Sectra AB (publ) (STO:SECT.B)
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Q2 24/25

Dec 12, 2024

Helena Pettersson
Investor Relations Officer, Sectra

Good morning and welcome to Sectra's financial report presentation with CEO Torbjörn Kronander and CFO Jessica Holmquist. My name is Helena Pettersson, Investor Relations Officer, and I will be the moderator of the Q&A session. The chat function is open from start, and if you write questions, management will answer them after their presentations. And with that, over to you, Torbjörn.

Torbjörn Kronander
CEO, Sectra

All right, thank you very much. Welcome to this presentation. And I will commence the presentation now. We will discuss interim highlights that will be done by me, then financial development by Jessica. Then I will discuss a little our way forward, and then we have the Q&A session. Please, as Helena said, ask via the chat function or email if you don't have chat. That's how we will track it afterwards. So our business operations sector is Imaging IT, which is the biggest part. We handle all images in hospitals. I'll come back to that later. And this is the largest operation, but also the one that is most affected by the big change from a license-based upfront model of sales to a recurring revenue model where almost all customers in the future will pay for usage instead. Then we have Secure Communications to the right.

That is actually our regional business, Sectra Secure Communications. And that is encryption. That is selling very high-level encryption systems and communication systems to national authorities and defense systems around the world or around Europe, I would say. We're not selling outside of Europe and NATO. And then we have Business Innovation, which is really our greenhouse for new ideas, kind of intrapreneurial ventures that we pursue. And the newest one there is Genomics IT, and I'll come back to that a little bit later. Highlights from the quarter. We are building a strong and future-proof business. We have very high customer satisfaction, which is very satisfying. All real business is built on high customer satisfaction. And this is the core sector, how we operate, how we try to run or build our culture in the company.

Then we have also seen a very large order intake of the quarter. The biggest one is, of course, the entire province of Quebec in Canada, which is more or less a country. They do equivalents about the size of Sweden in one single order, our largest order at Sectra today. Rapid progress in transition to as-a-service model, mainly in Imaging IT, where we're changing the upfront license sales to a service-based change. This change is going even faster than we ourselves anticipated. More or less all business in the U.K., the U.S., and Canada is now as a service model and increasingly also in Europe. This is a big hit short-term and short-term meaning over several years where we lose the upfront license model we had before. But long-term, it will be good for shareholders as well as customers.

Of course, when you do such a big transition, you have large investments. If you get a big order like the one in Quebec, there is a lot of cost upfront that you don't get paid for until the customer begins to pay after a year or so of installation phase. We are transforming as a service model, as I said, and then we measure the recurring revenue growth and Cloud Recurring Revenue is exactly that transition of model. That is when we take an earlier license sale that we did, we got paid for upfront, and we move this over a long period of time instead. And that has grown 36%. We have had large growth there for a long time, but now the figures are on a level where 36% begins to make a real impact. That's over six months.

Recurring revenue as a whole includes Cloud Recurring Revenue. That includes the old systems, the old installation-based service contracts, which of course is growing less rapidly, but as it includes the Cloud Recurring Revenue, that is also growing substantially. We have the churn, which is super important in a cloud or in a service model. When you get paid for usage, it takes a lot of effort to get people into these contracts, and then you don't want to lose customers and stop paying. Our churn is very low, about 0.5%. Main churn is in education, actually, which is a small business part, but that we see the main churn. That's people who have bought a terminal, a big table historically, and then they get initially a usage contract.

But if they don't prolong that, which in some countries people do all the time, then we lose that customer. We have even lower figure than that if you take Imaging IT. Happy customers is something we believe in. We think that's the only way to grow long-term for any healthy and sustainable business. We have contract order bookings up 39%. It's a tremendous growth, and that's mainly the Canadian and Quebec order. But we also grow in other areas as well. Net sales increased by 8% despite that we're moving the license sales upfront, license sales to long-term. We still grow in the top line. And profit per share was down this quarter. Now, I should remind you, as I said at the end of the last Q1 presentation, that the quarterly variations are large. It's very, very difficult to predict on a quarterly basis.

You have to look at 12 months running if you're going to see a trend, etc., and this year, this quarter, some business was moved into Q1, and some perhaps comes later, but it's, again, very large variation between quarters. The financial targets for the group are fulfilled. We have the priority one, which is our stability, equity/assets ratio. At the end of the period, we provide systems that are crucial for our customers. They cannot fail. Hospitals stop if our systems stop, and if the military or a country are to trust us with the most important secrets, we cannot be financially unstable, so having a good equity/assets ratio is important. Our target is about 30%. We are at 48%. Despite that, we actually paid out dividends or actually a redemption program this fall, then the second priority is profitability. That's a hygiene measure, etc.

Margin as such is not our main goal. If we increase, that's a one-time increase, but we should at least do healthy business, so we have a profit margin of 15% that we shouldn't go below. We are at 16%. Despite all the large investments, we do well for the cloud business, and growth of profits, that is our main target, but it's priority number three, the two hygiene measures of before. That should grow more than 50% per share over a five-year period, and we are currently more than double that at 111%. In secure communications, it's interesting. This was for many years a little of a problem child with us. It didn't grow, and we had not enough margins. This has now changed both internally because we have a very good culture there now and new management.

But we also have a world around us because it's a war in Europe and more insecure. This business is driven by that growth in the market as well. Now, Sectra's fastest growing area, in fact. Order intake includes our encrypted telephones on the secret level and also increasingly network encryption. That is when you want to encrypt between two buildings, for instance, or into two different cities. You want very high-level encryption there at very high speeds, and that is an area where we are very strong. We had also patent settlement there that will have a positive impact, not this reporting quarter, but the next reporting quarter. And coming back to that, Sectra has an extensive patent portfolio. We have many patents in different areas.

One of those is a U.S. patent within mobile VPN, virtual private network solution that we during Q3 have licensed to U.S. corporations as part of a one-time settlement. It's been a discussion between us and them of if they infringe or not, and we decided together that they can license our patent instead, and that resulted for us in a net impact in Q3 that will lead to almost SEK 100 million as a one-time profit increase in communications and thus the entire concern. Business Innovation highlights Orthopaedics IT. We have good profitable growth. Musculoskeletal disease is increasing, and prosthesis or implants is also growing a lot. We do products that intend to get the right prosthesis into the right person. So pre-operative planning, we increasingly also do post-operative analysis, which is growing healthily.

And that is the evaluation of a prosthesis afterwards, that if it's stuck or not, if it's not stuck, it should be re-operated. But if it's stuck, even if you have pain, it should not be re-operated. And revision of a prosthesis is very dangerous and very costly. So we can prevent some of those by actually seeing that the prosthesis is stable as it should be. Medical Education, there we have a little backlash this quarter because people are buying less of the hardware, which is the large tables. That's part of the general trend. But we also, the recurring revenue in that area is increasing rapidly. So that part, which is the most important part, is growing steadily. Genomics IT is the new area that we have been live with since in May in University of Pennsylvania in the U.S. We have a large interest for the market.

But for those who have read Geoffrey Moore's book, Crossing the Chasm, we are exactly in that chasm phase now. People are very interested. We saw that in an exhibition last week. But of course, they want to see how it goes with the first customer first. That is, however, progressing very well. So we believe in that area going forward as a very interesting area to come. But things take time in medicine. That is as it should be. In research, we do, that's not a business area, but it's a cost unit. We have lots of focus on various aspects of AI in medicine and clinical decision-making, which is important. Milestone for Genomics IT, as I said, we are in collaboration with University of Pennsylvania handling genomic data. Genomic sequences is increasing a lot all over the world, but it has been done on research systems and Excel.

Now, this doesn't work when you have an increasing production, then you need production systems. And the world has not had such production systems in genomics because it's been so seldomly done. Now, this is increasing, and we are experts on workflow optimization in medicine, etc. It fits perfectly well into what we do. Large synergies with existing portfolio in medical diagnostics, not only in oncology, it also actually is increasingly interesting for other parts because a mutation might be not carcinogenic, but it might be something that affects the probability of disease, for instance, in cardiology. And then genomics has an impact also in that area. License made at University of Pennsylvania. As I said before, our customers are happy with it. They're giving us good references. And large initial interest from other institutions, but of course, medicine is slow.

This will take years before it really begins to grow. But we're well positioned for the future there. Imaging IT Solutions are the biggest area. We have this ongoing transformation to software as a service that really affects our financing, especially short-term financing right now. We have Cloud Recurring Revenue going up at 36%. And now at the level we are, it really begins to make an impact where we continue that growth. And we have very large order intake and high interest from the market. And as an example, we can give the Quebec order in Canada, where they have had many systems over the province before, more than 150 sites in Quebec. They do about 12 million exams per year. That's about the same order amount Sweden does as a whole country.

They will now go into one single consolidated system for the entire Quebec public healthcare system for a place of a multitude of old IT systems. They can facilitate actually cross-reading, helping each other out, and having centralized service instead. This is a very large order. It contains radiology, breast imaging, orthopedics, not today pathology and other things we also could do. That's of course up to the customer if they want to give that to us in the future as well. There will probably be another order for that. Who gets that is of course not yet decided. We just came back last week from our largest trade show of the year. That's Radiological Society of North America. That's every year in Chicago, the week after Thanksgiving. We had a large booth, and we had a record interest in our offerings.

We have more visitors, substantially more than any previous year. Despite that, we had a full, much extended booth. It was more or less full the entire show. We had a lot of people coming and seeing what we're doing. We can note that a lot of proof and appreciation of Sectra's position as a thought leader in medical imaging diagnostics now. People come to us, even customers who have acquired other systems, and they want to see what we do because we do all of these different things in one single systems. Then I will lead over to Jessica, who will continue the financial part.

Jessica Holmquist
CFO, Sectra

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to our presentation.

Our six-month report shows record high order intake, solid recurring revenue growth, and strong cash flow, whereas the overall sales growth is more moderate and the operating profit is lower than in the comparable period. I will walk you through some key financial metrics, starting off with order intake. With the Quebec order signed during the period, our contracted order intake levels reached new all-time high levels, amounting to SEK 4.8 billion in the period, of which close to SEK 4.6 billion was guaranteed order intake, and we point out the fact that orders of this size create variations in the quarterly order bookings, as can be seen in this graph. In addition to the Quebec order, we also received Sectra One Cloud orders during the second quarter, both in the U.S. and the U.K., and we received orders for digital pathology in, for example, France and Belgium.

Secure order bookings in Secure Communications remained stable during the period with various orders for Tiger/S and network encryptors. And sorry for my voice today, which is not functioning 100%. I will do my best. Sales. Sales in the six-month period amounted to SEK 1,477 million, an increase of 8% year on year. And we had some currency impact on sales figures. Adjusting for that, sales would have grown by 9%. And recurring revenue keeps growing, up 17% year on year. And the part that is cloud-based increased by 36%. So this shows, again, the progress we're making in the transition to cloud-based SaaS. We have non-recurring revenues that are lower than in the comparable quarter. Non-recurring revenues are typically revenues from license sales and migration.

And as we have an increasing share of new business generated or an increasing share of new business from cloud contracts, this is the result of that. We continue our growth journey with loyal customers, noting that the recurring revenue churn remained very limited at 0.5% rolling 12. Imaging IT reported sales growth of 5% year- on- year. This growth rate is more moderate than what we have seen in recent periods. And growth is dampened both by currency and by the transition to the new business model with revenues spread over time. Growth in Cloud Recurring Revenue remained high, 36%. And this is the KPI that we focus on during the transition. Secure communications grew sales by 42% year- on- year to SEK 198 million. This is volume-driven and also includes more product deliveries than we had in the comparable period.

In Business Innovation, as Torbjörn said, we have seen a slowdown in hardware sales in medical education, but we have rapid growth in recurring revenue. This could, however, not compensate fully year on year. Sales increased year on year in our geographic markets, except in the U.S. and rest of the world. The U.S. decline is currency-driven, and we also note that this is the market where we have the fastest transition to cloud, with all new customer sales being service sales. In the rest of world markets, the decline is partly currency-driven. It also reflects lower non-recurring revenues outside our main markets. We note the highest growth in absolute figures in Sweden, fueled by the positive development in Secure Communications. Our operating profit declined 15% year- on- year to SEK 209 million, and the operating profit margin was weakened.

The transition to the new business model, again, is impacting as we spread revenues and earnings over time. We also have initial costs relating to the new extensive customer contracts that we have signed that is a factor that impacted profit negatively in the period, and quarterly variations are expected to gradually decrease long term, but we are not there yet. Imaging IT reported 22% lower operating profit at a margin of 15%, and here we have the strategic investment in becoming a service provider that continues to impact profitability as we report revenues and earnings over time, and we also have the ongoing preparations for deliveries of our large customer orders secured in the past year, and none of the large customer contracts are yet in, or the larger customer contracts are yet in full production. Secure communications increased the operating profit by almost 200%.

This is a major significant uplift. I repeat, it's volume. We also have more product deliveries than in the comparable period. Operations generated a cash flow of SEK 119 million in the period. Versus the comparable period, we have less tied-up capital in current receivables as a result of timing effects in customer projects. We closed the reporting period with SEK 626 million in cash balance after settlement of the share redemption program during the second quarter. That was all for me.

Torbjörn Kronander
CEO, Sectra

All right. Thank you, Jessica. I'll take us with our way forward. We have a saying in Sectra that success in business is quite easy. We just need to live and act the oldest rule of human history, do unto others as you want them to do unto you. You can find that in all religions.

And you should perhaps practice a little more business as well. This is what we try to get our people to do. And this has resulted in that we have very high customer satisfaction. We are best in class last year. So this is actually the award given in the early 2024. We were best in U.S. hospitals, large hospitals. We also were best in U.S. small hospitals, which is not our key market, but we have the aptitude and ability to make even also those happy. Canada, very large margin to the second one for the fifth year in a row. Northern Europe. And Europe was split up in several regions last year. So that has the only year it's been awarded has been to us. And Southern Europe and in Mid-Europe and the U.K. were number two.

One thing that I've showed before, but I think is very important, it's also been very beneficial in sales during the year. KLAS also does other things. They're not only measuring numbers. They ask people specific questions. And one of those is, would you buy again for large hospitals in the U.S.? And 98% of our customers in the U.S. and large institutions will buy from us again. We are so much higher than anyone else that we are the only one above the average. The second one is at 8%, and then we have 74, 72, 68. And of course, if we are in a new sale and we want to sell into new accounts, this is the thing we show them because we are allowed to show Black Book. And it's very important information. This is a quote, my quotes.

This is from W. Edwards Deming, who was a consultant for the Japanese government when they improved their quality in the 1960s. Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your product service and bring friends with them. This is exactly what we try to live by and that we have been very successful at. In medical IT, we are transforming as a service company, as I said. We are the only vendor who can do all of the different imaging in one single contract, in one single model. We can do radiology imaging. Of course, the largest part is the radiology aspects. Breast imaging is a version of that for mainly mammography. But we do digital pathology, cardiology, orthopedic planning, ophthalmology, enterprise capture, which is normal black and white or color images.

And all the other parts here you see in one single contract, in one single solution. This simplifies a lot for customers. And now we also added genomics into that. We see that we are the major enterprise imaging vendor now. Customers want to consolidate. They want to have less vendors if they can, which reduces complexity and it's good for them in general. We can say that if our competitors have Word or Excel or PowerPoint, we have all of it in one single solution. And we're the only company who can actually do that and deliver and have proven deliveries and do that right now. Also driving the market in medical is the demographics of the Western world. People do not have enough kids. Populations are getting older and older and sicker and sicker. But the workforce, because there are few young people, are getting fewer and fewer.

Everyone in society cannot work in healthcare. It doesn't work. Therefore, society has to do something about especially the older people's diseases, which is neurodegenerative disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer disease, musculoskeletal disease, and vision. We do image-related diagnostics on these fields especially. That's where we concentrate because that's where the market has to buy. This is no way out. This has to improve because we do not have people. Efficiency has to go up. Workflow has to improve. Efficient workflow is becoming paramount in healthcare. More and more people, more and more doctors are doing more and more. The workload for radiologists is increasing extremely much, which means they need efficient tools not to burn out. Their burnout risk is still very high. Efficient workflows and a good working environment is very important.

We have all of good workflow in all of these areas: radiology, cardiology, pathology, imaging. Radiology is the biggest. Cardiology and pathology should not be forgotten. They are also big areas where production is behind. Genomics, we have our new systems. Ophthalmology that we thought about three or four years ago during the pandemic, we also have a system working hand. Ophthalmology is the images of the eye that used to be quite simple 20 years ago, but it's getting increasingly complex. You can have a lot of diagnostic work done through imaging of the eye. We are the only vendor who can do all of that in one single system. Consolidating all imaging-related diagnostic data into one system enables for the customers better care for patients because you get a more overall efficient workflow. You don't need to have so many staff in IT.

You can hire more nurses and doctors instead. Efficient workflows, as I said, lower costs, reduce complexity. I know customers who have more than 1,000 IT systems in one hospital. That is extremely complex and very expensive to have expertise in all 1,000 systems. We can reduce that by moving all imaging into one single system. And now including genomics as well. And also, of course, improved cybersecurity. Cybersecurity is a very important part or concern for hospitals today because hospitals are just at the crosshairs of organized cybercrime. And of course, you have 1,000 systems, you have 1,000 points of attack for an external organization or crooks that want to attack you. The less systems you have, the more secure you are. And brilliant workflow is made for you is our tagline in these areas. And that is what we run at workshops, etc.

In the cybersecurity, our fastest growing area right now, we're living in new digital reality. We have increasing international attention on cybercrime. That drives strong growth. We are very well positioned and we have a very strong brand, and as in medicine, our most important and biggest asset is not on the balance sheet. That is our trust from our customers and our brand. We have also an extensive research and patents portfolio, as you've seen from the settlement that you will see in Q3. Threats are expanding. Attacks are getting smarter and smarter. Also, attackers have AI today, which means they can make an attack software write a virus much faster than before. It's larger and larger impact on the intrusions into cybersecurity, and it demands more and more countermeasures. That's society and companies must invest in cybersecurity.

It's an area, even if there's recession in the society, society must invest, and that is similar to what we do in medicine. The diseases of the elderly must be handled. Even if society has a recession, these investments have to go on, and that comes very close to our philosophy of shareholders. You start with a rational strategy in a growth market, and ideally, it's a market that has to grow, come high and or hell or high water, as I say. That is a market that will grow even if the overall economy is not growing, then if you have happy customers, happy employees are required to have happy customers. You cannot achieve happy customers without happy employees, and they're too expensive when you're worth it, and then have perseverance and reasonable cost control, then shareholders will be happy, but it comes in that order.

With us, you will see variations of results and so on if we need that to have happy customers. We are long-term. You need to evaluate Sectra long-term if you want to understand us, if you want to participate in our journey to better times. Why should an investor choose Sectra? We are positioned in markets that are, by external factors, forced to grow. Both cybersecurity and medicine has to grow, as I said before. We have high customer satisfaction and a very, very strong brand in areas where brand is absolutely crucial. Rapidly increasing recurring revenue and very low churn. This means we sit on the integrator, which is a nice place to be. Yet very exciting self-finance prospect for future growth areas in business innovation, but also internally in the business areas. The majority of them are already profitable.

We have a few that are on the way to becoming profitable, and management-owned shares and incentive programs are long-term, etc. We have four or five years programs, which the employees participate in and have done very well in to date, and that concludes our presentation. Our coming financial events and general assembly is March 14th. We have a nine-month report. March 27th, we have a capital markets day for the medical side of Sectra. We are pointing out that the capital market days for the security side will be another date somewhere in the future because it is such a different business, so it is more meaningful to have two different days for it. June 5th, we have the year-end report, and September 9th, we will have our annual general meeting in Linköping in Sweden. Your feedback is important. These meetings are not for us. They are meant for you.

If you have improvements, suggestions, or anything you want on these presentations, please send that in an email to info.investor@sectra.com. We will listen and try to improve it. And then we open up for questions.

Helena Pettersson
Investor Relations Officer, Sectra

Thank you, Torbjörn. I will start with some questions I got on email before the presentation here. And it's from Nikola Kalanoski at ABG. And the first question is around competition in the U.S. Could you please provide some color on how your competitive position for U.S. cloud deals for large hospital groups has evolved over the last year?

Torbjörn Kronander
CEO, Sectra

It has increased, clearly, especially in the U.S.

Helena Pettersson
Investor Relations Officer, Sectra

And the next question is, there are differences in client perception and willingness to purchase digital pathology in the U.S. compared to Europe?

Torbjörn Kronander
CEO, Sectra

U.S. was later because of FDA was quite slow in improving or in approving digital pathology, which meant Europe had a head start, especially Northern Europe and Northern Europe, especially Sweden. Sweden is clearly leading in the world in percentage of being digital in pathology. But the U.S., as very often in that market, when they go, they're going big. And since a few years, the U.S. pathology market is growing rapidly as well.

Helena Pettersson
Investor Relations Officer, Sectra

And there's also a follow-up question on digital pathology in the U.S. Have you received more interest for digital pathology after the FDA clearance for DICOM images in digital pathology?

Torbjörn Kronander
CEO, Sectra

I think it has meant that a few customers who really want to be certain that it's an open system and they can use many scanners with our system has now finally realized that this market is opening up.

Now, FDA is still not yet approving a general approval for a scanner and a PACS as a system by itself. So our approval right now from FDA is only with one vendor for the scanners. But we think that will change and become more similar like it is in radiology.

Helena Pettersson
Investor Relations Officer, Sectra

And then the last question from Nikola Kalanoski is, are there any differences in how long it takes to implement all the different modules for Sectra One Cloud clients? For example, if a client purchases radiology initially, will it be easier to implement all the other modules after a client is fully onboarded with radiology?

Torbjörn Kronander
CEO, Sectra

Absolutely. So, I mean, a very large part of this is the first one. So you set up all the server environment, the databases, all integrations to other IT systems in the hospitals. You set up the archives.

If you have radiology, it's much easier to add with pathology or the other way around. It's the first one that includes the server side of the installation.

Helena Pettersson
Investor Relations Officer, Sectra

And then we move on to questions from Jakob Lemke at SEB. What contributed to the strong order intake other than the Quebec contract? And I think you have commented on this already, Jessica, but you may repeat it.

Jessica Holmquist
CFO, Sectra

Yeah, we received several Sectra One Cloud contracts. I mentioned in the U.S. and the U.K. We also received digital pathology orders in France and Belgium. And then stable ordering flow in Secure Communications.

Helena Pettersson
Investor Relations Officer, Sectra

And what is the reason for the limited quarter-on-quarter growth in imaging IT?

Jessica Holmquist
CFO, Sectra

The mix of contracts. In the comparable period, we had more contracts where we could do upfront revenue recognition. And now we have a larger share that we spread over time.

And the next question is, can you talk about the initiatives you are doing to increase the rate of implementation for cloud contracts?

Torbjörn Kronander
CEO, Sectra

We're doing a lot of effort there. We're becoming better. But it's still a large product when you have 140 hospitals, for instance, that is going to use one system. You need to make sure the networks are fast enough. You need to set up with a cloud provider. In this case, in Quebec, it's Microsoft, which you normally use. So you need to have a very fast line into Microsoft server centers. So there's a lot of work there that needs to be done. And that takes time. But we are getting faster and faster in doing it. And especially on the client side, we do more and more digital teaching and less and less actually human touch to these hospitals.

You cannot install 140 hospitals in the way we did before. You have to do it much more efficiently. Okay.

Helena Pettersson
Investor Relations Officer, Sectra

And the last question from Jakob Lemke on the same theme. Status update on implementation for the large US contract you won last year. Could you provide?

Torbjörn Kronander
CEO, Sectra

They are in process. Only one of them actually has one or a couple of hospitals online yet. But as I said, it takes a lot of preparation. If you want to do a project fast, you should be slow in the beginning. And that's the thing I try to tell everyone. If you want to do it slow, you should run too fast in the beginning. This will come. And we will begin to see it mainly during the next year, on the next fiscal year.

Helena Pettersson
Investor Relations Officer, Sectra

And then I will move on to questions in the chat function.

If you who are following online have further questions, please write them now. I will start with a question from Kristofer Liljeberg at Carnegie. Can you please comment on the reason for recurring revenues not growing sequentially versus Q1 in imaging IT and provide some details on the timing of rolling out the new large contract, not yet generating so much to sales?

Torbjörn Kronander
CEO, Sectra

We have variations also in recurring revenue and how fast they come. As for the contract, that is what I said before. These huge contracts, when there's hundreds of hospitals, you have to be careful. You have to be very cautious in the beginning for them to really work and deliver long-term healthy profits. It takes time in the beginning. The big difference in delivering one hospital or two or three hospitals and delivering 100.

Helena Pettersson
Investor Relations Officer, Sectra

The next question is also from Kristofer Liljeberg. It regards operating costs. Based on what you have reported so far this year, it seems growth in operating costs has slowed down. Could we expect this trend to continue in the second half of this fiscal year and into next fiscal year?

Torbjörn Kronander
CEO, Sectra

That is the prediction we do normally do. However, one cost will increase. That is the cost that we pay to the cloud providers. We take the entire contract. Of course, the cost we provide to cloud providers will increase. But that's a part of the business. So then our income has increased much more.

Helena Pettersson
Investor Relations Officer, Sectra

Yet another two additional questions from Kristofer Liljeberg. Could you please update on the competitive situation in the U.S. and if you were also bidding for Trinity Health that Visage announced recently?

Torbjörn Kronander
CEO, Sectra

Competitive situation is quite all right.

According to KLAS, external source, we're winning about double as much as Visage is. And we think that trend continues. We have won other contracts, A1, Trinity. And that's how the market economy works. You win some, you lose some. We have other wins that are as large or bigger.

Helena Pettersson
Investor Relations Officer, Sectra

And the next question is, do you see a potential for more large contracts in Canada? There are more provinces in Canada. I would not predict the future on that one. We'll see what happens. And of course, Canada is looking very much on Quebec. We need to do a good job there. Then perhaps we can get more contracts in Canada. We do have other contracts in Canada as well. But Quebec is by far the largest one. Again, note that we are number one in KLAS. We are the highest customer satisfaction of any vendor in the U.S.

The margin in Canada is bigger than we have in other markets.

The next question comes from Thomas Nilsson at Nordea Markets. The transition to the new business model clearly impacted Q2 and will likely continue to do so until the major customer contracts with recurring revenue currently in the startup phase are fully operational. Could you provide clarity on the timing of this?

Torbjörn Kronander
CEO, Sectra

As I said, we will see some of them coming live during the next fiscal year. Some, of course, comes all the time. But we will see increasing growth of that revenue during the next fiscal year and even more so after that.

Helena Pettersson
Investor Relations Officer, Sectra

Okay. We have a question from David Vignon at Stifel. Good morning. Could you give some details on the market share that you have reached in the U.S.? How many exams are you handling each year there?

What would it look like if your customer had already reached planned volumes?

Torbjörn Kronander
CEO, Sectra

Well, the interesting thing about our market. First, that is currently about the market dynamics. We grow, of course, with sales, as everyone does. Now, our underlying business is also growing. So each customer is doing more and more examinations. And we get paid for per examination, which means our growth is both driven by our current customer's growth, which increases how much they pay, but also with the new orders. Our market share in the U.S. is somewhere just below 10%, we think. It's very difficult to measure this. And the number of exams we handle, I don't know by heart, but it's quite a lot. And that was the final question in the chat function. All right.

Then we thank you very much for listening and look forward to seeing you in March again or at the Capital Market Day.

Helena Pettersson
Investor Relations Officer, Sectra

And maybe we can send them a Christmas holiday.

Torbjörn Kronander
CEO, Sectra

Oh, yes. That one. As usual, we have at Sectra a Christmas greeting to you all. Let's see if I can get this to work. And Merry Christmas to you all from us.

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