Welcome to the Smith & Nephew Second Quarter and First Half Results Meeting. I'm Deepak Nath, I'm the Chief Executive Officer. J oining me is Chief Financial Officer, John Rogers. 2025 is a key year of delivery for Smith & Nephew. I'm pleased to announce the results that put us firmly on track for both our full- year growth target and the guided step up in profitability. On revenue, 6.7% underlying growth in the quarter reflects sequential acceleration across all regions and business units. In sports medicine, we've maintained the strong momentum across joint repair and AET outside of China. In wound, the continued performance of AWD and the rebound in bioactives produced double-digit growth for the business unit as a whole.
In orthopedics, we delivered yet another quarter of growth and in line with our previous commitment, our recon and robotics business sustained its recent improvement both internationally and importantly, in the U.S. This is now the fourth quarter of sequential improvement in U.S. recon and robotics. On profitability, 100 basis points of first- half trading margin expansion is slightly ahead of what we indicated, as we brought some efficiency savings forward. We remain on track for our full- year margin guidance of 19%- 20%, which includes the impact of tariffs. There's still a lot of uncertainty about where tariffs would settle, but we continue to expect a net headwind of about $15 million- $20 million in 2025. As previously indicated, we expect that margin expansion will pick up further in the second half.
This should come from cost savings increasingly dropping through to our P&L, particularly from our manufacturing network optimization of the last two years,, together with the reduced year-on-year headwind from value-based procurement in China. I've talked already about the improvements in growth and profitability. At the same time, better alignment of the commercial organization and operations has enabled us to bring down days of inventory. The delivery of our ambitious cost savings and a move to ongoing efficiencies has also brought down restructuring charges. The result is a 70% increase in trading cash flow, and almost $250 million of free cash flow in the first half. Finally, I'm also pleased to announce an additional element of value creation for shareholders, with a $500 million share buyback in the second half of 2025.
This is made possible by the operational efficiencies delivered under the 12-point plan and will be fully funded by the 2025 cash flow and existing balances, so it can be delivered while maintaining our leverage and without compromising any of our growth plans. I'll return to some of these themes later, and John will talk more about profitability, cash, and returns in his presentation. For now, I'll take you through the detail of the quarter. Revenue in the quarter was $1.6 billion, with 6.7% underlying growth and 7.8% reported, following a 110 basis point tailwind from foreign exchange. Growth also included a headwind from one fewer trading day than in the prior year. All business units accelerated sequentially, and I'll come to the detail in a moment. Geographically, the U.S. grew 8.7% and other established markets grew 7.4%.
Emerging markets declined 0.2%, reflecting strong double-digit growth across the Middle East and India and the impacts of value-based procurement in China beginning to ease. Excluding China, emerging markets grew by 12.2%. As we indicated in our Q1 announcement, we have passed the peak of the China impacts and we expect these to continue to ease through the second half as distributor destocking in orthopedics reduces, and as we lap the effects of joint repair VBP. For business unit performance, I'll start with orthopedics, which grew 5.5% underlying and this is an overall solid performance. Total reconstruction, robotics grew 5.2%, with the U.S. growth of 4%. This is the fourth quarter of sequential improvement in the U.S., on an ADS-adjusted basis. Global knees and hips grew by 2.9% and 3.4%, respectively.
Growth remains high outside the U.S., with knees benefiting this quarter from the timing of a tender order in the Middle East. Almost half of our recon business is outside the U.S., where we're demonstrating that our portfolio can deliver with good execution. As you know, China has been a headwind in recent quarters due to destocking and distributors. Their inventory levels have continued to come down, and have approached more normal levels at the end of June.
In addition, we expect the destocking to ease during the third quarter, so we should see the China headwind on our OUS sales start to fall away in the second half. U.S. hips and knees together showed acceleration over Q1, with 2% underlying growth and 3.6% adjusted for the one fewer day, a measure we refer to as average daily sales or ADS. This is the fourth quarter of sustained improvement for U.S. hips and knees combined. H ip performance was strong as we continue to roll out the CATALYSTEM hip system, which makes us more competitive in the high- growth direct anterior segment of the market.
We'll accelerate set deployment in Q3, and are also preparing to bring the platform to other markets starting in Japan. The softer U.S. knee growth was due in part to some slowing in procedures toward the end of the quarter among our active surgeon base, as well as positive actions that we are taking to increase profitability through streamlining the portfolio and focusing on higher volume accounts. Reassuringly, the balance of competitive wins versus losses has continued to remain favorable. O n an ADS basis. U.S. knees grew 0.1% and hips at 9.1%. Other recon grew 39.8% and reflects another good quarter of robotics placements, particularly in the U.S. where we're seeing strong growth in ASCs and in teaching institutes.
This should mean we're well- positioned as the market continues to pivot away from the inpatient procedures, and ideally placed to capture future leading surgeons. We also continue to develop our offering with the launch in June of the CORIOGRAPH preoperative planning and modeling for shoulder replacements. Trauma and extremities grew 4.4%. The AETOS growth contribution is steadily increasing as we deploy more capital and convert new surgeons, while the EVOS plating system continues to be a key driver, partially offset by a slower quarter for some of our legacy systems. We're continuing to refresh the portfolio with the launch this quarter of the TRIGEN MAX Tibia Nailing System , which could expand our indication range and features modernized instrumentation.
Further nail launches are expected in the coming quarters, and we expect trauma and extremities to return to stronger growth in the second half. Sports medicine & ENT grew 5.7% in the quarter. Within that, joint repair growth was 8.4% including the expected headwind from VBP in China. This is expected to be the last quarter before we lapped the effect of the implementation in Q3 of 2024. Excluding China, joint repair growth would have been 13.7%, representing an acceleration in Q1 2025, with a very strong quarter across our other markets. Growth was double- digit across all of knee, shoulder, and hip repair, with the REGENETEN and Q-FIX Nautilus suture anchors remaining the key contributors. We expect this good momentum to continue as we extend REGENETEN into hip and Achilles, as we further roll out Q-FIX.
We are developing CARTIHEAL AGILI-C as a longer- term growth platform, including a new disposable instrument set, which we expect to launch in the near future. Arthroscopic enabling technologies grew 2.3%, again improving sequentially. We saw continued growth from WEREWOLF FASTSEAL, which is supporting strong COBLATION revenues. ENT grew 3.6%, with good growth driven by our ARIS for turbinate reduction, offsetting a softer quarter for tonsils and adenoid procedures in the U.S. Looking forward, we expect ENT to follow sports medicine, with the VBP process in China that's expected to take effect in 2026. To give a sense of the size of our business, total ENT sales were $35 million in 2024. While VBP would be a noticeable drag on ENT growth, it should be a significantly more modest headwind at a group level than our previous VBP processes.
Looking now at Advanced Wound Management, where growth increased to 10.2%, following the strong rebound in bioactives. I n advanced wound care, 2.6% growth reflected continued strong performance in foams, films, and skin care, offset by a decline in infection management. In bioactives, gr owth came from the expected sequential recovery in SANTYL, alongside double-digit growth in skin substitutes. Although we'll face tougher competitors in H2 as we lap the launch of GRAFIX PL, we now anticipate mid single-digit growth for bioactives in the year. You'll have seen the proposed updates to Medicare reimbursement of skin subs in the outpatient and physician office setting, including moving to a single payment. Since no products were excluded from participating in the market, it is unclear how clinical practice will be impacted.
While the details of the proposal are yet to be finalized, we anticipate that this will be a headwind to both Advanced Wound Management sales and profitability in 2026, and that would be before any mitigating actions. Finally, advanced wound devices revenue grew by 12.7%, led by our single-use negative pressure platform PICO and with strong growth from LEAF, our patient monitoring system. In traditional negative pressure, competitive wins are an important part of our growth opportunity.
I'm delighted that we were recently awarded a U.S. Department of Defense contract for RENASYS TOUCH , succeeding in a competitive tender process, having demonstrated clinical efficacy and operational fitness. With an initial term of five years, which can be extended to 10 years, this contract is worth up to $75 million. Coupled with an ongoing broader refresh of AWM , we are confident about the lon- term outlook for wound. Now with that, I'll hand over to John.
Thank you. Thank you, Deepak. Revenue was $3 billion in the first half, up 5% on an underlying basis compared to half one 2024. R eported revenue was up 4.7%, including a foreign exchange headwind of 30 basis points from the relative strength of the dollar against most major currencies versus the same period last year. As the dollar weakened in the second quarter, the forex headwind on revenue became a tailwind and we now expect to circa 50 bps forex tailwind on revenue for the full year. Performance in China was in line with expectations and excluding these headwinds, growth would have been 7.2% o n an underlying basis. T his represents a 220 bp headwind in half one, in line with our guided full year impact of circa 150 bps a s the impacts of sports VBP unwind in the second half.
Performance was broad- based, with all three business units contributing significantly to the overall group. Orthopedics grew 4.1%, sports medicine & ENT grew 4.1%, although again excluding China, growth would have been 9% . A dvanced Wound Management grew 7.1%. Overall, a good set of growth figures, and particularly good to see that three quarters of our growth is drawn from products launched in the last five years. Moving now to the summary P&L, gross profit was $2.1 billion, resulting in a gross margin of 70.5%, which is a 40 basis point increase on the prior year driven by positive variances on price and volume.
We saw a further 60 basis points of positive leverage across our operating expenses, as we benefited from operational savings in SG&A and only a small uptick in R&D spend driven by half one, half two phasing . Operational savings were slightly ahead of expectations, as we accelerated some of our operational savings into the first half. We also expect to catch up some of the shortfall in R&D spend in the second half, as well as absorb the bulk of the $15 million- $20 million tariff impact Deepak outlined earlier.
Overall, trading profit grew 11.2% to $523 million, with a margin of 17.7% up 100 bps. I'll explain the various drivers of the margin expansion on the following slide. Slide 12 shows the detailed trading margin bridge. G oing through the moving parts, w e absorbed headwinds of 130 basis points from input cost inflation and 140 basis points from the introduction of VBP in China.
These costs were more than offset, with 190 basis points of revenue leverage from price and volume, and 170 basis points from productivity improvements not only in manufacturing, but also across all other areas of operating expense. FX movements contributed 10 basis points. We have now sustained a trend of revenue leverage offsetting input cost inflation, which means VBP aside, cost savings have been able to drop through to trading profit. A s previously guided, w e expect the impact of VBP China to unwind in the second half, such that the full- year impact is around 110 basis points. We expect operational savings to step up slightly in the second half versus the first, albeit not as much as previously cited, given the acceleration of savings I mentioned earlier.
Furthermore, we expect the bulk of the $15 million- $20 million tariff impact to take place in the second half as well as some catch up on R&D spend. The net effect is that we expect a step up in margin in the second half, such that the half one to half two margin uplift remains comparable to previous years, to deliver margin in line with our guidance of 19 %- 20% for the full year. I'll now come on to trading margin by business unit. As you can see from this slide, the majority of the margin expansion came through orthopedics, where our transformation initiatives to reduce inventory, streamline instrument set allocation, portfolio simplification, and focus on higher volume accounts resulted in 230 basis points margin expansion in half one 2025. We expect these dynamics to continue into the second half.
Sports medicine & ENT margin declined 130 basis points, reflecting the VBP impact in China. If we stripped out China from these numbers, we would have seen margin accretion in the first half. As we annualize the impact of VBP on joint recovery, we expect to deliver margin accretion in the second half. Advanced Wound Management margin increased 160 basis points due to mix, ongoing efficiency gains and the timing of SANTYL revenues in the prior year. F or 2025, w e reiterate that the bulk of our margin expansion will come from orthopedics at over 200 basis points, with accretion around 50 basis points coming from sports medicine and Advanced Wound Management combined. As we've already mentioned at previous results, we've changed our central cost allocation process to better align costs to the appropriate business unit.
With this fuller allocation in place, only $28 million has remained as truly central costs, in line with prior year and our previous guidance that these will be broadly flat year- on- year in 2025. The purpose of the change was to create transparency and accountability, and there are already positive behavioral changes as a result. We've seen greater scrutiny of spending plans, lower demand for new projects and greater discipline in constructing robust business plans for new IT investment spend, a s an example. W e showed you this slide at our interims last year. As a reminder, it details the gross run rate savings of $325 million- $375 million w e are targeting for 2023 through 2027. A s we set out at our prelims in February, i ncluding 2023 and 2024, we have delivered ac cumulative savings of $210 million.
This comprised $155 million relating to the 12-p oint plan and zero-based budgeting, and $55 million relating to earlier programs. That's actually the faint dotted line you see there on the 2023 column. Zero-based budget implementation is on track across all business units and central functions. Across our five work streams, 51 initiatives have been mobilized, of which over half are now complete. We anticipate $120 million - $130 million of savings coming through in 2025. A s you saw from the margin chart earlier, we delivered circa $50 million of these in the first half, slightly ahead of our plan, as we were able to bring some efficiency savings forward from half two into half one.
In total t herefore, that delivers run rate savings from the 12-p oint plan and ZBB of circa $275 million - $285 million at the end of 2025, with a further $50 million - $100 million of savings to come through in 2026 and 2027. Very much in line with what we set out on this chart this time last year. W e've now embedded our ZBB approach into our standard processes, in line with our culture of continuous improvement. Looking further down the P&L, earnings per share grew strongly, up 37% to $0.335 and adjusted earnings per share grew strongly, up 14% to $0.429, reflecting both revenue leverage, operational savings, and significantly lower restructuring costs, which were $8 million in the first half compared to $62 million in the first half last year. We remain on track to incur an estimated $45 million of restructuring charge for the full year.
The interim dividend of $0.15 per share is up 4.2% on half one 2024, in line with our policy set out this time last year, of paying 40% of prior- year full- year dividend as the interim dividend. As you know, inventory management has been a key priority of our 12-p oint plan. I'm pleased to report a further 46- day reduction in DSI across the group to 506 inventory days, in line with our full- year 2024 year- end position. The reduction in DSI delivered a $69 million reduction in inventory value at constant currency. All business units contributed to this performance, with the biggest reduction in s ports medicine & ENT.
There was still an overall increase in inventory for launch products in the first half versus the same period last year. T his means our inventory mix has also improved, with units of the slowest turning quartile of SKUs down by 14% in half one 2025 versus half one 2024, and down 22% since the start of 2023. Longer- term improvement will be down to improved forecasting and better alignment of production plans, with the commercial needs at the SKU level, enabled by the improved SIOP process. There is still more work to do here, including aligning our SIOP process with our financial forecasting in a truly integrated business plan. Inventory reduction remains a focus, and we expect further progress in half two 2025. Trading cash flow in the period was $487 million, with trading cash conversion of 93%, well ahead of the 60% in half one 2024.
The improvement came from lower working capital outflows, particularly from the inventory day reductions I detailed on the previous slide. Capital expenditure is slightly lower year- on- year, but we expect to catch up some of this in the second half of the year, as we continue to progress the development of our new manufacturing facility in Melton. We expect to exit the year at a similar level of spend to last year. For the full- year, we continue to target trading cash conversion of over 90%. W ith lower restructuring costs offset by slightly higher tax, f ree cash flow increased over 500% to $244 million. We expect to deliver free cash flow of well over $360 million for the full year.
This strong cash generation broadly covered the cost of CapEx, dividend and other costs in the period. M eaning net debt at 28th June, 2025 was only $38 million higher than at year- end 2024. The leverage ratio has also decreased slightly to 1.8x . As we maintain and build on this improved cash generation, capital allocation continues to be a focus. This is our capital allocation framework that you should now all be familiar with. As Deepak mentioned in his introduction, the good start of the year in terms of profitability and cash conversion has enabled us to increase our cash returns to shareholders, i n line with our capital allocation policy. W e intend to complete a $500 billion share buyback during the second half of 2025.
This will be fully financed from free cash flow and existing cash balances, so can be delivered while keeping our leverage ratio broadly stable for the full year and without compromising any of our growth ambitions. I'll finish with our outlook for 2025, which as you can see is unchanged. We expect to see a step up in margin in half two, in line with what we experienced in both 2023 and 2024, reflecting the timing of cost savings and reduced China headwinds. The tariffs announced by the U.S. Government early in the year have continued to evolve, and it remains to be seen what the final outcome will be. W e continue to expect a net headwind of around $15 million- $20 million, mainly to impact in the second half of the year.
We expect to deliver well over $600 million free cash flow for the full year. T he strong start to the year in terms of profitability and cash conversion has enabled us to increase our cash returns to shareholders, with a $500 million share buyback during the second half a s I've just mentioned. Y ou should see this as further demonstrating our commitment to value creation for shareholders, in addition to our extensive operational improvements. With that, I'll hand back to Deepak.
Great. Thank you, John. When we launched the 12-p oint plan, one of our core ambitions was to reposition Smith & Nephew as a consistently higher growth business. We're very much on track. In the first two years of the plan, we delivered growth of over 7% and 5% respectively. I n the first half of the year, we've delivered yet another 5% despite some significant headwinds. That includes two fewer trading days for the half. While the China headwind has passed its peak, it still had an impact on H1. If you look through the detail of the quarter, you'll see we're doing what we said we would do. Sports medicine and wound continue to grow well . In the U.S., recon specifically, we're showing progressive improvement quarter by quarter. Our investment in innovation is supporting the acceleration in revenue growth.
Let me take a moment to go into more detail on these two last points. A year ago, we highlighted the strong performance in trauma and extremities based on new product introductions, implant supply, capital deployment, and improved commercial execution. We also detailed that all the same elements were in place to improve performance in our U.S. r econ and robotics business as well. A s with T&E, t hese actions have driven four consecutive quarters of sequential improvements in U.S. recon and robotics revenue growth. On implant supply, key product line item fill rate reached its target in the fourth quarter of 2023 and capital availability followed soon after. W ith hip, set s hipment also was at goal in the fourth quarter of 2023, and knee sets started reaching their goal in the second quarter of 2024.
This is also being supported by a steady stream of product launches over time, such as the newly launched short- stem hip. We also launched 10 new features on CORI between 2022 and 2024, further contributing to the recent recovery in our hip and knee implant sales growth. We have further new product launches planned to continue this positive momentum. Innovation has been a key significant driver in our transformation to a higher growth business. Across 2023 and 2024, more than half of our underlying revenue growth came from products launched in the previous five years. In H1, this proportion was 3/4 or 75%. We continue to invest in our innovation pipeline and introduce new products across all of our business units in the first half of the year, which we're confident will help us sustain our improved revenue growth profile.
In orthopedics, we expanded our nailing range with a new system for stable and unstable tibial fractures. TRIGEN MAX b uilds on more than two decades of proven performance, and industry-leading design from our TRIGEN Nails portfolio. In robotics, we received FDA clearance for CORIOGRAPH pre-op planning and modeling services in total shoulder replacement during the second quarter of 2025, which expands our offering to cover all joint replacement procedures, knees, hips, and shoulders. In sports medicine, for the first time, Smith & Nephew is able to market REGENETEN, for extra-articular ligament injuries in the U.S., creating opportunities to reach more patients with soft tissue injuries around the body, w ith an initial focus on hip capsule repair, with future expansion planned in other extra-articular ligament repairs.
In addition to new products, we also announced a number of significant evidence milestones during the first half of 2025, supporting the adoption of key product families. For instance, a recently published randomized control trial of Smith & Nephew's handheld robotic system, demonstrated the value for patients and surgeons of robotically- assisted total knee replacement with JOURNEY II BCS . Patients experienced significantly better outcomes, including reduced pain, improved function, and higher satisfaction compared to conventional surgery at the one-year time point. In conclusion, I've talked a lot about our 12-p oint plan. We're now in the final year of our three-year transformation that I first set out for you in July 2022, and Q2 performance is yet another proof point that we are on track to deliver our ambitions. Each of the three parts of the 12-p oint plan is delivering great progress.
The rewiring of our orthopedics business is well underway, with sequential growth acceleration over the last four quarters at the global ortho, U.S. ortho, and U.S. recon and robotics levels. Orthopaedic inventory levels have improved, and we've seen the associated expected step- up in ortho margin. Both sports medicine and wound management have shown consistent momentum since the start of the program, and productivity improvements are clearly visible in the P&L. In other words, our operational improvements are increasingly translating into financial gains. In Q2, o nce again, we delivered revenue growth ahead of historical levels, even with headwinds from trading days and China. This higher organic growth is underpinned by our fundamental competitive strengths, better commercial execution, and a high cadence of innovation across our portfolio.
Cash flow has also stepped up significantly in the last 12 months, with better control of inventory to the point where we can start returning excess cash to shareholders through our $500 million share buyback. There's still more to do around profitability, but the 100 basis points of expansion puts us on track to deliver the guided step up and full- year margin. As a reminder, we've delivered 240 basis points group margin expansion from H1 2023 to H1 2025, despite greater headwinds than we expected when we first laid out the plan in 2022. As I've told you, in the fiscal year full- year 2024, results since the start of 2023, we've successfully offset over 700 basis points of headwinds from inflation, foreign exchange, and VBP. Finally, these improvements are sustainable.
A key objective of the 12-p oint plan has been to drive increased accountability and greater discipline in execution, both of which are now embedded in our culture and our ways of working. As I've said before, the 12-p oint plan is a necessary step, but it is not the limit of our long- term ambitions. We' ll set out the next stage of our strategy at a capital markets day in early December. I'm looking forward to seeing you all there, and formal invitations will follow shortly. With that, we'll now take your questions. Jack.
Thanks very much. Jack Reynolds-Clark from RBC. Three , please. The first is on revenue guidance. With Q2 having been, I guess, stronger than I think people were expecting, does that imply that there's upside to the 5% target for the full year? Are we expecting things to slow down elsewhere in the business?
On margin guidance, I appreciate you mentioned some kind of moving around of R&D and possibly some other expenses as well, but could you walk us through, John, the bridge in H2 margin and whether the upper end of the 19%- 20% margin range is possibly more achievable? The last question was on U.S. knees. Could you just run us through s ome more detail of the work you're d oing there, and kind of how much of the weakness was driven by the market versus your own activities, and how you're thinking about kind of growth versus margin in that segment going forward?
Sure. I'll frame this up, and I'll leave it to John to kind of give you the margin guidance. Overall, as we mentioned, given all the puts and takes that we see, we feel good about the guidance for the full year. There are positives and negatives as we go through. We'll continue to improve commercially in the back half of the year, but we do have a step up that we expect both from a revenue standpoint and from a profit standpoint. We're in a more uncertain environment. We've characterized for you what we expect the impact of tariffs to be. Fundamentally, there is a much more uncertain period.
That, coupled with the step up that we need to see in the back half of the year, particularly around margin and all the various effects around comparators, China, VBP falling off and other things, we feel at this point, it's prudent to maintain the guidance that we've given both in terms of revenue and margin. In terms of U.S. knees, as we unpack that a little bit, the headline is that at a U.S. orthopedics level, including trauma and recon, U.S. recon and robotics level and at a global orthopedics level, we're seeing sequential improvement. Those are very, very strong proof points that the improvements in supply and product availability, commercial execution or ability to connect all the different pieces together is delivering the desired effects. That's the headline in terms of where we are, and I'm pleased with the progress we're making.
The softness in knees, were offset by- the- greater- than- expected strength in hips, so a couple of factors. First, we are going through a step to refocus a commercial organization to the higher volume accounts. I've said in previous settings that we've got a relatively long tail of accounts, where we have surgeons use our products on an occasional basis with particular patient populations or what have you. While that's an important part of our business, we do want our commercial activities focused on driving kind of key primary use of our knees or hip platforms. That's some concerted effort there going on. There's also some level of portfolio rationalization work that we're doing, and I've highlighted that in the past. We've got three knee families that are relevant in the U.S.
We are trying to get all that down to two knee platforms, LEGION and JOURNEY, and there's work involved in having the transition surgeons in doing that. By and large, we're successful in retaining most of our customers when we go through that process, but not all. That does have an impact on top line. These actions actually get us to a better position as far as our U.S. business is concerned from a margin standpoint.
These steps do contribute on the back of all the other improvements we're making in the factory, and in terms of inventory control for the margin step up that John talked about. What we also saw related to this was, particularly in the end of the quarter, that we saw some slowdown in terms of the number of procedures in our active base of surgeons. That did contribute to the numbers that we see. With that, John, do you want t o take the [crosstalk]?
Yeah, I'd love just to sort of build on a little bit what you said. We saw the 230 bps of margin accretion in orthopedics in the first half, which was a reflection of those changes that Deepak has just talked about. That very much puts us on track to deliver the margin expansion that we set out last year for orthopedics. We ended last year at just below 12%. If we look forward to this year, we should end north of 14%, so a big step up, a improvement in margin for orthopedics. In terms of setting a little bit of color on the revenue guidance, you're right to highlight that we did say that we would expect to see a step up in Q3, given China annualizing, given the reversal of the impact of trading days.
In Q3, we've got level trading days year- on- year, as opposed to two less in the first half. We will expect to see a step up in Q3. That said, important to remind you that Q4 for us last year was a very strong quarter, particularly in the U.S., so we've got quite a tough comparator. I would say that we're only six months of the way through the year. There continues to be significant uncertainty over macro and external conditions like tariffs, for example, so n ow is not the time to be changing our guidance. I n terms of the margin phasing, a gain we talked about bringing savings forward from half two into half one and of course those savings will repeat in half two. That's an upside.
At the same time, we've got the impact of tariffs, the $15 million- $20 million that we made reference to and that will of course primarily hit us in the second half, so that broadly offsets that. Also, we've got the U.S. O US mix in Q4 as well. Again, we had a very strong US in Q4 of last year. Again, at this stage, I would say now's not the time to be changing our guidance on margin, a 19%- 20% hold. We've said in the past that we expect it to be broadly center of that range. Actually, if you look at the bridge from half two 2024 to half two 2025, so I'll give you a little bit of color here, w e'd expect sort of cost inflation of around 1.9% or so. VBP on China will be about a drag of 80 bps or so.
If you remember, we said it was going to be 110 bps for the year. That's averaging out half one, half two. We'd expect to see revenue leverage of around 200 bps or so, and then operating savings of a similar amount to get us up to the circa 19%- 20% margin for the full year. That gives you a little bit of color on the half two bridge.
Great. Thanks very much.
Sure. Richard.
Thank you. Richard Felton from Goldman Sachs. First one, just to follow up on m argin, John, can you remind us the d rivers of the operating savings in H2? How well advanced are those programs? How much visibility do you have that t hat is going to be achieved and fully de-risked? Also, w hat elements of those operating savings are structural, and how should we think about that dynamic into FY 2026? That's the first one. The second one, just to follow up on U.S knees, Deepak, you mentioned at the e nd of the quarter, a slightly softer procedure environment. Why do you think that happened? Why was that the case? Have you seen that continuing into Q3? Thank you.
Sure. Take the U.S. knees part. This is in our base of customers, right? It's hard to speculate. We don't know the reasons really. We can talk about vacation schedules, because there's vacations every year in that timeframe, so i t's hard to really define that. It's hard to tell what drove them. What we can tell is, there was a slowdown in our base. I've in the past been somewhat moved to comment on market. We're in a period of performance recovery in the orthopedics business, where it's sometimes difficult to parse how much of something is us versus the market. We can do that in wound . We can do that in sports . I've been [moved] to comment on that now. We're in a better place, actually a much better place even in orthopedics in the U.S. than we were a year ago or two years ago.
Having said that, what I do feel comfortable is talking about what's happening with our account base. There seems to be, at least from what we can tell in our numbers, some slowdown related to vacations. Surgeon transitions was another factor, as surgeons were moving practices in some cases from hospitals to ASC settings or across networks. That did have an impact on something within our base. What's encouraging for me is when I look at churn, you've heard me comment about that in the past, where through much of 2023 and early 2024, were net unfavorable. In other words, we lost more surgeons than we gained for a variety of factors. Retirements and those types of things were the large factor, and we had some competitive losses too. We also commented in the previous period that those have turned favorable starting in really the Q3, Q4 of 2024.
I'm pleased to report that that trend has continued even into Q2, building off of Q1. I feel good about the operational progress that we're making, and I do feel confident that as we go through the second half of the year, we'll be in a good place. Again, to come back to, in the end, there's different ways to slice and dice this. W hat I'm looking at in addition to knees and hip s, and we're looking at knees and hips separately as well, but i n the aggregate, when you look at U.S. recon, we're seeing nice sequential improvement and we are closing the gap to market.
We'll see of course, not all of our competitors reported in the quarter, but when we look at the trend, Q3 2024, Q4 2024, Q1 of 2025, we are closing the gap at the U.S. recon level. Of course, outside the U.S., we've seen some strength now over the last couple of years. We've continued to maintain that. Overall, I feel good about where we're positioned. I'll hand it to you, John, for [crosstalk].
Thank you. In terms of the savings and where they're coming from, again, I'll point you to the slide that we've got in the deck, which sets out, I hope, quite clearly, they come from across the board. There's a big chunk clearly that come from manufacturing, procurement, but there's also warehousing and distribution, business support, sales and marketing. We're seeing savings across the entirety of our business.
We had 51 different programs, all of which are already in train and many of which are already complete. In terms of visibility of those savings, I feel pretty confident that we'll see that margin accretion come through in the second half, as we said consistently before. In terms of 2026 and 2027, again, point you to the chart. We should expect to see another $50 million- $100 million of savings flow through in 2026 and 2027, as a consequence of some of the changes we're making now as we see those flow through into future years. Again, we should see a little bit of support for margin improvement as we go into 2026 and 2027.
Thank you very much.
Thanks. It's Graham from UBS. Just two from me, please. On the ortho inventory, in terms of the lower cost inventory, it started to flow through post the site c losures over the last 12 months, 18 months. H ave we seen much of that yet? I think we always thought that would be like a H2 sort of weighted story. It'd be i nteresting to get some color on that. Just on tariffs, one of y our peers appears to be able to n ot pay tariffs on hips and knees. Just to get your sense as to, have you explored the Nairobi Treaty for that protocol and is there anything to do there? Thank you.
Thanks, Graham. In terms of inventory, you're right. We've previously called out that the accumulated benefits of all of the network optimization efforts we've done will fully manifest in the second half of the year, and we remain kind of on track to that. That will be one of the key drivers of the continued margin step up from where we are today into the back half of the year. It's not like we haven't seen the impact of that already. Those have come over the period of time, one at a time. Mechanically, what happens is, you close a site. Obviously, there's upfront costs associated with the site closure. We' ll typically build up some level of inventory as safety stock in terms of what we manufacture there, and then we transition that production to elsewhere within our network.
The impact of all of that will flow through, and there's a timescale associated with it. What we're actually doing also in addition to that, is as part of improving our product availability, which has twin objectives, o ne is to improve availability and actually reduce our inventory. It's about how we connect supply and demand down to SKU levels. We've been at this now since the start of the program, and there we've made really, really good progress in terms of being able to connect at a much better level. Now, there's still more work to be done, but when I compare it to where we were in 2022 versus this, it's kind of a night and day thing. That's part of what John talked about in terms of our inventory, health being better. He provided some stats around what our slow- turning inventory has been doing.
In fact, when we started out, our mix wasn't great. We had too much of the stuff we don't need, and not enough of the stuff we did need. Part of that is because in our business, trauma is a relatively higher proportion compared to recon. Trauma has particularly high inventory requirements, and they're particularly slow turning. Some of that is related to it. We have actually brought down the slow- turning inventory levels significantly. That is another contributor in terms of both inventory levels and days of inventory coming down. Of course, the impact of that as it flows through the balance sheet and P&L is a bit more complex. There's inflation impacts for which there are timescales associated with it. The second thing is our manufacturing capacity. We' ve taken down capacity, but we' ve navigated through much of this period with excess capacity.
That has obviously complicated impacts on both balance sheet and P&L. All these put together, we are on track to delivering the margin expansion associated with this, just as we said. A s you rightly call out, that was the second half of the year. I n terms of tariffs, obviously we are looking at all different ways, including the one you mentioned, is ways to mitigate. As far as we can tell, based on our read of the situation, we are calling for a $15 million- $20 million impact t o remind you of our network. I think your question is more within orthopedics, referencing one of our competitors. For us, we' ve got two primary sites, well, three total, but it' s Memphis, it' s Malaysia, and we have got Switzerland.
On the one hand, because a significant part of our orthopedics production comes from Memphis, we are naturally hedged in that regard, but it is not zero. It is very much down to SKU level in terms of what comes from there. There is actually impact, not to mention the impact of raw materials, the input feedstock that comes in from other places. Look, it' s a very dynamic situation. It is hard to call where things actually settle out. We' ve got a tiger team that is looking at this, at the pace that you would expect companies like ours to look at and we are now keeping that situation under review.
Yeah, thank you. Just to build on Deepak's point there, if you look at our manufacturing network as it happens, more of the tariff impact comes through for us on wound and sports and less on ortho, because most of our manufacturing is U.S.- based for ortho. There's a little bit more of an impact in wound and sports than there is in ortho.
I think, David, you had a question.
Oh yeah, a couple. I' m David Adlington at JPMorgan. Just on the buyback, John, given the strong cash flow in the first half, just wondered how you're thinking about ending the year in terms of net debt, EBITDA . S econdly, also good to s ee progress on the inventories. A s you l ook into the medium term, w here do you think you get down t o and how much cash could that free up?
You want to take that, John?
Yeah, so on the buyback, notwithstanding the $500 million buyback in the second half, I'm still expecting us to exit the year below our 2x net debt to EBITDA sort of target level, so giving us plenty of capacity for all of our growth ambitions, etc . Very strong cash flow, which is very positive. O n the inventory side, o bviously we don't want to overly guide to what we're going to deliver in the future, but you've seen the direction of travel over 2024 and 2025, and we would expect that improvement to continue.
I think when it comes to sports and wound, we're now getting down to what would be pretty good industry levels. I think the opportunity continues to exist in Ortho, and we've seen good improvement in the first half. We'd expect that to continue into the second half of this year, and then further improvement in ortho next year as well.
Sam.
Morning, it's Sam England from Berenberg. The first one, just in hips, y ou called out the benefit from CATALYSTEM in Q2. How should we think about the market share gains you think this can drive, especially in the ASC channel, given the focus on anterior surgery and how crowded is that space becoming now for anterior products? Just looking at the other r econ business and the growth there that you called out was driven by robotics, c an you just talk a bit about demand and placements for CORI in Q2? I suppose it's more of the d emand being driven by the hospital or ASC channel, j ust some sense for the sort of split of demand between channels.
Yeah, so we're pleased with the uptake of CATALYSTEM . Obviously, not every one of our competitors have reported, but you've seen two report. We feel good about where we're positioned. The surgeon feedback on CATALYSTEM has been very, very good. We feel good about how we're positioned there and continuing to have traction across a range of settings, so not only in ASCs, but also in hospitals, academic centers, and community hospitals as well. We feel good about its value proposition. As you know, the market over the last three or four years has gone through a fairly profound shift from a traditional approach into a direct anterior. We were among the later players, not the first players to come into that space, but we have a very compelling product offering in a segment that's rapidly growing.
We feel good about the surgeon feedback, and the resonance that we're getting across a range of settings. In terms of robotics, what we're looking at is not just placements, right? We could be executing a place-first kind of strategy. What we're looking at is both placements and utilization, and we're seeing very nice uptake. In other words, where we place, we've got surgeon champions that are using that integrated into their kind of routine practice, which is really kind of the true measure of what we're trying to do.
We're also looking at whether it's driving competitive conversions or we're using that primarily to retain our existing customer base, both of which are important. There are multiple things we're looking at around CORI placements just being one of many factors, and continue to be pleased with the progress there. We're looking at how we do in ASC channel, as well as in teaching institutions where historically we've kind of skipped a beat or two. The progress we're making on both of those is very, very encouraging for me. Overall, very pleased with how CORI is doing across channels, and the type of utilization it's getting everywhere where we place them.
Again, just to build on Deepak's comments there, we're not going to split out obviously numbers that go into the channel, but it's fair to say that in the second quarter, we certainly over- indexed in ASCs in terms of the proportion of our CORI placements that went into ASCs in the second quarter, which I think is really encouraging. We said before, we think that CORI, in terms of its form factor, in terms of its size and its footprint, and also its capital costs being significantly lower than the competition, actually puts it in a very strong position particularly in the ASC channel. We're starting to see that come through in terms of the number of placements we're putting into that channel.
Should we turn to the phone?
For those on the phone lines, to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. The first question comes from Veronika Dubajova of Citi. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Deepak and John. Thank you guys for taking my questions. Hope you can hear me o kay. I have three, please. The first one is just joint repair. Again, another impressive quarter for you guys, is double- digit growth excluding China. Just curious, Deepak, if you could touch upon the drivers that are enabling you to deliver that growth and how sustainable you think that is, not just into the back half of this year, but also as we think about 2026.
My second question is just, maybe if you can elaborate a little bit on the skin substitutes exposure that you have and the risks that you might see there from the new proposal, and maybe just give us a flavor for where your current pricing stands relative to the $125 that's been proposed by CMS. My final question is around the buyback and just to what extent you feel this year, is it giving us a good indication for your ongoing recurring future capacity to return cash to shareholders? Thank you, guys.
Sure. In terms of joint repair growth, we take China out of it, as we've indicated multiple times. We will annualize the impact of joint repair VBP as we head into Q3. When you look at our performance across all other regions, very, very nice double-digit growth. The key drivers are Q-FIX, and what we've done with that and REGENETEN . It's increasing adoption within rotator cuff, which was kind of our lead indication. As we expand indications into the Achilles in particular, we're seeing an increase in proportion of REGENETEN use within Achilles as well. Of course, we're not stopping there. Hips is another area that we're going after. Very nice uptake of REGENETEN . We expect it to be a platform technology, so we're starting to see its utilization across different joints. Q-FIX, REGENETEN are key drivers of joint repair growth everywhere outside of China.
In terms of skin subs, look, it'll be a net headwind both from a revenue and profit standpoint for our wound business fundamentally. Obviously, there's the pricing that you mentioned. In addition to that, no products got taken off the market as a result of this. How practice patterns change as a result of that does remain to be seen. Relative to a previous version of this, where on the back of expected clinical evidence, there would be fewer players in the market at a lower price point with some limits on adoption, whereas for us, we characterized it as a net neutral thing for us as we pivot into this regime, which of course hasn't been finalized. It would be a net headwind. O bviously, for the year, w e've taken this into account in our guide, have made some remarks and John did as well.
We feel good about our ability to navigate through this headwind for 2025. Of course, just to 2026, as we look in the year, w e're not going to guide to that quite yet. Now is not the moment to do so. Let's just say that we're active participants in it. We remain committed to bringing forward products that have strong clinical evidence backing them. In terms of what we're going to do, we're going to stick to what we think would be the right way to develop products that are substantiated with clinical evidence, and we'll see how topics evolve from there. In terms of buyback, do you want to take that, John?
Yeah, I'll cover that. Again, just to make it very clear, I'll sort of draw your attention to the capital allocation policy, which is very clearly set out. First and foremost, we want to be able to invest in our organic growth. That's absolutely clear. That's one of our key objectives, is to drive the growth of our business forward. Secondly, we want to be able to acquire businesses that are complementary to our portfolio, that will assist in driving growth. Thirdly, we've got to pay a dividend, and if there's anything left over from that, then of course we have the option of paying a share buyback or doing another share buyback.
I want to make it very clear that that is the last option and that the primary focus is driving our top line growth, investing in our business through organic growth and acquisitions, and obviously paying a dividend, and then as the last element of the capital allocation, share buyback. We were able to make the share buyback in the second half of this year of $500 million. As I said earlier on, we will expect to still end the year below our target leverage ratio, and with all the capacity that we need to drive our top- line growth.
Got it. Thank you. That's very clear.
Sure thing, Veronika.
The next question comes from Hassan Al-Wakeel of Barclays. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. I have three, please. Firstly, Deepak, if I can follow up on your comment on slowing procedures amongst more active surgeons in knees, I wonder if you're seeing this beyond knees and separately, any color on the weaker OUS hip performance and any key challenges faced here. I guess combined, what are your expectations here and in U.S. knees in the second half.
Secondly, if I can follow up on skin subs, was the stronger growth in the quarter supported by any physician behavior changes due to the LTD. O n the proposed reimbursement, appreciate behavior can change as can volumes. What is the impact from the lower price in isolation? What is your exposure to the hospital inpatient channel, and what are the mitigating actions that you could take? Finally, how are you thinking about the pipeline of potential bolt- on deals, particularly as we look into next year, given the buyback announced for this year? Thank you.
Okay, so what we've seen in terms of procedure slowdown was really in knees and hips, and medically a different level of, I would say urgency around knee replacements versus hip replacements, as you know. What we've seen in our active base was really more around knees compared to hips, so that's that. In terms of hips OUS, there's a China factor, an ex-China factor, OUS. It 's a little bit in Japan, for example, that we're looking at. Overall, OUS orthopedics performance remains an area of strength. We continue to perform well commercially, and although there's quarterly volatility primarily around timing of distributor orders and things, we feel good about how we positioned OUS writ lar ge. Ther e are individual markets where there may be something from one quarter to the next.
In terms of physician behavior changes in response to pricing, w e did see some of that, but not to the extent that it was the dominant kind of factor driving the performance there. Now, we have not previously split out how much of our business is skin subs, but I'll just say it's material. In the realm of, you know, from a group impact standpoint, I expect that with pricing changes here, we'll be able to navigate through this. I guess, rather than get into breaking out the impact of skin subs, I'll just leave it at that. In terms of proportion of utilization in hospital versus physician office, it's about 40% of use is in the physician office compared to the hospital. In terms of our own activities, we've always had a strong presence on the hospital side, which we continue to maintain.
In terms of development of products, we continue to be focused on not just coming up with the next version of skin subs, but also investing behind development of clinical evidence. That will remain the case as we go into next year and beyond, so s kin subs. I n terms of acquisitions, as John mentioned, a key priority is to drive growth top line. At the level of payback buyback that we've announced, we are not going to be limited in terms of the type of bolt-on acquisitions that we're going to be able to do as a result of it.
We feel good about the opportunity set in front of us and the ability to execute on that. Bolt-on M&A or M&A in general is a key part of value creation in Medtech. We have an active corporate development team that's well plugged into the ecosystem, and we've got a pipeline that we feel good about and we don't feel constrained in our ability to do those bolt-on M&A, even with the announced buyback.
Yeah. Just to add some color to your question on hips, Hassan, just looking at the numbers for the second quarter, we were actually up on an average daily sales basis. Globally, we were up around 5% for Q2. A ctually, if you look at ex-China, we were up 7.5%. You're right to highlight, the OUS growth was pretty flat in the second quarter. To Deepak's point, we expect that to significantly step up, in that the OUS number should significantly step up in the second half as some of the impacts on China start to reverse, and we should see a pretty strong half two on our hips ADS growth on an OUS basis.
Perfect. Thank you.
The next question comes from Robert Davies of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yes, morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have three. First one was just how you're thinking about the strategic position within ortho, I guess within the context of both the 12-p oint plan and within the context of this. You mentioned the constructive discussions with the activists. Maybe just provide us a little more color on that.
The second question was around the trajectory for margins beyond 2025, and whether the sort of savings plan that you've laid out has changed your views over the mid-term profitability targets of the company. The final one was just around the sustainability of growth I guess, and just getting a little more color on the future pipeline. You've obviously made a lot of comments over the last couple of years around the products you brought to market. I just wondered if you could provide some color around the pipeline looking forward over the next couple of years. Anything meaningful to look out for. Thank you.
Yeah, sure. With orthopedics, look, we're a portfolio company as many other Medtech companies are. In terms of orthopedics, what we've said a number of times is, as we look dispassionately at all different ways in which we can drive shareholder value, far and away, the best opportunity is to get orthopedics functioning as it has the potential to do and as it once did within our portfolio. As I've detailed in this quarter and its previous presentations, we're making really good progress in our ability to do that. There are a number of elements associated with it in terms of product availability, the way we connect supply and demand, our commercial execution, which itself has multiple pieces around people, process, how we manage the business. On every one of those fronts, we've made tremendous progress.
When I take a step back and look at all the things we could be doing, driving performance improvement along the dimensions that I've outlined is by far the best thing we can do for shareholders at this point and w e are well on a path to doing that. I do believe we'll get it to where this business can perform in its ability to deliver great returns, whether it's in terms of revenue growth contributor in terms of margin expansion, which as John mentioned earlier, we're on track to go to about 14% margin this year, which is more than 200 bps. As we look ahead, that journey will continue. 14% is not the end- point, but it's a [waypoint] along the journey.
As we look ahead, we expect it to do its part in driving growth, importantly driving margin expansion as we get it back to levels at which we were a number of years ago , and importantly , as we move into a position where it starts to deliver excess return ahead of its cost of capital. We have all of those opportunities in front of us in orthopedics. I think with Q2, we delivered yet another proof point on our journey there. We've got more to do in the balance of 2026, and of course then as we look into the future. That brings me to the second question that you have around continued margin expansion. We have said that the target for 2025, which is 19%- 20%, that's not an endpoint, it is a punctuation. We expect to continue to improve beyond that, in particular orthopedics margins.
We expect to continue to expand as we go into 2026. Now, the right time for us to be talking about what we expect to would be on the back of full year 2026 results, so that you can judge how we did on the three- year transformation program, where we're positioned and what makes sense in terms of reasonable midterm targets. We'll come out and do that. A s a prequel to it, i n our capital markets day, we'll detail out what we see as the key growth drivers. I'll take the mystery out of it. We are an innovation- driven company. We've said, 3/4 of our growth in H1 was from products launched in the five years and we've commented on that periodically. Full year 2024, that number was about 50%. In 2023, that number was about a little over 50%. They might have said 60%.
We've had a good track record of bringing forward innovations. We're not always first to market, but what we bring forward, and if you look at our greatest hits reel, if you will, we're actually punching above our weight class in terms of the type of innovations we bring forward. As an organization, we're very, very committed to maintaining our levels of investment within R&D. That will be one of the key drivers of growth. Going forward, we expect to build off of where we hope to exit in 2025 in terms of further margin progression.
We'll detail that out at the right time. I n terms of sustainability of growth, w e've gone from kind of being a low- single- digit growth kind of company into kind of a mid- single- digit growth company during this transformation period. I think at this point, we've given you enough proof points in terms of our ability to do that. The next chapter will be to build off of where we've come. Here, I'll leave this a little bit of a mystery, so you can come to the capital markets day and see what those drivers are. Of course, with full year, we'll give you that in more detail.
Just to comment on the margin trajectory, as always, there's a lot of moving parts on margin, as Deepak highlighted. We've got the positives in terms of this additional savings coming through, and I talked about $50 million- $100 million at least coming through in 2026 and 2027. We've got the positives in terms of the continued progression on the orthopedics margin. As Deepak says, 14% is not our end game.
We expect to continue to improve that over time. At the same time, of course we've got to offset the challenges of tariffs coming in in 2026 and also of course the impact of skin subs. There's always lots of moving parts. We hope to set out at the capital markets day, clear direction of travel as to where we expect things to go forward and a lso obviously, the prelims in February of next year, provide very clear guidance as to what we expect to happen in 2026.
Yeah, just a quick build on what you said, John. In terms of sustainability of both growth and margin, part of being a portfolio company is being able to go through all these different factors and offset these things, to deliver more consistent kind of top- line growth and margin expansion a s part of being a portfolio company.
Another thing that I'll accentuate here is in terms of sustainability, when you look at how Q2 turned out, the growth came from all regions and all of our businesse. T hat's been a theme, that if you'll go back and kind of look at our messaging over previous quarters, that is something that's been true actually for a number of quarters now. It's not just coming from one particular part of our business, but the growth has been relatively broad- based. T hat you should take as another encouraging sign in terms of the sustainability of growth, as we move out of this period of transformation or turnaround into more kind of new and improved Smith & Nephew.
Very helpful. Thank you both.
Thanks, Robert.
The next question comes from Kane Slutzkin of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Morning, John . Can you hear me?
Very clear.
That's great. Just quickly on U.S. recon, you're obviously still targeting the market growth rates by end of year, I would assume. I'm just wondering if anything has changed in your thinking there in terms of how you get there, given the softer U.S. knee, but stronger hips. Secondly, you obviously mentioned you're in the final year of the transformation. You're making good progress against this plan. Without being too sensationalist, I'm just wondering, with the Cevian stake sort of slowly building, could you provide us with any confirmation or details of the nature of any discussions you've had with them, what their influence has been to date, if at all and I guess, just how active have they been?
Sure. In terms of what we're targeting, as we've said before, getting to market growth in U.S. recon remains a goal. Ideally, we would like to do that with all parts of our business kind of working, r ight? In other words, we want to continue to show progress in knees and progress in hips, r ight? Obviously, there's multiple ways we could get there. In Q2, we great performance in hips that offsets somewhat softer performance in knees. We expect to build on both of those things as we go into Q3, Q4.
The objective is at a U.S. recon level to exit at market. It could be a different shape, but that remains the goal. In terms of Cevian, as you know, our position has always been, we maintain open dialogue with all of our shareholders. We spend a considerable amount of time, John and I do, engaging with our shareholders in an open and constructive way. We have done that with Cevian as well. The conversations so far have been quite deep, quite meaningful and constructive, and we expect to maintain that as we move forward as well.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Yeah, one more.
The next question comes from Dylan Haaften of Stifel. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Just one clarification at the end for me. Baked into your tariff guide, are you using the Nairobi protocol for any of the, let's say, non-U.S. or U.S. business? I'll stop there.
The short answer is no, not at this time.
Perfect, thanks.
We currently have no further questions, so I'd like to hand back to the management team for any final remarks.
Great. Thank you very much for your questions. As we said, we're very encouraged by where we are in Q2, and remain confident of our ability to deliver within the guidance that we've set out. Thank you for your attention today.