Embla Medical hf. (CPH:EMBLA)
Denmark flag Denmark · Delayed Price · Currency is DKK
26.55
-0.15 (-0.56%)
Apr 29, 2026, 11:06 AM CET
← View all transcripts

Earnings Call: Q3 2025

Oct 21, 2025

Operator

At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to this Q3 2025 conference call. Today's call is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. All participants will be on listen-only mode throughout the presentation, and afterwards, there will be a question-and-answer session. I would now like to introduce President and CEO Sveinn Sölvason and CFO Arna Sveinsdóttir. I will now turn the call over to your speakers. You may now begin your presentation.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Thank you, Operator, and good morning and welcome to the Embla Medical conference call, where we will review the third quarter of 2025. I am Sveinn Sölvason, President and CEO of Embla Medical, and joining me on today's call from Copenhagen is our Chief Financial Officer, Arna Sveinsdóttir, and Embla Medical's Head of Investor Relations, K laus Sindahl. The presentation should take approximately 15 minutes, after which there will be an opportunity to ask questions during a Q&A session. And if you please go to the next slide. Sales in the third quarter amounted to ISK 237 million, representing 7% organic growth, and our reported growth was 11% for the quarter, including 3 percentage points impact from FX and 1 percentage point from M&A.

As expected, and as we had communicated, our growth picked up here in the third quarter, driven principally by double-digit growth in prosthetics and neuroorthotics, while sales growth in patient care remained modest, and sales in bracing and supports segment came in flat for the quarter. EBITDA margin was strong at 22% here in the quarter, and on par with the third quarter last year, while our margin increased by a full percentage point to 21% for the first nine months compared to the same period last year. The margin increase was driven by robust sales in prosthetics and neuroorthotics business area, solid efficiency gains in manufacturing, and continued cost discipline in SG&A. In line with our performance recorded here in the first nine months of 2025, our guidance for the full year has been or is reiterated.

On our strategic initiatives, we are pleased with the progress we are making. Late August, we announced the closing of the majority investment in Fior & Gentz neuro orthotics. We are very excited about this investment, which is a strong strategic fit with our Growth 2027 strategy and will enable Embla Medical to reach more patients as a full-range provider in the broader O&P space. We're also pleased here in the quarter to announce the successful launch of Odyssey iQ, which is a new hydraulic microprocessor foot solution by College Park. The Odyssey iQ is a lightweight and low-profile foot solution suitable for various environments and activity levels, offering long-lasting battery and fast response time. We have seen good reception of this product in the Americas market since the introduction during the summer. In neuro orthotics, we are tracking in line with expectations since last year.

Our focus and strategy has been to expand into new international markets while maintaining the growth of the existing German business. Fior & Gentz was recently also awarded a new reimbursement code in the United States for their microprocessor-controlled knee joint, which is a significant milestone for the introduction of neuroorthotics in the important U.S. market. We continue to monitor the external environment closely as dynamics remain volatile, whether it relates to tariffs or other trade restrictions potentially impacting our business. In the third quarter, we experienced some impact from tariffs in the U.S. and continue to assume some absorption in our guidance. And we are as well taking short-term mitigation initiatives, including initiatives on the cost side to mitigate the impact of these tariffs. Lastly, the U.S.

Department of Commerce published a notice for public consultation on a possible Section 232 investigation concerning medical consumables and medical equipment, including prosthetics and orthopedic appliances, with the objective to determine the effects on U.S. national security. We're currently assessing the scope and potential implications and the potential trade restrictions that might result from this investigation. However, several factors remain uncertain at this stage. We still deem it too premature to discuss potential impact until more clarity has been released. If you turn to the next slide, please. We had solid growth across all our regions in the third quarter, mainly again driven by prosthetics and neuroorthotics. Our sales growth was especially strong in the APAC region with 18% growth, while our EMEA region and Americas delivered 7% and 5% growth respectively. If you turn to the next slide, please.

If we look at our prosthetics and neuroorthotics segment, organic growth was 13% in the third quarter. The strong momentum in EMEA continues across markets, and growth was driven by strong both volume growth and solid uptake across all our key product categories, especially in categories such as bionics and feet solutions, where we saw strong growth supported by our innovation, namely Navii and Pro-Flex Terra. We're also encouraged by the strong sales growth or sales growth recovery in Americas following a soft start to the year. The growth in Americas was led by key product categories in both upper and lower limb prosthetics and supported by our recently launched innovation. Also, our College Park portfolio showed very good sales growth in this quarter following the launch of our new bionic foot solution, Odyssey iQ, among others.

Lastly, our performance in APAC was very strong, with growth across markets driven here in quarter three by China, Japan, and very good performance in Australia. In neuroorthotics, the business is moving ahead according to plan, and during quarter three, we saw a good ramp-up in select new markets based from a low base. If you turn to the next slide, please. Sales in bracing and supports were flat in the third quarter. In EMEA, sales ended soft despite good performance in some markets. In Americas, sales were flat, continued headwind in the U.S. market, but we see solid growth in our OA bracing business. Lastly, APAC demonstrated some scattered performance with solid growth in Australia and New Zealand, but partially offset by softer performance in most other markets. If you turn to the next slide, please. Sales in Patient Care grew modestly at 1% for the quarter.

We saw mixed performance by key regions in both EMEA and Americas, while our APAC region demonstrated very strong performance across our clinics in Australia, and as a reminder, Australia is the only market in APAC where we operate in patient care. If we go back to the big picture in patient care, the market is estimated to grow in the range of 3%-5%, with also healthy operating margins. Our patient care business has, over the last few quarters, experienced lower-than-expected growth, mainly in EMEA and Americas regions. This performance can possibly be ascribed to softness and timing in patient volumes, particularly in the first half of the year. However, our patient care business has also been delivering below-market growth in this period.

This recent weakness can be ascribed to internal change initiatives, including the promotion rebrand rollout, platform-wide integrations of new ERP and operating systems, and other change management initiatives impacting ways of operating. It's a top priority for management to get back on track in patient care, and we have extensive focus on performance management and other key initiatives that will strengthen our execution in this part of our business. Now, this concludes our performance overview for the quarter. I would like to hand it over to Arna to go through the financials in more detail. Arna, please.

Arna Sveinsdóttir
CFO, Embla Medical

Thank you, Sveinn. Please turn to the next slide for an overview of our financials. In the third quarter, the gross profit margin was 63% on par with Q3 2024. The gross profit margin was positively impacted by the strong performance in prosthetics and neuroorthotics, coupled with manufacturing efficiency. The margin was, however, negatively impacted by modest sales growth in patient care and bracing and supports, in addition to some impact from U.S. tariffs. For the first nine months in 2025, our gross profit was 63% versus 62% in the same period last year, and on par when excluding special items. OpEx growth was 5% organic in the third quarter, or 2 percentage points below our organic sales growth, and in line with continued focus on cost management on the SG&A side. Consequently, we delivered an EBITDA margin of 22% for the quarter, on par with quarter three 2024.

And the third quarter EBITDA margin was negatively affected by around 30 basis points from FX. In line with our plan to expand EBITDA margin, the EBITDA margin for the first nine months was 21%, compared to 19% before, for the same period last year, or 20% before special items. Net profit grew 17% in both quarter three and for the first nine months. Growth in net profit was driven by strong operating results. Please turn to the next slide for status on our cash flow and leverage. During the third quarter, CapEx was ISK 8 million, or 3% of sales, and within the guided range of 3%-4% of sales. CapEx decreased slightly in comparison to Q2 and the comparable quarter last year, partly due to timing of investment and CapEx returning to normalized levels.

Our free cash flow was strong for the quarter, as we generated ISK 38 million in the quarter, compared to ISK 33 million for the same period last year. Our free cash flow benefited from strong operating results, as well as positive impact from net working capital and normalized CapEx levels. It should be noted that the second half of each year is seasonally higher than the first six months in terms of cash flow generation. Net debt to EBITDA corresponded to 2.5x at the end of the quarter and within the range of 2x-3x , but it's the target range. Lastly, we issued around 2.8 million new shares in early September in support of the majority investment in neuro orthotics.

We also bought back a record 525,000 shares in the third quarter as part of our ongoing share buyback program at a market value of ISK 2.7 million. With this overview on financials, I'll hand over to Sveinn for his closing remarks and comments around our guidance.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Thank you, Arna. Please turn to the next slide. In the third quarter, growth picked up as expected, driven by double-digit growth in prosthetics and neuroorthotics, with the solid momentum in EMEA continuing and growth in Americas picking up following a soft start to the year. In line with our performance to date, our full-year guidance is reiterated with 5%-6% organic growth and 20%-21% EBITDA margin. As previously communicated, the guidance assumed some absorption of tariffs, although uncertainty around exact impact remains. With this overview, our presentation is now concluded, and we would like to open the call for questions. Operator, please move to the last slide, and the Q&A can begin.

Operator

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press five-star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw a question, press five-star again. Our first question comes from the line of Jesper Ingildsen from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line is now unmuted.

Jesper Ingildsen
Senior Equity Research Analyst, Carnegie

Yeah, hi. Congrats on a strong quarter. I have a couple of questions. Maybe firstly, if we can start out on the strong performance within prosthetics and Neuroorthotics, could you share a bit of thoughts around what we should anticipate going into Q4 and beyond? Is there anything we should consider here in terms of timing or anything similar? And also, I guess you have somewhat tougher comps in Q4. And then maybe moving on to your Patient Care business, as you alluded to, it's an area where you have been underperforming the market, which I think is clear in the light of one of your competitors recently going public. Could you talk a bit to what initiatives you are doing here to improve the growth and how soon we can expect the growth to improve? Thanks.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Yeah, hi, Jesper, and thanks for the questions. On prosthetics and neuro orthotics, this was one of those quarters where we had tailwind across all our major regions, and we saw solid performance across all our major product categories. And it's also fair to remember that we are also comparing to a fairly strong comparable quarter last year, where we generated 9% organic growth in Q3 2024. I would not like to comment or give very specific guidance by segment here for the next quarter, but how should I put it? We've been consistent in our performance in prosthetics and neuro orthotics over the last many quarters, and there's no reason for us to expect that that shouldn't continue, but obviously also mentioning that we can see quarterly fluctuations.

With regard to your question on patient care, I would like to sort of take the opportunity to take a step back and to the big picture in patient care. We have, over the last decade, built up a very strong platform in patient care. We've made acquisitions in key markets of high-quality companies, but have operated these entities with limited integration, maintaining separate brands, etc. Over the last 12 months, we have taken significant steps in order to move to the next maturity stage in patient care to operate a global business, a truly global business, benefit from scale. And in order to do that, we have rolled out a new brand here over the last 12 months and will complete mostly on that here during 2025.

We've also made significant investments in processes and systems alignment, rolling out a new clinical management system, for example, in our whole U.S. platform here over the last 18 months, and now most of the platform now is operating on the same ERP backbone system, and this has caused some disruption in the business, we have to acknowledge, and has impacted our performance here over the last, yeah, especially here the last four quarters, but the big picture is that the Patient Care market is very healthy, growing mid-single-digit with solid operating margins, and we have full urgency on getting back on track in Patient Care, and we will, so that's a little bit where we are today.

Jesper Ingildsen
Senior Equity Research Analyst, Carnegie

Okay, thank you.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Thanks.

Operator

The next question will be from the line of Tobias Nissen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Tobias Nissen
Equity Analyst, Danske Bank

Yeah, good morning. In the quarter, just to build on Jesper's question on the patient care platform, we had some headwinds, also external headwinds with lower patient volumes. And now you're taking the step to focus more on improving this segment. When should we expect some meaningful improvement in this second half of next year? What are your expectations here? And then just in terms of M&A and buying some more clinics, does this mean that you're taking more of a pause now to do this and more focus on driving this incremental performance improvement for your clinic network? Let's just start with that. I have another question afterwards.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Yeah, hi, Tobias. On the Patient Care side, I mean, if I start with M&A questions, I mean, we are still building a pipeline in Patient Care. But our first and top priority is to make sure we are growing at least in line with market. And our top priority is to make sure we execute on these changes such that we run a healthy Patient Care business. And we do see lots of opportunities both for organic as well as external growth going forward. Now, with respect to timing, I would not like to comment in too much detail on that. We will provide more detail as we post our quarter four numbers and provide guidance for 2026, but I will still expect that during 2026 we will be operating in line with market growth rate at least.

Tobias Nissen
Equity Analyst, Danske Bank

Okay, perfect. That's perfectly clear. Then just this quarter, you had the 7% organic growth, quite strong. I was just looking at your guidance of these 5%-6%. Should we expect you to reach the higher end of this range, giving this better performance than what was expected here with Q3? And what are the downside risks to this and you achieving this? Also, because you normally have a pretty strong Q4, especially for the Patient Care segment, if I remember correctly.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

I would like to just go back to a previous communication in terms of that we have been consistent here around both quarter two and quarter three reporting that we expect the second half to be stronger than the first half, and I'm now just reiterating this 5%-6% guidance, and we do expect the average growth to be higher here for the second half than first half, so I wouldn't want to be more specific than that.

Tobias Nissen
Equity Analyst, Danske Bank

Okay, thanks. That was just banging the juke.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Operator

And our next question will be from the line of Martin Brenøe from Nordea. Your line is open.

Martin Brenøe
Associate Director, Nordea

Hi, thank you very much for taking my questions, Sveinn and Arna. I got a few questions, but I can maybe start with three and then I'll jump back in the queue. Maybe just first of all, completely appreciate that you cannot quantify the tariff impact on a longer horizon with all of the moving parts that we're seeing. But can you maybe just quantify the impact that you had in this quarter and whether or not you expect the impact from tariffs to increase or decrease going forward, at least just at face value, and maybe a bit wording around what you do in terms of mitigations, also in terms of potential price increases? I'll start with that question, then jump to the next two questions.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Yeah, hi, Martin. Thanks for your question. I mean, I can say that the tariffs that we are absorbing here in quarter three are close to $2 million, and from what we know today, we would expect something similar in quarter four, perhaps a little bit higher. That is based on what we know today, but there is, as you all know, some uncertainty around these tariffs. Our ability to mitigate depends on our ability to pass on some price increases to our customers. We have not done that to date. We can work with our suppliers and are also actively evaluating the different scenarios that we have in terms of, let's say, once there is more clarity in terms of long-term situation, we will take action.

But we have decided to hold off on major changes in our supply chain until we have more visibility in terms of what assumptions we're working with. But this is a topic that has higher urgency and consumes time and energy to monitor the situation and also plan for different scenarios. And that is just where we are.

Martin Brenøe
Associate Director, Nordea

Very clear. Thank you, Sveinn. Maybe just as a follow-up to that, are you having any considerations on moving production, at least partly, to the U.S.?

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

I think we will, as all companies, just need to evaluate the feasibility of having a larger footprint in the U.S. I mean, we do have some operations in the U.S. We do have a small manufacturing platform with our College Park business in the United States. We also have our central fabrication service in Orlando. And this will just be one of the scenarios that companies in our position will need to evaluate once there is more clarity in terms of what the medium-long-term landscape looks like when it comes to trade restrictions and tariffs.

Martin Brenøe
Associate Director, Nordea

Very clear. That makes sense, then just, and we already talked about patient care, but I was actually just wondering a little bit whether you could put some color on the patient care mix, because prosthetics is clearly growing very fast, but there are other products that are not growing as fast, and just wondering if the patient care is mirroring the mix that you have in terms of prosthetics versus low-margin products, or whether you have a bigger component in the patient care business that is bracing and supports and that type of products, just to understand a little bit better what's driving the patient care.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Yeah, that's a good question, Martin. And if we look at the business mix in Patient Care, that does vary by geography. And the reason it varies is that the different healthcare systems have taken different choices in terms of how they deliver some of these mobility devices. Almost equally, you can say that, for example, our U.S. Patient Care business is very focused on prosthetics and neuroorthotics or other custom orthotics. That is the main business for Patient Care in the United States, with a little bit of off-the-shelf bracing, but very limited. However, if you look at the typical Patient Care provider in continental Europe or in Europe, there you would typically see a broader range of services, both prosthetics, neuroorthotics, and a fairly broad range of other mobility type of solutions. So it is, yeah, it is different.

However, I can tell you that our recent weakness in Patient Care is not because we are seeing some erosion of some sort in categories outside of our core product categories. That is not what is the reason behind the short-term weakness we are seeing in our Patient Care business. All else equal, we see healthy development across the vast majority of these product categories that we are focused on in our Patient Care projects.

Martin Brenøe
Associate Director, Nordea

Makes sense, and then just a final and follow-up question to that is that your prosthetics business is obviously growing very fast. It's not really reflected in your retail, so I'm just wondering which channels are you selling your prosthetics and neuroorthotics products through them? Is there anything to point out in terms of a changing distribution landscape or any specific channels that you are growing much faster compared to earlier?

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

There are two, let's say, two points I'd like to make in relation to this question. First of all, it's important to remember that our geographic footprint is not the same in our Patient Care business and our product business. So all else equal, you should not always expect the performance to correlate. The other point I'd like to make is that the health of the industry is reflected in the underlying performance in our core product business, which, again, underlines the fact that the reason for our underperformance in Patient Care is principally related to these substantial change initiatives that we are executing on. And also, maybe the third point is that only a small part or very small part of our product business goes through our own clinics, and all of that is very transparent in our reporting.

Our main channel has always been and will continue to be the O&P market or Patient Care or our independent clinical customers. That remains our core channel for where we focus and how we grow our core product business.

Martin Brenøe
Associate Director, Nordea

Thank you for the elaborate answers to these questions, Sveinn. I'll jump back in the queue. I've got a couple of follow-ups. Thank you.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Thanks, Martin.

Operator

And as a reminder, press five stars to ask a question. Our next question will be from the line of Yiwei Zhou from SEB. Please go ahead. Your line is now unmuted.

Yiwei Zhou
Equity Analyst, SEB

Hi, Sveinn. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. Firstly, in the U.S., do you expect any disruptions from the U.S. government shutdown in Q4?

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

No, we have not recorded any major disruption wave, but we are monitoring the situation, but we have not received any concrete feedback on that.

Yiwei Zhou
Equity Analyst, SEB

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for confirmation. And secondly, you have explained the short-term disruption on the growth and also the margin and the Patient Care business. I was just wondering, if you are looking at a bit longer term, and all those operational initiatives you have done on your business, the Patient Care business, do you expect to improve the long-term profitability? And if you can elaborate a bit.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Yeah, I can say maybe a comment high level on that. It is the reasons we are doing these changes is because we believe in the benefit of operating a truly global Patient Care business, where we build a business where we have scalability around certain systems and processes that we are able to benefit from technology in terms of how we fabricate, in terms of how we operate with our patients. So that is the core, I guess, assumption behind our actions in Patient Care. What is also a fact is that this is a business where we have a capacity-driven business, and our profitability will be dependent on our ability to serve patients and utilize our capacity costs. So in a year like now, we will go into the fourth quarter where we are flat on top line.

And that means that it has a negative impact on profitability because the vast majority are fixed costs. So yes, our profitability in Patient Care has taken a temporary step back while we go through these changes, but we firmly believe and have a strong plan for how we will get back on track. And I think that should also be looked at in light of our performance on the profitability side, that still, despite going through these changes and absorbing cost in relation to, for example, the brand change that we are absorbing, this is all cost we're taking through the P&L here, but still, we are protecting and increasing our baseline margins. So if you're hoping for some more details, the forward-looking guidelines, I will disappoint you anyway, but this gives you some color.

Yiwei Zhou
Equity Analyst, SEB

No, it was good. It was good. In this context, I was wondering if you can give an update on the CRM and also the used U.S. L-code, but I guess it's an Embla L-code solution. I remember a few years back, you highlighted as sort of a new marketing tool and trying to convince the clinics to push the L-code solution, and could you give an update on this? Do you have seen any progress?

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Yeah. That's a good question, Yiwei. It goes back to how we think about our competitive position and our value proposition toward our independent clinical customers. Generally, independent clinics are struggling to sometimes find CPOs, and some are struggling with maintaining adequate capacity in terms of fabrication. So our success with it going forward will depend on our ability to, one, bring the right product to the right patients, but also have our independent customers around aspects such as fabrication. And that is what the complete leg concept was all about, that we offer our independent customers an ability to outsource fabrication to us. And this is a service we offer both in the U.S. and in Europe.

And this is also one of the areas where we gain some scale and some efficiencies in operating both as a patient care provider as well as a traditional product business, where we can build more scale around some of these activities like fabrication. So that remains part of our core strategy to do that.

Yiwei Zhou
Equity Analyst, SEB

And we recall that it used to be one of the main regions that the clinics were very sort of giving some pushback and slow adoption. And have you seen that being improving over the recent quarters?

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

We've seen gradual increase in adoption, and we're also using this as a central fabrication for our own clinics, so this is a core part of our business, for sure.

Yiwei Zhou
Equity Analyst, SEB

Okay. Clear. Thank you. I'll jump back to the queue.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Thank you.

Operator

Next up is Martin with a follow-up. Please go ahead. Your line is now unmuted.

Martin Brenøe
Associate Director, Nordea

Thank you. Just two follow-up questions. It's already been touched a bit upon, but I would just want to be sure whether on prosthetics and neuroorthotics is anything to flag in terms of any sort of one-off items in any way on revenue or anything to flag in terms of big contracts or big orders, anything that is disturbing the picture a little bit, just to be sure.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

No, there is nothing like that. Like I mentioned in the beginning, it is one of those quarters where we just do have tailwind across all our regions and markets. And you also have, just to name one example, we have high growth in the APAC region this quarter, where we are growing again in China after five quarters of decline. So there is no big quarters or anything like that in these numbers. It's, yeah, simply strong execution across the board. And we're obviously also getting benefit from having recently launched products that are well received in the market, like the Navii, like also in the Odyssey iQ here in the quarter, the Pro-Flex Terra, and the Icon by College Park. So these are all strong products that are being well received by our customers.

Martin Brenøe
Associate Director, Nordea

Very clear, and maybe that's a good lead to the next question because the thing that I would like to understand a bit better is maybe, and maybe you already said that by the wording you used, what is the key delta here in this quarter? Is it the product launches that you have in the broader portfolio that is sort of expanding your total addressable market, and now you are firing on more cylinders than you used to? Is there any customer types that you have increased your sort of exposure to, or is there any regional sales that is just doing better than you expected?

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

I attribute a lot of this growth, and I think it's fair to say that this is above what we would expect. I mean, we do expect the prosthetics and neuroorthotics to deliver strong organic growth rates. But what we see here in quarter three is above what we expect on a normalized basis. And I do attribute that mainly to the new product launches that have given us this tailwind. What has been different than what we had, for example, on the Navii launch has been a good one. It has not cannibalized our real sales as we expected. That's one aspect that I think is relevant to mention. But otherwise, I would go back to my previous comment in terms of just the nature of this quarter being a quarter where we just have tailwind across all regions.

And again, pointing towards APAC, where our Australia business is also benefiting from the reimbursement slowness we had in 2024, so getting some extraordinary benefit here in 2025. So there's a lot of these things that come together that push our growth rate above what we would consider a normalized growth for this part of our business, but still reminding everyone that we do expect, all else equal, this part of our business to generate good growth rates as the structural growth drivers are there.

Martin Brenøe
Associate Director, Nordea

Very clear. And just final question for me, just I think Fior & Gentz serves, a question just wondering if you can specify a bit more what the growth is. I know it's in line with the expectations, but I just want to be sure that I know what the expectation was.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Yeah. I mean, I think if I go back to our early communication around Fior & Gentz, we expect we said the business has grown organically around 13%-14%, and we expect at least those type of growth rates, and that's what we're delivering on. And Fior & Gentz is a top priority for our company to make sure we take the right trade-offs in terms of prioritizing building this business as it is very strategic for us in terms of building products and services towards a patient population that is vastly underserved when it comes to access to good mobility devices. And where you see the exact same health economics that provides a strong rationale for healthcare systems to fund good prosthetics, the exact same dynamic is on the neuroorthotic side. And it's a market that is less mature than prosthetics in terms of reimbursement and access and awareness.

And that's our goal, to really focus on this and be disciplined in terms of where we focus our efforts because this is, yeah, this is top priority for our organization.

Martin Brenøe
Associate Director, Nordea

Completely agree. And just on Fior & Gentz in the U.S., you got the L-code, which is great. I guess that it's not really starting to contribute yet. Can you put a few words on when you expect to hit the ground running in the U.S.?

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

We will be more specific around that when we set guidelines for 2026. There's lots of work going on to support our U.S. execution, and this is a big milestone for us, this recognition that we can operate and build this specific code. So we will be more specific around our estimates for the U.S. and neuroorthotics when we set guidance for 2026.

Martin Brenøe
Associate Director, Nordea

What I'm hearing you're saying is that it's going to be big enough to impact the group guidance for next year. That sounds great. Happy to hear that. Thank you very much.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Well, it is. We're obviously starting from a very low base in the U.S., so all growth moves the needle. So we'll be more specific around this at year-end. Martin, thank you.

Martin Brenøe
Associate Director, Nordea

Thank you very much.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Appreciate it.

Operator

Next up is Tobias Nissen, Danske Bank. Your line is open.

Tobias Nissen
Equity Analyst, Danske Bank

Hello again. Just on bracing and supports, it remains flat year over year. I'm just wondering what the strategy here, also since it continues to grow below your estimated market growth, and what are you seeing underlying? Are you seeing any improvement here in Q3? And how do you also balance this with the tariff impact, etc.? Are you pulling products from the market due to them being unprofitable? I'm just wondering what should we expect from bracing and supports going forward? Thanks.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Our goal is to grow the bracing business at least in line with market. This has been a tough year in our bracing business, mainly in the U.S., which is a market which, again, has been impacted by these tariffs. And that's also a market where the channel structure is different. We also see more, let's say, some movement between channels, bracing business moving to fewer bigger customers. But we still maintain our goal to grow at least in line with market. And our ability to achieve that will depend on some moderate expansion of our product portfolio, tapping into a few opportunities where we can use our existing channel access to bring a broader set of product services to our customers.

It will also depend on our ability to execute on volume opportunities and, thirdly, to continue to have or to, let's say, be a good partner for our customers in terms of ease of doing business because we do offer a broad, complete portfolio and bracing of high-quality products, and these products all remain fundamental to each and every healthcare system. These are products that we all know and all use if need to, so we are working hard to take the right choices so that we are able to generate that market growth in bracing, but it's been a tough year, especially with these all the turbulence that these tariffs have created in our biggest bracing market, which is the U.S.

Tobias Nissen
Equity Analyst, Danske Bank

Okay. Okay. That's clear. Do you have any timeline for when you expect to expand this portfolio? I know you have a lot of reach with the Patient Care and driving the performance back there, but any comments would be appreciated.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Again, I would like to push further details on that out to our quarter four and guidelines discussion, which we'll be having in three months.

Tobias Nissen
Equity Analyst, Danske Bank

Thanks.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Thanks.

Operator

The next question will be from the line of [Pieter] from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.

Question. Hi. Thank you so much for taking my question. Just looking at the PA and NOA segment, could you possibly give some more color on the regional demand for the Navii and the Icon product launches and possibly give some kind of commentary on whether there's been much adoption of these solutions by kind of K2 entities? I know you noticed that there hasn't been kind of acceleration in the Rheo Knee, but if you could give some more color, that would be fantastic. And I've got a follow-up question as well.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Thanks a lot for your question. When we look at the Navii, we've seen good adoption across all our major markets, both in the U.S. and in Europe. The Icon, we've principally been focused on the Icon in the U.S. market. I think it's also fair to say that our growth in the U.S., we do see some impact from the coverage expansion. We obviously don't have full transparency on the ultimate, let's say, profile of the patients that are receiving these bionic devices with our independent customers in the U.S. However, we have no strong indication that this coverage expansion is part of the growth story in the U.S. Yeah, so that's a bit where we are on that.

And what I mentioned also earlier, we've still seen our real business, which has historically been our kind of flagship bionic product, continue to do well in selected markets. So now, if we look at bionics, we just have a much stronger portfolio that addresses a bigger part of the underlying patient population. We have the Navii, obviously. We have the Rheo. We have the Icon. And we also have the high-end Power Knee as well. So a much stronger bionic portfolio. I hope that gives you a little color.

Yeah. That's fantastic. And just on Patient Care, apologies if I missed it earlier, but I think I read that you're more than halfway through kind of rebranding. I suppose my question was just about when is this expected to complete?

So we expect to be through most of the rebranding this year and have taken also some costs in relation to this initiative. So we'll be mostly through it already this year. And we are also through a big part of the systems piece as well, which is key to our operating model going forward. So lots of work here over the last 18 months on building the foundation for our patient care business, which we are confident will deliver at least in line with market going forward.

That's fantastic. Thank you very much. That was my question.

Thanks for your questions.

Operator

As no one else has lined up for questions in this call, I will now hand it back to speakers for any closing remarks.

Sveinn Sölvason
President and CEO, Embla Medical

Thank you, Operator, and thank you, everyone, for calling in this morning. Please, if you have any follow-up questions, don't hesitate to reach out to our investor relations function. And I wish you all a pleasant day. Thank you very much.

Powered by