Welcome all to GN's Q3 2021 conference call following our release this morning, Danish time. Thank you all for dialing in. It's great to have you on the call. Participating on the call is Gitte Aabo, CEO of GN Hearing, René Svendsen-Tune, CEO of GN Audio, Peter Gormsen, CFO of GN Store Nord, and myself, Henriette Wennicke, Head of IR and Treasury. Today's presentation, which can be found on gn.com, is expected to last about 20 minutes, after which we'll turn to the Q&A session. The agenda for the presentation itself is that Peter will start off with group highlights, then Gitte will provide an update on GN Hearing, René will provide an update on GN Audio, after which we'll go back to Peter for a financial update and guidance. After that, we hand over to Q&A with the questions from the queue.
With that very brief introduction, I'm happy to hand over to Peter.
Thank you, Henriette. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for joining our call today. Let me start by briefly addressing our revised guidance for the year. We are naturally disappointed by the fact that we had to adjust the guidance earlier in the month for GN Hearing and today for GN Audio. It is clear that it is very different circumstances that drive the revisions. We will come back to this later in the presentation. Let's move to slide four and a snapshot of the performance in Q3. In Q3, the group delivered DKK 3.8 billion in revenue, equaling an organic revenue growth of 2%, driven by growth in both divisions. Excluding transaction-related costs, EBITDA reached DKK 625 million, translating into a group EBITDA margin of 16.5% for the quarter.
This led to an adjusted EPS of DKK 3.46 , and due to continued strong cash flow generation, the leverage reached 1.5x by the end of Q3. This is slightly higher than in Q2 due to our share buyback program, where we in the quarter bought back shares worth more than DKK 700 million. Finally, GN has now committed to the Science Based Targets initiative to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and being net zero by 2050. This is beyond our existing 2025 climate goals. With that short introduction, I would like to hand over to Gitte for an update on GN Hearing.
Thank you, Peter. Starting on slide six and our financial highlights. GN Hearing delivered 4% organic revenue growth in a hearing aid market which is still COVID-impacted by significant regional differences due to COVID-19. The organic revenue growth compared to Q3 2019 is around -6%. The gross margin was 6.1%, which was slightly higher than in Q3 2020, primarily driven by higher volumes and positive mix effects. EBITDA increased slightly, mainly driven by the revenue growth and prudent cost management, while we continue to invest significantly in R&D and IT. Moreover, we delivered a significant free cash flow of DKK 340 million in the quarter, mainly driven by a positive impact from a gain from channel investments.
Even though we are encouraged by the improvements in our financial numbers, we are naturally disappointed with the fact that we are not able to deliver on the guidance we shared in the beginning of the year. On October 5th, we revised the financial guidance due to delays in product development deliverables, leading to postponement of two key product launches. These two product launches were expected to generate a step change in the top line for the H2 of the year. One of those product launches was Jabra Enhance Plus, a product expected to generate incremental revenue and with no cannibalization of existing sales, as it is targeted towards the unaddressed part of the market. Moreover, new product introductions traditionally create positive momentum and excitement for the existing product portfolio.
Even though we're disappointed by the delays, we have continued to execute on the sales side to defend our market share, which I'll get back to in a moment. Moving to slide seven and the regional development in the quarter. Looking at the U.S., we delivered 7% organic revenue growth compared to Q3 2020 and -12% compared to Q3 2019. We continue to see a solid performance in the independent market, but offset by the development in VA. Moving on to Europe, we delivered an organic growth of -11% compared to Q3 2020, which translates into -3% compared to Q3 2019. We saw, among other, a strong performance in France and Spain, while Germany softened a bit compared to Q3 2020.
In our Rest of World region, the organic revenue growth ended at 17% compared to Q3 2020 and 7% compared to Q3 2019, with strong performance in China. Japan continued to be challenged by COVID-19, and market normalization is still to come. Let's move to slide eight. Following the recent guidance revision, I would like to give you some more insight into our performance and market share development. This is the data I look at in addition to the financial performance when judging our performance. Even though we do not have exact market data across all markets, we have a good insight into the data in our main markets. Looking at the U.S. independent market, excluding VA but including Costco, we have been seeing a stable market share development since 2019, driven by our upgraded product portfolio and the Beltone transformation that progresses well.
The market share development has, however, been negatively impacted by the development in Costco until recently. When we look at the VA market share, the story is quite different. Our inability to visit the clinics following our launch of ReSound ONE has been very challenging, and we are not satisfied with these numbers. We do not expect miracles in the short term in VA, but we clearly expect to regain some of our lost share in 2022 when clinic visits are allowed. Moving to Japan, our second-largest market. In Japan, we've been able to gain or maintain our market share in recent quarters. As I spoke to earlier, Japan was still challenged by COVID-19 restrictions during the quarter, with volume still below 2019 levels, but I'm overall happy with our market share development in Japan. This leads me to our worldwide unit market share.
Despite headwinds from VA and Costco as well as a large UK retailer, our market share is currently roughly at the same level as of early 2019. Bottom line, we've been able to maintain or gain our global market share in recent years, excluding the three highlighted accounts, VA, Costco, and the large UK retailer. With that, let's move to slide nine. Let's have a further look into our revenue development and the building blocks leading to the negative 12% reported revenue growth compared to Q3 2019. When excluding exchange rates and M&A, the organic revenue growth is - 6%. In Q3 2019, we delivered DKK 1.5 billion in revenues. This revenue number naturally includes our hearing instruments business, but it also includes other revenues, including sales of accessories, et cetera.
In this bridge, we've outlined the impact from the three mentioned accounts, which we have been speaking about for some time, VA, Costco, and a large U.K. retailer. Those three accounts have an impact of almost 10 percentage points on our organic revenue growth compared to Q3 2019. When excluding these three accounts, our organic revenue growth would have been around 3% compared to Q3 2019. The 3% is a combination of a strong unit uptake and a traditional negative impact on ASPs as well as a mix effect. All in all, outside the three larger accounts, VA, Costco, and the large U.K. retailer, we are generally satisfied with our performance and trend across markets. That leads me to slide 10. As announced on October 5th in connection with our revised guidance, we've initiated the transformation of R&D.
This is of course a serious matter, but let me just stress that the core of our R&D is fully intact. Our innovation capabilities are as strong as they have been for many years, and we continue pursuing delivering industry firsts, including our press release yesterday with the introduction of hands-free calling for iPhone users of ReSound ONE. As part of the R&D transformation, there are three areas I would like to highlight which we are working on improving. First and foremost, we will need to increase our focus and investments in software to ensure we deliver a great user experience for the audiologist and our end user. Secondly, we need a much more lean and flat organization that will enable us to significantly decrease decision time and increase efficiency and transparency.
Finally, we will strengthen our product, project management skills in order to make sure that we have robust, achievable, yet ambitious timelines. I'm sure that this will make GN Hearing even stronger and that it will secure our competitive advantage going forward while maximizing our financial return on R&D investments. Let's move to slide 11 and the long-awaited draft OTC legislation from FDA. I have to say that we are pleased to finally see the proposal from FDA. FDA, with its ruling, aim to deliver accessibility and affordability of high-quality hearing aids to people with perceived mild to moderate hearing impairment, something we fully subscribe to in GN. This is a major opportunity to increase the penetration rate in the U.S. market.
Initially, we are very encouraged by what we've seen in the draft legislation, but we are currently evaluating and look forward to comment on the draft ruling. As I've said at many occasions, we truly believe that GN is well positioned to enter the new OTC market. With that, I'm handing over to René for an update on GN Audio. Thank you.
Thank you, Gitte, and hello to all of you. It's now my pleasure to take you through GN Audio's results for the Q3 of 2021. Let's move to slide 13. Q3 of 2021 was a quarter of strong execution for GN Audio, where we continued to see strong underlying demand, but also a negative impact from the global supply situation. For the quarter, we were able to deliver positive organic growth of 1% on top of the 72% in Q3 of 2020, and the business is now anchored at a new and far higher level than before the pandemic. The Q3 2021 revenue, however, was significantly impacted by component shortages, and the underlying demand could have delivered solid two-digit growth in a normal environment. Given the situation, we left the quarter with a significant increase in order backlog.
Let me continue by addressing upfront the fact that we decided to revise our guidance this morning. The global supply situation of certain components has significantly worsened over recent weeks, and while up until now we've been able to navigate in this situation to a large extent, we now face real impact in the current quarter. The volatility in the component market has recently increased significantly, and we do experience an accelerating amount of delays in deliveries of components like we see an increasing amount of decommitments from certain GN Audio suppliers. As a consequence, we found it prudent to revise the financial guidance for organic revenue growth for 2021 to between 22%-25% growth. Let me go back to the report. The gross margin was slightly lower in Q3 2020, driven by increased freight and production costs due to COVID-19.
EBITDA margin reached 20% when excluding transaction-related costs associated with the SteelSeries acquisition. This is lower compared to last year and mainly driven by increased investments into future growth opportunities. Free cash flow came in at DKK 281 million, driven by solid earnings. All in all, a strong quarter with strong execution for GN Audio despite a challenging supply situation, which leads me to slide 14. Let me spend a moment on explaining the supply chain situation and how we work to mitigate it. As you all know, the crisis was initially triggered by the outbreak of COVID-19. Production of all goods that require semiconductor chips have been impacted from auto industry to electronic goods. While chipset manufacturers are accelerating efforts to increase supply, demand still significantly outstrips supply, especially for older chipset generations.
Fortunately, we do in GN Audio use widely newer chipsets in many products, and where we don't, we are now working on re-engineering headsets to fit the newer chipset technology in order to mitigate and address the current challenges on specific products. Further, we have put in more resources to optimize our supply chains, and we are doing ongoing reevaluation of our portfolio. Finally, we have an open line with all suppliers to ensure that we are in sync and we get the priority we need. Let me emphasize one more time, demand and markets are fully intact. All trends we are seeing are pointing towards an even bigger market tomorrow, and we are still comfortable that demand is 10% higher next year compared to this year.
With that, let's move to slide 15 and an overview of our performance across regions. Overall, we continue to see solid demand across all three regions and across enterprise and consumer. In North America, we delivered 5% organic revenue growth, mainly driven by the enterprise segment. Since Q3 2019, GN Audio has delivered impressive 67% organic revenue growth, led by our industry-leading product line-up and strong commercial execution by our team in North America. In Europe, we continue to execute strongly, but as Q3 2020 was extraordinarily strong with 82% revenue growth, the comparison base for the region was very high. We delivered -7% organic revenue growth for the region compared to last year, but 74% comparing to Q3 of 2019.
The year to date, the European region has delivered an impressive 34% organic revenue growth. In our Rest of World region, we delivered organic growth of 12% compared to Q3 of 2020 and 77% compared to Q3 of 2019. This is driven by several strong performing countries in the region, including Australia and Brazil. With a strong broad-based performance with around or more than 70% growth on a two-year basis across regions, we continue our strong momentum, and we have anchored, as I said, the business as at a much higher level. Turning to slide 16 and some of our recently announced products. Starting on the consumer side, we have announced additional products to our Elite True Wireless lineup, the Elite 7 Pro, Elite 7 Active, and Elite 3.
These new products are engineered on the back of six generations of True Wireless products, with each of the new products engineered for specific user needs. Elite 7 Pro comes with best-in-class call performance, longer battery life, and adjustable ANC. Elite 7 Active offers the best grip for an active lifestyle. Elite 3 offers high-quality product for the new addressable segments in the lower-end range. Beyond the consumer launches, we have also launched an exciting product in the enterprise business. Jabra Evolve2 75 is an addition to the successful Evolve2 range and is specifically engineered for modern and hybrid working. The product is the first in the Evolve range to offer fully adjustable ANC and comes further with an even more sophisticated microphone technology. Moving to slide 17.
On October 6th, we announced the exciting news of acquiring SteelSeries and then expanding our business into the highly attractive gaming market. Everything progresses well, and we are on track to close the transaction by the beginning of 2022, as we have earlier communicated. I just want to stress once again that this acquisition is an ideal fit. We are adding a new growth engine to GN through a best-in-class player in the premium segment of software-enabled gaming gear. With the growth and scaling opportunities we have identified, this bodes well both for the future of SteelSeries and GN. With that, I hand back to Peter.
Thank you, René. Moving to slide 19 and the group financial highlights. GN delivered 2% organic revenue growth in the quarter. When excluding transaction-related costs and a gain from legal settlements and litigation last year, EBITDA decreased slightly, primarily reflecting investments into the business. We continue to be highly cash generating and on top of our ongoing share buyback program, leverage ended at 1.5 x. Due to the acquisition of SteelSeries, the share buyback program has been paused in order for us to deleverage after closing of the transaction. Let's move to slide 20 and details on our cash flow generation. In the quarter, GN Hearing saw a significant free cash flow, mainly driven by a gain from channel investments. In GN Audio, we saw a strong cash flow in the quarter, but lower when comparing year-over-year.
Remember that in Q3 2020, we received a gain from legal settlements and litigation of DKK 114 million, which naturally had a significant cash flow impact. In Q3 2021, we continued our investments into future growth opportunities across OpEx. Across the business, we continue to be highly cash generating. This is also why we are able to finance the SteelSeries acquisition without raising new equity. Speaking about this, let's move to slide 21. The acquisition of SteelSeries will be structured as a 100% cash transaction utilizing the existing cash balance and the new bridge loan. The bridge loan is expected to be replaced with other debt instruments at a later point in time. Due to the size of the transaction, it is of course fair to expect a significant increase in our financial leverage next year.
We do, however, expect to deleverage rather quickly and already within a couple of years. Our mid to long-term leverage target of 1x-2x EBITDA is fully confirmed. Let's turn to slide 22. Both Gitte and René have commented on the guidance revision, so let me briefly summarize. For GN Hearing, specifically, we now expect an organic revenue growth of around 16% and an EBITDA margin of more than 12%. For GN Audio, we now expect an organic revenue growth of between 22% and 25%, but we continue to expect an EBITDA margin of more than 21%. The financial guidance for Other is confirmed, while the growth in EPS is now expected to be more than 40%. With that, I would like to hand over to Henriette.
Thank you to Gitte, René, and Peter for the updates. Just a few practical remarks before we move to Q&A. While we have been looking forward to meeting you all in person in our Meet the Management and already in December, we have decided to postpone the event a few months due to the pending closing of the SteelSeries acquisition. Please mark your calendar for March 23rd, 2022. With that, I'm handing over to the operator for Q&A. Please limit your questions to two at a time, please.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question for the speakers, please press zero one on your telephone keypad now, and you will enter a queue. After you are announced, please ask your question. Our first question comes from the line of Maja Pataki from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes. Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. I'll try to keep it to two. I might do some offshoots of questions, as we all do. Let me start with Hearing, please. Gitte, thank you very much for, you know, providing a bit more clarity on what is going on and how your market shares have developed. However, can you please elaborate a bit more in detail what you mean when you say delays in development deliveries? Is it that your R&D department didn't, you know, provide you the correct data for the launch, or there has been a last-minute hiccup? Or, you know, anything that we can get a better understanding of what has happened. Over to Audio. René, could you please clarify what you mean when you say contract decommitment?
Is it that your suppliers have taken the, you know, the volumes and given it to someone else, or has there been really a shortage of the raw material and that's it? There is no risk of, let's say, relationships with your suppliers going forward. That would be very helpful to understand. Thank you.
Thank you, Maja, for that question. I mean, when we look at the developments or development projects, I mean, one of them, as we've pointed out, is Jabra Enhance Plus. Obviously here we are treading new ground, if you like, by combining a true wireless earbud and a hearing aid and also filing under the self-fitting regulation with FDA. Yeah, let me be clear, we have actually handed in the file now to FDA, and it's awaiting the approval. The delay, I guess, is a combination of that we're treading new ground, that probably we've been overconfident that we could solve the last technical issues and therefore get the transparency on the issues we face too late. This is why I talk about a strengthening of our project management and also increased transparency in the R&D organization.
René here. Thanks for that question. I think two comments to that. One, of course, is that let's just remember that the Q3 this year is the highest Q3 we have ever had. We are getting a lot of components, and I mean, we are more than 70% above 2019. It's not that we are not getting components, we get a lot. That's one. I think the second comment is, as you also commented yourself, this is a raw material crisis more than anything else. I think also what we have said earlier is that we have these commitments, we have contracts in place, but if our suppliers can't get the raw material, they cannot get sufficient amount of chipset out.
It's not like we have sort of like one or two massive decommits from one or two supplier. It is simply that they are running out of steam. We have very good relationships with these people, but we work now on unfortunately very short notices. You can say the recent couple of weeks here and the events here, the volumes we see are somehow triggered that we have to send this warning to the market now. Also, let's remember that the absolute revenue in Q4 is higher than in Q3, and we are getting the components for that. There is a lot of components, but not enough.
Okay, thank you. Can I just have two follow-up questions then, please? One is, I guess that's asking you to look in the crystal ball, but how long do you think this raw material crisis is going to sustain? In other words, how long are you going to be battling with the supply constraints? Are we talking six months? Are we talking possibly another 12 months? The other question is, you know, component issues, supply issues have been a topic in tech quite obviously, but why shouldn't we see maybe this starting to get more pronounced also in hearing?
To the first question, how long? I mean, there are as many speculations about that out there as there are people. I think we all have to understand this is not. We know, as you know, that it's not gonna go away by 1st January. Will it ease up in the H2 or next year? I hope so, but I don't know. What I can say is that, of course, the mitigating actions we are taking is to try to somehow, for our own case, find places where the supply is safer, namely in the newer technologies where there is more available. I mean, I would be wrong if I told you that I know how this will work. We have contracts going forward. Our vendors are, of course, very keen to work with us on high volumes. If they can, I don't know.
Thank you.
Components on the hearing side, clearly it's also something that we have very much focus on and monitor closely. With what we know today, we do not see an issue in relation to components and delivering on our revised guidance. Clearly, we also have long-standing relationships with our sub-suppliers, and in addition to that, we have increased inventories, as I'm sure you've noticed, in order to cover critical components. Again, we monitor the situation every day. With what we know now, I am convinced we can deliver on our guidance.
Thank you very much. I'll go back to the line.
Our next question comes from the line of Martin Parkhøi from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hello, Martin Parkhøi, Danske Bank. First question to Gitte. Gitte, speaking about guidance, you have a mid-term target, which you set last year, of coming back above 20% on GN Hearing. I know you didn't do that last year for good reasons. Of course, this year, there is a pretty long way from more than 12% up to more than 20%. Let's just try to explain to me how you should be able to meet this mid-term target in 2022. Then, to René on SteelSeries. Can you speak a little bit about the performance of SteelSeries in the Q3?
I guess you have seen the numbers. Maybe also, are they also seeing some issues as well with respect to supply, which are similar to the situation that you are seeing right now? Because you could say things have apparently evolved for you since you at least set your intention to buy SteelSeries a few weeks ago.
Well, thank you for that question. In terms of 2022, obviously, I'm not giving any guidance for 2022 right now, but what I can say in relation to 2022 is that clearly following the delay or deferment of two big projects in R&D, we've obviously scrutinized our R&D roadmap for 2022, both in terms of sort of validity of the timelines, but also innovation. I'm actually very confident with what I see now in regards to 2022. In terms of the midterm guidance, that is still our aim midterm to outgrow the market and deliver an EBITDA margin above 20%.
Can I just follow up to Gitte on the R&D side? Because I think it was quite a dramatic way that you made the GN Hearing downgrade and in all respect throwing the head of R&D completely under the bus. So that doesn't really sound like that is a short-term issue to fix. I think that also R&D is something which are developing on a long term. Can you maybe elaborate a bit on the problems that you're seeing which made you the changes on the top management team?
Clearly, I mean, we are an industry that live off innovation, so it's absolutely pivotal for us to have a well-functioning R&D machine. What I do wanna point out that in terms of ability to innovate, that's a strength in GN Hearing and has been for a very long time and still is. Where we failed and I'm obviously not happy about that is to have the sufficient development, if you like, in our ability to deliver and also have the sufficient transparency around our product developments.
That's the reason why we've made a change in the leadership, and that's also why we have announced that we are doing a transformation of R&D, again, to put more focus on software going forward, to have a flatter and more transparent organization, and strengthen our capabilities within project management. Those are sort of some of the key cornerstones in the transformation we are embarking on, and that obviously takes some time, but of immediate interest, I think, is the roadmap for 2022 that I already spoke to.
René here on SteelSeries, and you're right. I have the Q3 numbers, so I'm not allowed to give exact details, but I can tell you that they were growing very. They had very solid growth. What I have seen from other vendors, if that represents the market, they have also taken significant market share in Q3. SteelSeries operate in, you can say, in our environment. Without revealing any secrets, it's clear they are affected by component situation as well and working with this best they can. In that situation, still, I would just say they have delivered solid growth in Q3 and above market.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Christian Ryom from Nordea Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi. A couple of questions from me, both of them to GN Audio. René, first of all, could you help us with some insight to how the component shortages might be impacting different products across your portfolio? When I look at revenues relative to the Q2, you were roughly flat here in Q3. Was that development similar across both your consumer and your enterprise products? That's my first question. The second question is, considering these both components and logistics constraints that we are seeing and the fact that demand in the market remains very strong, are you pondering any kind of price increases towards customers, potentially in the form of freight surcharges or something similar? Thank you.
On the split, I guess I can say that we're a bit more hurt on the enterprise side than on the consumer side. We have talked about Video earlier. It's not that it has the biggest impact, but that's probably where we are the hardest hit on while we are now shipping Video products in meaningful numbers, we are still not where we want to be. In the split, we have seen a deterioration we experience as we speak is mainly on the enterprise side.
On the logistics side and the cost and so forth and the price increases, it's clear we need to find ways to deal with this if price increases continue. I mean, we do see the logistics and the transport of course has not softened over this H2 year. I guess the next question you will bring is on component prices. Let's just take that up front. We are not a lot in the spot market, so in that sense, of course, we are buying against the longer contracts. Will there be component prices coming as a consequence of this? Maybe so. Maybe likely. Then we'll have to respond in appropriate ways. If we would raise prices, I would have to tell our customers first and not this call. I hear your question.
Just to clarify, you haven't implemented any significant price increases yet?
We have earlier, but that was linked to something else, namely tariffs, where we responded with price increases, and they are still out there. We are not in the context of this situation. That's correct.
The timing of those price increases related to tariffs, when was that, sort of roughly speaking?
Yeah, I think it's time back now, but it was quite closely linked with when we saw that this would not go away. We increased our prices.
Okay. Okay, great. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Julien Ouaddour from Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thank you very much, and good morning to everyone. First question is for you, Gitte, on GN Hearing. How should we think out there about the 2022 top line growth for Hearing, given you're likely to launch new products, I guess new platform, new OTC Jabra hearing aid, on the back of, I would say, a sort of challenging year with soft comp? Just maybe do you expect to be, r oughly at the same level of 2019 revenue, which was DKK 6.3 billion.
That's my first question. On GN Audio, I know René, you said that you don't expect really sort of normalization probably in H2 next year. One of your competitors reported overnight and seemed confident that Q4 calendar year 2021 will be probably the trough in terms of supply chain, and expects some sequential improvement from Q1 2022. Is it also a conclusion that you share with your discussion with suppliers? Could we see some sort of, I would say sequential improvement, in Q1, Q2 2022? Thank you very much.
We are not giving guidance for 2022 yet. I guess one way to think about it, and again, coming back to the roadmap we have for 2022, I think we are looking at a good roadmap, both in terms of solidity and also in innovation level. I guess normally we are obviously quite sort of secretive about what our roadmap contains. I guess one way to think about it is that normally we have a two years cadence in when we bring a new platform into the market. Therefore 2022 is an interesting year for us. Again, like I said, I'm actually pleased with what I see in our roadmap for 2022.
René here. I mean, it's a very good question on the situation next year. I guess, there is a lot of speculation. I also saw the comment, and I also hear from some of the suppliers that we should expect a better situation H2 of next year. We have to somehow see quarter by quarter, month by month now. We can get the contracts, as I said here, but can they be fulfilled is the question. Okay, one speculation that at least is out there that I do share is that do we actually see just now a hyper demand that everybody's trying to get almost more than they need? Then this will somehow create a relief later on.
We can hope for that, because you can say some of it is actually quite certain. I mean, we are trying to get all we can, and I mean, I know, and other people are trying to get the. If such a situation in place, then of course we should see some relief next year, but I don't know.
Thank you. Just if I may, like one follow-up for each, sorry. Gitte, just to confirm the big changes, I would say, on the R&D side, so you do not expect any major delay in the next product launch? And just René, is it also able for you to quantify, like you did in the previous quarter, how much of the organic growth was impacted by this lack of components? Thank you.
Just to follow up, I do not expect any major delays for 2022.
I think what we have said now and as you remember, we said that we expected some 2%-4% we lost in Q2. I think as far as we wanna go now is to say there's a solid double-digit growth we could have had in the Q3 had we had a normal supply situation. Yeah, I think we keep it like that. That's more than 10%.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Carsten Lønborg Madsen from SEB. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thanks a lot. Just, yeah, let me start with a follow-up question to René on this, about how much growth you have lost in the quarter, because I was just interested in hearing a little bit more sort of commentary on that. Of course, you could have delivered double digits if you could deliver the products. That's also a situation where the competitors cannot deliver the products. In a perfect world where everyone could get the products they wanted, then I guess it would not be double digits. I don't really know how you can talk about this, but maybe you could add a little bit more color about underlying growth, etc., and market share gains, if that's possible. To Gitte on hearing.
In terms of the R&D revamp, can you confirm that there's been no issues in relation to this in terms of, for example, ReSound ONE, so products already on the market, that the fact that the head of R&D was laid off had only to do with the upcoming product launches that did not happen on time?
René, I mean, the double-digit growth potential basically is the very simple math. We are looking at the increase in order backlog. The orders were there for the quarter, but we couldn't ship. I think it's no more academic than that. It's no more science. You're right that of course, if someone else could ship exactly this kind of products now or before we can, then of course there's a risk we may lose this business. In the quarter, we talk about this double-digit potential lost. Not lost, but postponed.
Yeah, contribution from PanaCast in the quarter.
Say again, what was?
Did you have any contribution from PanaCast sales in the quarter? Any meaningful?
Yes, we did have contribution, but not any meaningful.
Okay. Thanks.
In terms of products that are in the market, and I guess especially ReSound ONE, we continue to get great feedback from audiologists and users. This is really a product that does deliver something unique in terms of the audiological experience. I think also that's the main reason why we see that our market shares, we've been able to maintain apart from the headwind we've had in VA and also Costco.
Yeah. You're feeling you got the product profile on ReSound ONE that you were promised from R&D, basically?
Yeah. I think with ReSound ONE, I mean, we were the first to deliver the ReSound ONE with M&RIE, a microphone and receiver in the ear in an open fit. That's actually a unique concept that we will build on also in future generations.
Okay, thanks.
Our next question comes from the line of Veronika Dubajova from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hey, Gitte, René, Peter, thanks for taking my questions. I have two, please. One is just kind of circling back. I think, René, I asked you this question three weeks ago or so when you announced SteelSeries, but it was your confidence in the 2022 growth for audio being greater than the market expectation for 10%. I think you sounded fairly confident. I'm curious if you'd like to change that statement in light of some of the supply challenges that you're seeing at the moment. I guess, you know, any updated thoughts on how you're thinking about 2022 growth for Audio would be helpful. My second question is on the OTC.
Apologies, I joined the call a couple minutes later, so maybe, Gitte, you addressed this in your prepared remarks, but I'm gonna ask anyhow. I guess your thoughts on the fact that the FDA is not limiting the gain that the OTC devices are to deliver, is that a positive or a negative as you think about the one, opportunity and two, the competitive threat for the industry? I know obviously there's been some noise around the output being set 115-120, and maybe some of the industry participants seeing that as too high. I'm just curious if you have any views on that. I'll leave it at that for now. Thanks.
Thanks for that. We don't have guidance for 2022, so we had our mid-term guidance out there, we do expect 10% market growth. As we have said many times, our ambition is to beat that. Actually, I mean, as we see it now, and what I do expect, I think there is a market growth out there. I mean, the underlying trends are intact. This hybrid working is sort of expanding, and the platform users are strong and so on and so forth. All these things you talked about are still there, and they are actually seen in the market behavior as we speak.
I guess where we're landing is that if that's the case, and if we don't see a relief in the supply, 2022 may be a supply-driven year to some extent. Of course, it's down to our ability to do what we have done in other quarters under the pandemic and that we actually did this better than the market. I mean, I think if you go three, four, five, six quarters back, almost every quarter we have handled the supply situation better than the market and competition and taken share. Still at this point of time, I just wanna repeat that Q3 is the highest Q3 ever. Q4 will be bigger.
There's a lot of components coming our way, but is it enough to beat the market or to satisfy the market in 2022? We have to hopefully have a better view on that when we come back with the guidance in February.
Thank you for the question. On the OTC legislation, there are maybe opportunities to further make the legislation precise. But having said that, I actually think that with the 115 dB output, the new legislation is addressing mild to moderate hearing loss, 'cause that is actually the level that this fits into. I think, again, keep in mind that you cannot sort of make a comparison to this dB output and gain. Those are two different things. A more sort of general comment to the OTC regulation, I think as we've spoken to before, we see this as an opportunity. There is still a huge unmet need in the market.
Many people choose not to use a traditional hearing aid or go through the traditional channel. We really see this as an opportunity to reach many more people. We are very convinced that GN, because we have audio and hearing under the same roof and with a product like Jabra Enhance Plus, we are really well suited to play into the OTC market.
That's helpful. Thanks, Gitte. Can I just follow up quickly, and apologies to kind of be going back to this, but I'm still a little confused as to what happened with the R&D delay this year. Sort of exactly what the failures were. I know the question's been asked a couple times, and I'm still a little bit lost, so maybe you can just clarify it for me. Is this that you ran into delays with the FDA? Is this that you ran into delays with the kind of functionality of the product, you were promised something, but when you looked at the product, didn't have it? Or is there something else? Is there a third category of something that's gone wrong that's neither the first or the second, but something else? If so, can you help me kind of think through that?
Well, thank you for that question. Maybe in order to shed a little bit more light on this, I mean, I think where we failed is we were too overconfident in our ability to sort out technical issues at the last minute. I think the real situation of the projects surfaced too late. That's why I talk about, you know, increased transparency, more output, and also better project management as we move forward. Those are clearly areas that we need to strengthen in order to not end up in this situation again.
Okay. If I paraphrase it, and tell me if I'm putting words in your mouth, basically the product maybe didn't have features or there were issues that you identified toward, you know, shortly before the planned launch, and you couldn't address those quickly enough and fix those quickly enough to meet the timeline.
Yes. That's a good way of putting it.
Okay. Understood. Thank you so much. I'll jump back into the queue.
Our next question comes from the line of David Adlington from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thanks, guys. Most of my questions have been asked, but maybe just on the Jabra Enhance Plus feature. It would just be great to get your latest thoughts on the launch profile there. Specifically with that, maximum dB level rather than the gain, where does Enhance Plus come out on that maximum dB level? Can you get to 115-120 decibels? I'm pretty sure you probably can, but just want to double-check that.
Yes, I'm happy to do that. Jabra Enhance Plus actually fits from a technical perspective and in terms of dB levels well into the framework. We are around 110 dB output level, so it actually completely fits into the new legislation. As I've already alluded to, we've handed in the file to FDA under the current self-fitting regulation, and it's still not completely transparent whether that will be, you know, immediately transferred as also approved under the OTC legislation. I think that is one of the things that are still a little bit unclear in the draft legislation and obviously something that we need to clarify.
Thank you. That's clear. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Mattias Häggblom from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. The line is now open.
Good morning. Thanks so much. Two questions, please. Firstly, coming back to the hearing and the transformation of the R&D organization. In light of what you said about some of the shortcomings, can you talk about what the key criteria you was when you looked for the new leadership for hearing R&D? And also if that was a complete extensive search or if this should be seen as more of an interim leadership. I may have missed those details.
Secondly, on hearing, with regards to the North American market, the company states that for hearing aids, the market did not improve in Q3 compared to Q2, which stands a bit in contrast to other market participants, which in particular pointed to North America's proof of recovery and strength, and even example for why there may be a pent-up demand happening. Should we see the difference in light of what you discussed earlier, related to Costco and VA, or is there something else going on that may explain the delta from what I'm seeing?
Yeah. Let me start with the latter part of your questions on the U.S. performance. What explains the delta, to use your words, is VA and Costco. As you can see in our detailed layout of our Q3 performance, we have headwinds in VA compared to 2019, and we also have in Costco. What has happened since 2019 is there's been a significant decrease in the sell-out prices for hearing aids in Costco in the branded segment. They have lowered with close to $1,000 for a pair, and obviously, that also has an impact on our ASP selling into Costco.
Not that we pick up the full bill of that, but still, part of it also impacts our ASP, as I'm sure you can imagine. Then what I've also spoken to earlier is that we do have a strong position in the branded segment, and I'm happy with that. But admittedly, I also think that the current KS 10 is doing really well in Costco, so the branded segment as such is probably less than it was in 2019. When you look at the headwind we have for U.S., it is due to VA and Costco.
In terms of the qualities for the new leadership, it was obviously important to get a person in that has a strong experience in the hearing aid industry. I think we found that with Günther Pausch. He brings close to 40 years of experience. He's been heading up R&D at Siemens Audiology or Sivantos early on. In that capacity, he also went through a similar transformation of the R&D at the Siemens Audiology. I really think he brings exactly what we need. That obviously is why I have appointed him as head of R&D.
Our next question comes from the line of Niels Granholm-Leth from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thank you for taking my question. First question would be on component prices for next year. Since you have locked up supplies for a great part of next year, I guess you must have insight into the changes in component prices for next year. Can you elaborate a bit more on how this will affect your gross margin in GN Audio for 2022? My second question would also be a question about, you know, kind of looking beyond this year. I mean, you're talking about that you expect the market to grow by 10% next year and that you will outgrow the market. In Q1, you will be facing a very difficult comps to this year.
Hence you need to grow fairly robustly in the remaining part of 2022 in order to grow by double digits. Can you just elaborate a bit on that as well and tell us, so do you really expect to see growth in the remaining part of next year, going, you know, to, you know, pretty high, solid double-digit numbers? Thank you.
Thanks, Niels, for this. I mean, on the component prices, yes, we have some views, but there's also, of course, a lot of back and forth out there. I guess it will also be implicated by what will really happen with this demand supply balance that's out there. As some of you may have seen, the raw material prices were increased two weeks back in an attempt to somehow dampen the demand. Didn't help. We have to see what happens. I don't have a gross margin guidance for next year at this point of time.
As I said a little bit earlier, of course, we will work with this best we can, and there are many tools in the toolbox that we can play with. One of the things that, of course, is already here is that, what I talked about, some of these mitigation actions that we are trying to move ourselves where supply is better. Second is we are not in the spot market, and that helps a lot because if you go there, you have uncontrollable prices. We are working on these contracts. We'll come back with this. It's a super relevant question, of course, but there are handles in the toolbox that we can use to deal with this.
I mean, I don't have a guidance for 2022 either. It's clear we have a very tough comp in Q1. Many would have said to us that, guys, in H2 of 2021, there's no way you can match what happened in 2020. The market is matching it very well. We have to see now, and we'll come back and talk about this more. Every dimension sort of out there of the underlying things are pointing to growth in this market. I'm not promising that we will grow in Q1, but growth in the market. We have a very strong lineup of products, very relevant products in the market and in our roadmap. I think we'll be very competitive in that market if we can ship.
Great. Thanks. Just to follow up on those higher input costs. I think you mentioned that freight price increases had a negative gross margin effect of a couple of percentage points. As it looks right now, that will obviously carry over into next year. If we assume that freight prices would stay at current levels throughout 2022, for how long would this have a negative effect on the gross margin for next year? Would that be in Q1 and Q2, or how should we interpret that?
That's of course a very relevant, I mean, first of all, it's 1% on the bottom line, as we speak, from last year. I think, Peter, I'm looking, it must be something like Q2, it will dilute if it doesn't go up, right? In the beginning of the year, but not in the H2.
Great. Freight prices should pretty much have a negative effect of approximately one percentage point next year.
Yeah.
Even that it will only affect H1.
Yeah, I think we don't know. I mean, we don't. But if it is like this, it will have a negative effect on a bigger part of the H1, but not on the H2, because then it's in the money already.
Great, thanks.
Our final question comes from the line of Martin Parkhøi from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Great. Fantastic. A couple of questions. Firstly, one for René. Just on the talk about Niels just asked about the 10% and your growth above. That is of course based on a normal demand or supply situation. The question from my side is, do you plan to grow like this? In a situation where your supply will be an issue next year, are you willing to see your margin drop even below your mid-term target to keep the investment plans you have even in a difficult supply situation? To Peter.
Just now you indicated that you come with a new platform every second year, but you have also indicated that you have become delayed with line extension on the current platform. Do you still stick to the plan for the line extension even though that it will come very close to a new platform launch? Then just finally to Peter, to bring him into the game. On SteelSeries acquisition or attempt to acquire them, you have given some indications of opportunity targets. How the situation has evolved now, both for you, but apparently also for SteelSeries working in the same environment, could we see a situation that your synergy targets actually already outdated?
René first, here. On your margin question, I mean, first of all, we still don't have any guidance for next year, but it's clear that we will not run a machine where we are diluting the margins. I mean, we have midterm targets out there, and we're going after those. I think also in this quarter, as you have seen, we are maintaining, despite the hassle, we are sustaining our 21% margin for this year. This, of course, is intact in our sort of outlook, and we'll come back to that. I don't know if that answered your question, but the answer is we're not gonna cut the margins.
Yes. It did. Thanks.
Martin, back to your questions on, I mean, I don't think we have necessarily confirmed that it's line extensions, but obviously that's reasonable to think that is the other thing we were talking about. In regards to our now roadmap for 2022, clearly for competitive reasons, I don't wanna be too detailed about this, but I guess your assumption about things coming closer than what we would like in terms of line extensions and a new platform, I think your assumption is right. Then again, I mean, if I put on the positive hat, I guess it means that we have an interesting year ahead of us in terms of launches.
Hey, Martin, it's Peter. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to chip in also here finally. SteelSeries, first of all, we of course have not closed the transaction yet, so there is a limit to how much we can do. We still remain confident in the synergies. Of course, we're preparing everything we can at this moment while not owning the assets. The second we have a closure, we will certainly move forward as aggressively as we've communicated up until now.
Just a follow-up, maybe you can take that, Peter. Just on Audio, we have seen a significant benefit this year from R&D capitalization. Is this a one-time effect? Because looking into next year, how should we expect that to evolve?
Yeah, of course, you see these patterns depending on when you launch your products. There will be swings up and down. It's probably fair to assume a slightly more balanced going into next year. We will continue to invest significantly into R&D. That has proven to be the right strategy, and we will certainly not change that going forward.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. This concludes the Q&A session. I will hand back to the speakers for any final remarks.
Thank you very much, operator, and thank you everybody on the call. With that, we appreciate your time today, and we will see you on the road. Thank you very much.