the more clinic capacity we create for future growth. The other point I want to make on Nexa, before I get to the future too, is we often talk about how full our R&D product pipeline is. Nexa is an example of this, a 20-year development that we didn't say anything about, I think, for obvious reasons, until 2023, until we were getting very near the end of the development. We started to talk about new stimulation modes.
New stimulation modes to improve hearing outcomes is one of the potential future possibilities of Nexa. It's the last one on the list on the right here. It's really one of the core reasons for developing Nexa with its upgradable firmware is to be able to now experiment with different ways of stimulating the auditory nerve, getting potentially more precise stimulation and therefore better hearing outcomes. Over the last year, we have been running four small studies to experiment with new techniques. Those studies will wrap up over the next year, which will give us real insights into the possibility that with this implant and then enable us to undertake further development. Some of the other future possibilities shown here, even more power efficiency, which could lead to smaller externals, earlier activation.
With the map on the implant, we can actually load a map in surgery, and we're going to start running some experiments on this, which means that someone, when they go home from surgery, once the bandages come off, they can put a processor on and they'll be able to start hearing. It'd be some number of weeks later, they've got to come back to the clinic for another appointment or a set of appointments to get that map set up. That's saving clinic time, easier for recipients. There's a whole bunch of potential for diagnostics. Already some of those are active. There is more to come. We think about half of clinic appointments being routine maintenance and follow-up. The more we can do on a diagnostic front saves clinical capacity into the future, but also gives both clinicians and recipients confidence in the performance of their system.
The last one here is neural health. One of the biggest drivers of variability in outcomes for people with Cochlear implants is neural health, the quality or health of their auditory nerve. At the moment, that quality can only be inferred, and at some time after implant, we're very confident that what we can do with the implant is be able to measure that neural health, which will mean much more potentially much more targeted expectation setting and much more targeted rehabilitation or rehabilitation to enable people to reach their potential. A very quick view of just some of the potential for Nexa. The second reason we're confident, Nexa really puts us in a really strong competitive position. It's a significant step above our competitors, and those benefits come from the slim body or electrode, which is also unique to us.
The second reason for being confident in the future is the work that is going on across the world to explore the link between cognition and hearing loss. This is all about medicalizing hearing loss. We've talked about this a lot. Hearing loss is one of the most prevalent medical conditions in the world, and it's one of the least treated. It's one of the least treated because people don't see it as a medical condition. They don't see that there are other health consequences from not treating it, and so they don't see the need to treatment. Through our awareness campaigns, these people actually don't know of the potential solutions and their effectiveness. What we've seen and we've talked about over the last five or six years is a whole range of studies, starting with Frank Lin, actually in 2011, showing the correlation between hearing loss and cognitive decline.
The Lancet published that hearing loss was the single biggest modifiable cause of the midlife modifiable cause of cognitive decline. The Sarant study in Melbourne showed people with Cochlear implants, cognition improved after getting a Cochlear implant. On the right here, there are several more studies coming over the next few years looking at hearing loss and cognitive decline, looking at the different treatments between CI and hearing loss and effectiveness, both in terms of hearing and to some degree effectiveness in terms of cognition. It's this emerging data that gives us a growing pool of data on this link that gives us confidence of medicalizing hearing loss and the increasing motivation for professionals to refer people who want to treat their hearing. I wanted to just call out one study in particular. This comes from Korea. It was just published a couple of months ago.
This study in Korea, they've got population-wide data from people's health records. This study tracked over 50,000 people with severe to profound hearing loss for 14 years. It was an observational study, so it didn't track them. It looked back at their medical records. What it looked at was the incidence of dementia across these 50,000 people over 14 years, and then looked at that incidence by type of treatment. If we go to the chart here, the black line there is the incidence of dementia from people with normal hearing. There was over a million people that they tracked over those times. The blue line is the incidence of dementia for people with severe to profound hearing loss who got a Cochlear implant. It's about 640 people, so a reasonably significant number for us. There is no statistical significance.
The study concluded in the incidence of dementia for people with a Cochlear implant versus people with normal hearing. If you then go to the green line and the red line, the green line is people with hearing aids. The red line is people who had no treatment for their severe to profound loss. What that shows is that for people who used hearing aids, the incidence of dementia was significantly higher than those with a Cochlear implant and those with normal hearing. It was better than people with severe to profound hearing loss who didn't have any treatment. This is an observational study.
There are some limitations on it, but it is evidence like this that gives us confidence of our future growth because of this growing link between hearing loss and cognitive decline, and that being the motivation for people to refer, for professionals to refer, but in time for people to get their hearing loss treated as well. Let's move now into the detail of the results. You'll have seen the headlines already, that 4% revenue growth, 1% net profit, and the dividend. Let's get into the detail. First into Cochlear implants. Cochlear implant, the result overall is a pretty good result. 9% growth in Cochlear implant revenue, 12% growth in systems. We saw stronger growth in the systems in the second half, which is one of the things we said would happen at the half. We look into developed markets first. Their units were up 6%.
Adults and seniors growing around 10%. It is slower than we've seen in the last two years, but still pretty strong growth. The key bit there is we continue to see ways for us to activate people on their hearing loss journey. We've collected a lot more data over the last year on referrals, on what happens to those referrals. For instance, we know now that about people actually get referred for a Cochlear implant, only about 1/3 are actually getting to get an implant. There is a whole bunch of reasons that they drop out along the way. By us understanding those reasons, it's the opportunity for us to go in and to help those people back into the funnel because only a small number are dropping out because they are not in indications.
Most, it's about not enough information or conflicting information or just not sufficient to follow up. We've learned a lot more about that path. I talked about the medicalization of hearing loss and cognition. That all helps us build confidence into the future. Our DTC programs continue to be a very important part of driving growth around the world. We did lose a little bit of share, we think, through that half in a couple of countries. Coming into the product launch, our competitors know that's coming. They have responded as you'd expect. They're very good companies. We expect to more than regain any share that we have lost with the launch of Nexa. A slight decline in children. Again, we said at the half, we were surprised children were continuing to...
We wouldn't be surprised by a decline in children just because we have seen such strong growth, which we knew was out of line with the rate of incidence, that there should be a reversion to the more normal rate. I think that's what we're seeing. Very strong growth in emerging markets, up over 20%. Remember, we had sort of two different halves on emerging markets. In the first half, we had a smaller volume, but a very strong mix towards the premium tier, which lifted our overall ASP on lower volumes. In the second half, we had far more volume going through, but it was low-tier volume. That was across a range of countries. Obviously, the volume-based pricing in China, which started in March, has been a factor in this. We are seeing strong growth there, but that growth is in the lower priced, lower tier.
Given the comparison between 2026 and 2025, the volume-based pricing in China will be a headwind for us, both on revenue and on profit. Let's move on to services. Services for us is the down 10%. It's obviously the most disappointing part of the result. We talked about this at the half. We've seen some stabilization of our services sales, and we do expect to see growth going into 2026. There does remain some uncertainty because there's a few factors in 2025 which are unique to 2025, and then there's some ongoing factors. The one thing unique to 2025 is we are cycling, particularly the second half of 2025, the impact of COVID. We know the biggest driver of services over time is a growth in the recipient base, and particularly the eligible recipient base.
We thought years ago in COVID, we saw a reduction in sales and a reduction in upgrades. We are starting to cycle that, and we can see that in the eligible base. Now that eligible base grows again as we get into 2026, and particularly into the second half of 2026. The other thing that we talked about at the half that we have not seen for over time is the impact of cost of living, particularly in the U.S., where there's just significant economic and consumer uncertainty. We look at some of what the hearing aid companies are saying. I think they're saying something similar to this. That's where we do have an out-of-cost payment. The U.S. was our largest fall in upgrades over the last year. We talked about putting payment plans in place, which we have done.
Even that we are seeing is not at this stage sufficient to get people to take up upgrades. We do know upgrades for many people are discretionary. If someone's processor is broken out of warranty in the past five years, they'll get an upgrade. If it's discretionary, we do see people delaying. At some point, those people will upgrade. Right now, we are seeing more hesitancy, particularly in the U.S. Part of that is Nucleus 7 is a fantastic product. People are saying, "My Nucleus 7 is pretty good. Why would I switch?" We have really good clinical evidence that shows that Nucleus 8 is better. The other thing that we have done through the half is survey people who have gone from Nucleus 8 to Nucleus 7.
Nine out of ten of them are saying that they would recommend switching, and seven out of ten are saying they're hearing better. We will use that evidence to promote, along with upgraded marketing capabilities, to promote upgrades in the half, sorry, through 2026. We have Kanso 3 as well, which will help us get modest growth in upgrades into 2026. Finally, acoustics, 6% revenue growth, so slower than we expect the long-run trend for acoustics. Osia growth, 30%. Very happy with the Osia growth. It was really Baha 7 coming and Baha 7 being visible later in the half. We saw a pullback on Baha 6. We expect to pick that back up this year with both Osia continuing to grow in countries and with more geographic expansion and Baha 7 lifting Baha plus Baha upgrades through the year. Onto our strategy. Our strategies are unchanged.
I'm going to move pretty quickly through and over the other strategy because I did talk a bit about our strategy upfront. As we go into a lifetime of hearing solutions, our product portfolio, our investment in R&D continues, like I said. The Kanso, sorry, Nexa is a whole system, new software as well as Kanso 3. The drug-eluting electrode trials, two pivotal studies well underway, recruiting well, this important product for our future portfolio. Moving on to thriving people. People, but too passed to pass to this, our people and our leadership development, one of the key enablers of our growth. We continue to work hard on leadership development, particularly in the lifting capabilities of our leaders so that they're capable to lead in a growing and larger organization. The investments in replacing our core systems. We are in the final stages with the replacement of our core ERP.
What we will get here with both new data, new systems that will automate many processes, giving us some efficiencies. More importantly than that, data and clean data and consistent data, which will enable us to be making better decisions and enable us to be able to use AI as we look forward. A picture of Stephen Dunn, one of our first Nexa recipients, meeting people in manufacturing. I just want to comment, one of the things Stephen said was we talked about our mission and hearing solutions. One of the things he said is this is not a hearing solution. It's a living solution and a good reminder of the impact of what we do, again reinforcing our confidence for growth. On environmental responsibility, we continue to meet our targets. We're a very small emitter and we continue to reduce our emissions. With that, I am going to hand over to Sarah to take us through the P&L and balance sheet in more detail.
All right, thanks, Dig. And good morning, everyone. Let's go through the numbers. We'll start with P&L. You can see on there, sales revenue was up 3% in constant currency. Now, Dig's taking you through that, so I won't go through those details. You see the gross margin declined by 1 percentage point, 74%. There were two parts to this. First, there's a shift to lower margin emerging markets in the second half. Second, we started to scale up production at the Chengdu manufacturing facility. Until December last year, we'd only been manufacturing sound processors. Now, we have regulatory approval for implants, and we have started to increase production rates. That side will continue to be a gross margin headwind for another year or so. Operating expenses increased 5% for the year, just a little ahead of revenue growth.
We continued to invest in activities to support long-term sustainable growth and in R&D. We moderated the rate of growth in the second half. With softer sales, we prioritized our growth investment on the highest value activities. Total operating expenses also include an approximately $50 million reduction in the employee short-term incentive provision. This was a result of below-target revenue and profitability outcomes. Our cloud computing related investment was around the same levels as last year at $33 million. We continue to expect our overall transformation investment to be about $250 million total. The final phase of that program focuses on our core ERP, our underlying data, and our manufacturing systems. The balance of approximately $130 million will be incurred in FY2026 and FY2027. Given the materiality of this investment, we'll report it as a significant item from FY2026.
The increase in other income is primarily collaboration income from our innovation fund investments and revenue from various government grants. The final thing to note on here is the net margin pre-cloud was 18%, in line with last year. All right, let's move on to the balance sheet on the next page. Key change to the balance sheet that you'll see is the increase in working capital. That was up around $200 million on last year. A big part of that was inventory levels, which increased $108 million ahead of major new product launches and to build the higher safety stock levels for critical components. We expect inventory to sales levels to start to moderate by December. The $90 million increase in trade receivables reflects a relatively stronger fourth quarter sales that we had, including in emerging markets. You can see property, plant, and equipment increased $28 million.
This is mainly investment in capacity expansion at our Lane Cove and Kuala Lumpur manufacturing facilities. You see the $50 million increase in intangible assets. That reflects increased IT system development, acquired technology, and software development, and some impact of foreign exchange. The increase in the other net liabilities includes the approximately $50 million reduction in the employee short-term incentive provision that I mentioned before. All right, onto the cash flow on the next page. You'll see operating cash flows declined $150 million on last year. That's driven down by the working capital, which we just went through, and a bit on higher income taxes paid. That's due to timing of tax installment payments. Finally, the CapEx of $103 million includes the capacity expansion that I mentioned, that investment in Lane Cove and Kuala Lumpur, and our stay in business CapEx. All right, now back to Dig for the outlook.
Thanks, Sarah. Under the outlook, you'll see that the numbers here are a guidance range of $435 million -$460 million. That's 11% - 17% in reported. When we take out cloud out of $25 million, that's between 5% and 11%. Going into the detail of that, we should really talk through on the ways. We expect a strong performance in developed markets through this year on the back of the launch of the Nexa system. We're expecting over 10% unit growth. We'll be waiting the second half because we are rolling out Nexa with FDA approval at the start of July. In the U.S., for example, we then have to work through contracting because we are seeking price increases in a whole range of markets for Nexa and software installation. The launch is still coming in the U.S., so weighted to the second half.
In emerging markets, we do expect strong unit growth, but it will be in a high mix in the lower tier. That means modest growth. As I said, China is a headwind for us in terms of both revenue and profit into 2026 compared to 2025, particularly because we had a strong first half, a very strong first half in emerging markets in 2025. Service, as I've talked about, we're expecting to see growth there. It's modest growth, but it's really that eligible base growing will help us. There does remain some uncertainty there, particularly over just the sentiment that we see, particularly in the U.S. Acoustics, I've talked about then, gross margin at around 74%. Now, R&D is slightly higher this year, and that's a factor I talked about upfront. We haven't slowed down our R&D pipeline with the lower sales this year.
As the sales catch back up, we're preserving that R&D spending, which means it lifts as a proportion of sales. Our net profit margin is heading towards 18%, but will be a bit below. That's reflecting the R&D and just reflecting to make sure that we continue investing both our R&D and our growth as our sales grow, and Sarah has talked to cloud. Okay, let's move on and we'll talk to questions. I'm going to stop sharing the screen so that you can see Sarah and I.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two, and if you're on a speaker phone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from David Low from JPMorgan . Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Dig, if I could start with guidance, can I get you to talk a little bit more to how second half weighted it'll be? Also, on the same topic, the little bit below 18%, how much is a little bit and why the decision to do that? It seems such a long-standing strategy. I heard the explanation on R&D, but if I could get you to elaborate on that as well, please.
Yeah, okay. Our sales will be pretty significantly weighted to the second half. As I said, Nexa is rolling out, so we don't get a full six months in all of our countries of Nexa in the first half. Equally, with people knowing Nexa is coming, we expect to see now it's imminent surgery holds. We are seeing some of that in the U.S. They'll come back pretty quickly, but some of that will follow the second half. Similarly, on upgrades, they have said that eligible base rises in the second half. Also in the U.S., we have the retirement of Nucleus 7, which comes into effect in the second half. Pretty strong weighting. If you saw this year, obviously, we had more profit in the first half than the second half. This year is going to be the other way around.
That contrast will also play when you look at it on a comparable basis. The second half of your question, David, was about.
How much below?
Yeah, yeah. Okay, it is, I don't say we're going to be above 17.5%, which is why we say 18%, but we want a bit of flexibility there. We are rebuilding that at the STI provision. That was a significant piece of our cost that didn't happen because of performance in this year. We expect to perform and get that back next year. Rebuilding that and making sure that we are still investing in R&D and investing in growth. Given our long run-out look, we think it makes much more sense to smooth that path back to 18% than to jump straight back up there at the risk of compromising the future.
Great. I'll leave it at that. Thanks very much.
Thanks, David.
Thank you. Yeah, next question comes from Andrew Goodsall from MST Financial . Please go ahead.
Thank you very much for taking my question. Maybe just continuing on from your comment around the Nexa launch, could you just give us a sense of what sort of response you are getting in the markets you have launched? I mean, is that what's supporting your sort of 10% + growth outlook? Is that giving you the sort of confidence?
Yeah, Andrew. Yes, we're seeing a very, very positive response. Surgeons, even quite conservative surgeons, are saying this is a game changer in terms of the industry and in terms of patient selection and their implant selection. We have consistently heard those sorts of messages as we've rolled the product out and been through launch events. It is genuinely new technology and different technology with more potential. What people are recognizing is that people have, whatever age, the implant for the rest of their life, the potential for the implant to be able to benefit from technology over that time, as they do from sound processors now, is really important. That gives us confidence. With new technology, we're pushing for price increases across a range of markets. Part of that lift is both we will get share gains, we'll get some ASP gains, and we've got an underlying market growth. All of those things give us confidence in that developed market CI outlook.
Just a second part of my question, for Sarah, could I get you to clarify what you expect the post-tax cloud spend will be? For the basic guidance where you've given the 5% - 11%, can you also clarify the base that we should be using to understand that 5% - 11% growth?
The post-tax cloud is expected to be around $80 million. The second part of your question was around the base for the 5% - 11%. Is that right? Yeah, that's off of our numbers from this year, as usual.
It's a pre-cloud to, it's an inclusive cloud to the 5% - 11%, sorry, excluding cloud to excluding cloud.
Now I get it.
Yes.
Yeah, if I use your, you've given us a sort of an 18% margin or in the P&L for this year for X cloud. If I use that to get the NPAD and come up with about $424 million, then the 5% - 11% is on that number. Is that right?
Yeah, it's off the underlying basis.
Yeah.
Take our guidance range and back out 5% and 11%, you'll get to that number.
Okay, got it. Got it. Okay, and the 80 is a post-tax number. Just to clarify. Okay. Okay. All right, thank you very much.
Thanks, Andrew.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Saul Hadassin from Barrenjoey . Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Dig, I guess a question on the services and particularly the upgrades. The commentary again just about that U.S. consumer, which I think hasn't really been a feature in upgrades in the past. I know you're expecting improvement because of the increase in the size of the install base from five years ago. You seem to be a bit cautious about the commentary just then about the outlook for 2025. I guess just your, yeah, some comments around why you think services should see solid growth. Maybe also give us a sense of what does solid actually mean. Is that a mid-single-digit revenue growth number? Is it high single digits? Any color around the word solid, please?
Definitely, definitely single-digit growth in its services, our expectation. I don't want to go too much further than that. Yeah, look, we are a little bit cautious on the outlook. Saul, you're quite right. This is not something we have seen before, this caution around the copay in the U.S. We're trying to sort of triangulate that. I have just been in the U.S. pretty recently, and we hear from our team there a lot. There is a bunch of uncertainty in the U.S. at a sort of a consumer level. If we look back over our history, we haven't seen that level of uncertainty at the same time, apart from COVID, at the same time as actually our services business has been quite significant. We're probably going back to the GFC, when services were much, much smaller. We wouldn't sort of see those impacts.
We are trying to understand and unravel. We are a little bit cautious on the outlook, certainly in the shorter run. Over the long term, remain confident because this is, and this tracks well over time. It's driven by the growing recipient base. While upgrading is discretionary, it's discretionary within a time window. Our processors do wear out. You just can't make a piece of consumer electronics that sits in that sort of environment where a processor sits and have it last forever.
Understood.
Short-term hesitancy, uncertainty versus a long-term remain confident that the underlying conditions for Services are intact.
That's very, very comprehensive. Thank you for that. Just one more dig. This commentary around slower market growth in some of the developed markets that I think was referenced during this fiscal year as well, and maybe there was some expectation that that growth might improve. Can you talk to what it is that is going on potentially in some of these markets? Are you able to call out which of the developed markets that you're seeing this? I assume it's not necessarily the U.S., but maybe some of the Western European markets. Any idea, I guess the question is, what do you think market growth, what is a sustainable rate of market growth considering this slowdown in some of those markets that you compete in?
Yeah, yeah. We have been a bit slower in Western Europe. It is also coming off some really strong years of growth, particularly in the adults and seniors. Getting to around 10% this year is clearly not a bad outcome. It's just not at the level we've been. What gives us confidence is that of this growth, the growth picking back up, we are seeing our growth programs getting traction. As I said, we've done a really good job this year of getting more insight into the referral paths and the points at which people will drop out. We've got better metrics, we've got better measures, and that will help us target where we invest in our growth programs.
Nexa, to a degree, is also just helpful in the shorter run from growth because we have a contact with a lot of people who are in vacations or for whatever reason have decided just not to go ahead now. A new product is a new opportunity to re-engage and for all these people, their hearing almost certainly will have deteriorated over time as well. Long run, again, and you know what I talked about, this links to cognition, and you see the growing evidence there. That gives us a lot of confidence that, you know, both from a referring and a candidate perspective, we'll see more motivation to get hearing loss treated. In some of our surveys now of people who've been referred and got implants, and we ask them what motivated them, cognition is one of the things that is rising in terms of people's reasons to act.
Thanks very much. That's all I had.
No problem. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Steve Wheen from Jarden . Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, Dig. I just wanted to touch on the cloud costs. In the interim, you increased your guidance as to how much you're going to spend to $40 million, and I think you've done $32.7 million. Just what happened in the last few months that made you not spend what you thought you were going to spend?
Yeah, I can take that one. When we indicated at the half we were spending more, we had not yet fully done the planning for exactly what we would be doing when, during this half, and then going into next year, into the year we're in now. We did that planning during Q3 of the year. It became very clear exactly what we want to do, when, and why. It's a timing effect. We will still spend the money. It's just we didn't end up actually doing exactly the things we were kind of thinking we would once we firmed up those plans more. It's a timing effect on that.
Okay. Just a bit of a follow-on from that, the staff STI provision release this year of $50 million. I heard your comments that you're going to be rebuilding that provision in the FY2026 year. Can you give us an indication as to are you going to reverse the $50 million back into the FY2026 year, or is it a figure less than that? As part of this, just trying to understand the guidance, your other income included some that was certainly larger than I was expecting. What was the composition of that, and will any of that continue into FY2026 as well?
I'll answer the first part. I'm sure I could do that. Other income. On that, the $50 million, we do expect to land on our targeted outlook. If we land on our targeted outlook and we deliver well on our programs, we'd expect to have the STI going broadly across the company next year. Therefore, we've got to rebuild that provision, and you know that goes through into our OpEx for the year. I'm sorry, you can then just talk on the other income.
Yeah, sure. Look, in the other income, about half of that is grant income from government grants. We know those come and go at different years. If we could predict the grants that government were giving us, I would love to do that. I can't guarantee you that that all sustains at exactly that level into the next year. There's also some income from collaborations that we have and a little bit of that that is related to the Oticon Medical acquisition just as that got wrapped up.
Okay, Sarah, so you aren't putting any of that continuation into FY2026 guidance?
It will be lower in FY2026. I wouldn't expect it would stay quite at that level.
Okay, great. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Dave.
Thank you. Your next question comes from David Stanton from Jefferies . Please go ahead.
Good morning, team, and thanks very much for taking my question. Just to maybe beat a dead horse a little bit, can you give us an idea of what you think market volume growth is for Cochlear implants at present?
I think, David, on this one, it always depends on which segment are we talking about. You know we've seen very strong volume growth in emerging markets.
I'm sorry.
Okay, my dad also seniors. We think it's probably this, you know we saw around, we saw around 10% and we probably lost a little bit of share. We think that segment, therefore, the market growth is a bit higher, probably low single digits in the year. You know we didn't lose much share, so probably just over 10%. That's about what we saw. That's a bit lower than we saw in 2024. We're expecting that segment to get, you know, to grow again this year. That growth to lift as we go into 2026.
Understood. That 10% number, just to make it absolutely clear for the dummies on the call like me, is the overall number, global number, or is that just to developed markets? Sorry, I think I'm missing.
Developed market, adults and seniors. Yeah, important to clarify.
Okay. Okay. Overall number, would you hazard a guess at that?
Not really, because it is this mix of pretty different things. Obviously, developed market, we've got children, which is about a quarter of the implants in developed markets. We should come back to around 2%, normal run rate. In emerging markets, we've seen over time putting a number on it in a single year, it's just guaranteed to be wrong. It's always going up, but it moves around quite a lot.
I'm interested to hear with the Nexa, you've had initial feedback. I'd like to hear your initial feedback on the potential from surgeons or the feedback from surgeons around more precise manipulation post-surgery, whether that's a feature that the surgeons are very interested in.
Yeah, look, we're getting a lot of surgeons reaching out to be interested in doing research. This is on the focused multipolar stimulation. We've got a couple of small studies going on that we've had going on for a year now. We're seeing some interesting results there. For example, just a small study, we are seeing with the new stimulations, people preferring music with the new stimulation modes over the existing ones. Small numbers of people at this stage, but very, very encouraging results. The logic here is pretty strong, but we need to see that clinically. The logic here is if with the electronics, we can focus the charge more and therefore be more precise in the stimulation of the auditory nerve. The logic says that should get better hearing outcomes, but only when you do this clinically do we see if that's the case. Some early indications, but it is early and more research to be done.
Sorry, second and last follow-up. It sounds like the surgeons are interested, maybe interested because it may correct for any issues that they have during surgery. They can potentially fix it later.
Not so much the correct for issues in surgeries. One of the things separate that we, as well as being able to measure neural health, one of the other things that we think we'll be able to measure is electrode placement. At the moment, you know, when a surgeon puts the electrode into the cochlea, they're blind on exactly where in the cochlea is it and how close to the modulus, the auditory nerve. We are, and we've done some studies on this at a small scale, but we're confident that we'll be able to actually measure that, which will enable the surgeon during surgery to ensure that the electrode is optimally placed, and that will certainly help outcomes. The focused stimulation is more about, with the electrode optimally placed, how to maximize a person's potential by targeting the stimulation to their auditory nerve in a way that gives them that best perception of sound.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
Thanks, David.
Thank you. Your next question comes from David Bailey from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Good morning, Dig. I just want to be clear on this one. You know, the update you gave in June, you called out slow and expected market growth in developed markets. Can you just sort of talk through, following on from Saul's question, where that's occurring and the mix between adults and seniors, please? Sorry, adults and kids.
As kids, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was more in Western Europe, which was certainly slower than we had expected. The decline in children, we sort of anticipated it, I suppose, or we'd foreshadowed it might happen, but you know when it happens, it's different to foreshadowing it's going to happen at some point. On the adults and seniors, again, 10% is a pretty good number. We want it to be higher and it has been higher, and we're confident we can get it back higher. There's not, I put it in that it's a modest decline in growth rather than a worrying decline in growth, and we're confident of the plans that we've got that we can lift it back up.
Is there any reimbursement pressure, or is it all just volume coming through? The question is price versus volume in that.
No, we're not in developed markets. We are not seeing any increased or unusual reimbursement pressure. I mean, healthcare systems is always reimbursement for pressure, but certainly wouldn't call that out as being a factor in 2025.
Yeah, understood. You've talked to the VBP in China, a bit of a revenue hit and gross margin impact as well. Is there anything you can sort of quantify in relation to that? Maybe just more broadly, the dynamics there? I think there's pretty good private pay growth in those special zones, but the question is maybe quantifying 2026 to the extent you can, and then the dynamics in the Chinese market more broadly.
I think David can make a few comments there. You're quite right. The special zones are still there, and we are selling Nexa through one of those special zones now, and we've seen a very strong uptake. That good premium segment remains. In terms of the volume-based pricing, we're five months in, and there's definitely been a lift in overall volume. Still some uncertainty over the extent to which that will be maintained. We know the market potential is there, but we're also pretty confident that this was visible before it happened. There was a backlog of people to come through. We want to just see that run a bit more. Overall volume is definitely up, and we think it will stay up, but it is through that low tier.
One of the things that's happened is that we used to have a pretty good middle tier pricing in China, and that volume that was in the middle tier, most of that's moved into the low tier, and that's what brings this revenue headwind and that profit headwind as we go into 2026.
Are you able to quantify either a gross margin impact or revenue impact?
No, I'm going to stay away from the specifics because it's still moving around. We just want to be cautious about going beyond the dynamics to get to numbers.
Yep, no worries. That's all. Thank you.
Thanks, David.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Davinthra Thillainathan from Goldman Sachs . Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks. Morning, Dig. Morning, Sarah. Appreciate the opportunity. Dig, can I just get you to talk to the ability for the Nexa implant to expand the market? Clearly, I understand the longer-term dynamics there with the processor mapping side of the equation where you can actually, I guess, expand capacity in the channel. If we think about nearer-term trends, could you give us a sense if you're seeing any leading indicators where the product is actually expanding the market?
Yeah, that's a good question. Too early to call on whether Nexa would expand the market. I'm certainly seeing some share already now, early days on that, but definitely seeing that happen. You're right. One of the features in Nexa, some of those will take away, take out clinical time, therefore increasing clinical capacity to enable more people to get evaluated. It's an enabler of growth. Looking forward from a product perspective, we do think that a drug-eluting electrode has the potential to expand the market, particularly. To do that, we will want to be able to demonstrate that there's better hearing preservation because that is one of the barriers for people getting an implant now is that while there is hearing preservation, our labeling at the moment says you may lose your hearing. We've seen some early indications that a drug-eluting electrode could help preserve residual hearing.
If surgeons were able to give people more confidence on the amount of hearing they'd retain, that would take away one of the barriers. I said we've done this analysis of where people drop out once they're referred, and that is certainly one of the points at which people who are in the indications and would do better to pull out of the process.
Okay, thank you. My next question is on the services part of the business. In your FY2026 guidance, is there any expectation within services for a new processor for the Oticon Medical recipients? Just thinking about that opportunity there.
Not in 2026, but something we're certainly working on. Now, that recipient base from Oticon Medical is relatively small. When it does come in, you won't see a huge kick-up in services. We are continuing to sell the existing processors there. It's a small number, but it's a small part of our services revenue.
All right. Thanks, Dig.
Thanks, David.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Marcus Curley from UBS . Please go ahead.
Good morning. Just a couple of questions on the Nexa system. Could you talk a little bit about how you think the multipolar stimulation differs from what's offered by MED-EL and Advanced Bionics?
Yeah, yeah. Marcus, good question. Medel don't have anything that is in any form of multipolar stimulation. Advanced Bionics have some capability, and they've had that for over 20 years. Being electronics over 20 years ago, it is far more rudimentary than we have. The other thing that's important, and we realized this partway through this development, is you need to be really close to the hearing nerve, which is one of our motivations for launching the slim body electrode in about 2016, to benefit from focused stimulation. You've got to be really close. Otherwise, that benefit of that focusing too far away, you still get a lot of channel interaction. Advanced Bionics don't have sophisticated electronics, and they certainly don't have the electrode that would enable the benefits that we've noticed.
Secondly, you mentioned the future potential reduction in the size of the sound processor with this platform. Could you give us a bit of perspective in terms of how small future releases could get? We've had feedback to suggest that there could be quite large reductions in the size of the sound processor in the future with this type of platform.
We've already seen a reduction upfront, and we do think there is more we can do on reducing power consumption with the electronics. It has potential with a drug-eluting electrode with lower impedance to reduce the power consumption again. There is more room to go there. The sort of the obvious, the ultimate on size reduction of the externals is a ticky.
Maybe I can throw more in on products. Can you just talk a little bit to the response you're seeing on the Kanso 3 and sort of how big a contribution you think it makes to your services revenue in 2026?
Early days, but good response so far. It brings all of the Nucleus 8 functionality into the Kanso form factor. Kanso is an important part of the market. On average across the world, it's sort of around 20%. There's a population of people out there on Kanso 1 and Kanso 2 who will be eligible to upgrade for Kanso 3. It's certainly part of the services mix for this year.
Okay, thank you.
Thanks, Marcus.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Lyanne Harrison from Bank of America . Please go ahead.
Good morning, Dig. Good morning, Sarah. I'm going to come back to services for a little bit. You mentioned there were a number of reasons for softer services revenues this year. Can you put that in context for us? You know, which of those factors was the biggest drag and which had less of an impact?
Yeah, Lyanne, good question. It's actually really hard for us to disaggregate. 2025 was a difficult year because it's quite hard for us to really understand every piece of what's going on because there are multiple factors, and it's just hard to disaggregate those factors. I think, as I said, the U.S. was where we had the biggest fall, and that's the place where cost of living is, you know, there is the copay and that cost of living impact is there. That certainly helps us conclude. What we hear directly from people as we're talking about the audits is that was a piece of it. The recipient base bit not growing, that's a contributor, but actually disaggregating those into exactly of the reduction, this bit was due to this and this to that, we're not able to do at that level of granularity.
What that doesn't stop us doing, though, is still not sure knowing that would change too much the actions we've already taken, which is about to promote what we have got better. We've got in the U.S. the retirement of Nucleus 7, and obviously then we just have the eligible base increasing. We've got Kanso 3 launching as well. All of those things will contribute to a better outlook and result in 2026.
Okay, great. Thank you. Just another question. You mentioned taking some price, particularly with the Nexa launches. How much price increase would you be thinking about there?
It varies by market, but certainly in single, there's a range, but all in single digits.
Okay. With those launch of new products and also you expanding some of the processor launches across different markets as well, why would we not expect gross margin expansion? Obviously, you're guiding it to being flat in 2026, and understanding some of the headwinds there. If you're taking some price and launching in new markets, surely we should expect a little bit of gross margin expansion?
Yeah, in the developed markets, yes, we will. In the emerging markets, we're going to have a full year of the volume-based pricing in China, and that will put downward pressure on the gross margin.
Okay, great. Thank you very much. I'll leave it there.
Thanks, Lyanne.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Andrew Paine from CLSA . Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just coming back to our services, obviously calling out the smaller eligible base impacting that area. Just looking at the strong services growth that followed that initial COVID disruption, do you think that's an indication of a type of growth you'd expect as those headwinds ease and maybe also including some of the product launches coming up?
We are certainly, when Andrew, not forecasting that sort of level of growth that we saw coming out of COVID, but I think that what that growth did show is that upgrading is discretionary in a time window. If people are holding off upgrading now, they will upgrade at some point because at some point they will either realize the gap between the existing technology and potential technology, or the processor just will wear out.
Okay. If you're talking about, you know, especially in the U.S., cost of living pressures, there's holdouts there. Plus, you didn't have that, you know, the kind of five-year cycle through, let's say, this calendar year. Into calendar year 2026, it should, you know, there should be some reasonable demand for upgrades coming through. Is that correct?
I think your point is, yes, look, some of those upgrades that would have happened in the second half of 2020 were delayed into 2021. Those five years for those people have moved out. For some of them, they will, and that will happen in 2026. That's one of the reasons the eligible base grows in 2026 compared to 2025, as it's reflecting that deferral that happened in COVID.
Okay, that's great. Also, just in relation to holdouts waiting for the Nexa system, is there any concerns around bottlenecks to surgeries or getting those patients through the channel and implanting devices, let's say amongst the U.S. launches and into calendar year 2026? Do you think that's going to be a pretty smooth process?
I think to the extent there's holds, we will get those surgeries back through in 2026. Surgeons are, and it's particularly a U.S. issue where we've got the launch, but with the contractor, we haven't put the product out just yet. It's soon. Surgeons are very conscious of their access to their surgical slots and don't want to give them up if they're not sure they can get them back. That's moderating. While we're seeing some holds, it is moderating the level.
Okay, that's great. Thanks very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Sacha Krien from Evans & Partners. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for squeezing me in. Just another clarification question on developed markets. When you've previously mentioned some market weakness, can you sort of clarify how much of that do you think is attributable to patients waiting for Nexa versus other factors? Are you seeing any, you know, potential cost of living issues on the implant side as well?
Yeah, we don't see that cost of living has had an impact on the market growth. In terms of people holding for Nexa, we don't think it was significant. We're sure there were some, right, because we announced the product in February. We certainly know through our consumer tracking of a small number of holds, but it wasn't, you know, certainly wouldn't hold that up as a significant factor impacting 2025.
Okay, got it. Services growth, you touched on a few different factors there, but you didn't mention payers. I'm just wondering how much the change in mix of your eligible base, so more seniors and more adults, is pushing out that replacement cycle. Do payers apply stricter criteria to adults and seniors upgrading their processor?
No, we don't see stricter criteria based on age. We certainly do see in places payers, as they always do, pushing back on upgrades or on procedures or on upgrades. That's not unusual.
Okay. Is that part of your uncertainty driven by potential changes for Medicaid?
As Medicaid changes, it looks like there is still uncertainty there. I think the saying is that impact won't happen just yet. Medicaid is a small part of our health sales in the U.S., but there certainly is a level of uncertainty of just what impact that will have. Probably not so much directly on us, but on hospitals. There are hospitals that have a level of Medicaid funding which helps them with their profitability. If that falls, what's the hospital response to that and what impact is there on us? There is some uncertainty, but we think that's more likely a bit later than 2026 at the moment. It's still playing out.
Yeah, okay. Final quick question, just emerging market prices. You talked a bit about the trends in China. I'm just wondering if you're seeing any more pricing pressure in other markets?
In terms of other markets, it can be pretty normal. Across emerging markets, there is always a range of prices. You know, with Nexa, that gives us a great opportunity to hold and even gain share in that premium segment across the world. At the lower end, yeah, there's always a range and the volume there is where it's more variable because there is more dependence on government funding and the timing of government funding, but we're not seeing a trend that's different.
Okay, thank you.
Sure.
Thank you. The next question comes from Steve Wheen from Jarden . Please go ahead.
Steve, back to you.
Thank you. Sorry. Just given you'd mentioned this historically, that you were expecting an Indian tender from the Indian government, wondering if that appeared at all in 2025, or is there any part of that that you expect in FY2026?
Look, we certainly, we've got a bit of volume in 2025. We expect to have some Indian tenders in 2026, but in terms of the overall impact on the business, it's not a huge either way. Not a huge impact. You know, with these tenders, when they come, we can see a lift in our volume, but not a huge revenue impact.
Yeah, so the government one tender that went missing in 2024, you're not expecting that to come back?
No, no.
Okay, thanks. The second question.
Thanks, Steve.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Craig Wong-Pan from RBC . Please go ahead.
Thanks. Just wanted to clarify, is the margin headwind from Chengdu manufacturing becoming larger in FY2026, given you're expecting to manufacture more implants there? Is the amount of the overall margin headwind still thought to be around 50 basis points that should roll off somewhere throughout FY2027 and FY2028?
Yeah, look, we're not expecting that to get larger. Ramping up is helping us there. It'll probably be a little bit less than that number you quoted, but it's still a headwind this year and next.
I should have just mentioned earlier on Lyanne's question, just on the gross margin, the Nexa being new, obviously a new product, the costs are a bit higher to start and then they come down. There's partial impact there as well.
Okay. On acoustics, you mentioned that with the launch of the Baha 7, that might have meant some upgrades were delayed. Given that was only announced in June, I was just curious when doctors or patients might have been aware of that. Is that a significant impact there around why those revenues declined in the second half?
Craig did say that was in the U.S. We did launch in February with Baha 7 in Europe. That's where we saw some delay, and we're seeing a good response on Baha 7 now.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Christine Trinh from Macquarie . Please go ahead.
Hi Dig, just two quick ones from me. Just in terms of longer-term targets, are you still looking to target sales revenue growth of about 10% over the coming years, or are you kind of expecting a significant uplift from that Nexa system?
No, as a long-term target, that's one that we would maintain.
Just quickly on the cloud investment again, just confirming that $130 million over the next two years is post-tax?
No, that $130 million over the next two years is a pre-tax number. That's our total investment in that.
Okay, great. Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question is from Lyanne Harrison from Bank of America . Please go ahead.
Hi, I just had a follow-up question on the retirement of the Nucleus 7. Can you give us an indication of what proportion of your install base are on the Nucleus 7? When you say retirement, what does that mean in terms of patients who are currently on it? Do they have to switch, or is it just that any support gets turned off?
Yeah, Leanne, good question. Retirement is part of managing the lifecycle of each of our products. With these, the consumer electronics, there is a limited life that we can support them for. We also have different regulatory requirements in each country as to how long we need to continue support. We've got to manage. The retirement dates are different by country. Be conscious of our regulatory obligations. We're also very conscious of just our ability to continue to support a product with components. The retirement that we're talking about is in the U.S. We won't go into what proportion of our recipient base, because again, it does vary by country. What it means after retirement is that we stop providing repairs. If someone's processor breaks and it's unable to be repaired, if we can repair without replacing components, we do that. If it's unable to be repaired, then they need to get an upgrade.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Lyanne.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand the conference back to Mr. Howitt for closing remarks.
Okay, thanks everyone for joining. Appreciate it and no doubt see you again in six months, if not before.