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Earnings Call: Q4 2024

Feb 19, 2025

Operator

For Report 2024. For the first part of the presentation, participants will be in listen-only mode. During the Q&A session, participants can ask questions by pressing the pound key followed by five on their telephone keypad. During the Q&A, I kindly ask participants to limit themselves to two questions at first. If you have additional questions, please queue up again by pressing pound key five. I will now hand over to CEO Tom Englund and CFO Anna Ahlberg.

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

Welcome to this year-end and quarter four presentation of Surgical Science. My name is Tom Englund, CEO of Surgical Science, and with me today I have Anna Ahlberg, our company CFO. We'll use our time together today to first present the report, and then we will take questions from the audience. We can look back at an eventful and positive fourth quarter for Surgical Science and a good end to 2024. The year started weakly with a tough business environment Educational Products. our turnaround came in quarter two of last year, and sales and market conditions have since steadily improved during the year to end with record sales for the group of SEK 252 million . Starting Educational Products, the quarter saw growth for the business area of 2% to SEK 125 million .

Some geographies had considerable growth, like Asia with 29% and Europe with 20% growth, whereas our important market, Americas, has decreased by 20%. We're cautiously optimistic about developments Educational Products, even though the growth is not in line with our growth expectations of 10%-15% right now, which we have for this business area. On the one hand, we're seeing a clear increase in customer activity and requests for quotes in all markets. On the other hand, the global budgetary climate for hospitals and training centers remains strained, which prolongs the time it takes to convert quotes into orders. Our team has a very high activity level, and we are taking several very specific actions to increase the growth pace and convert more quotes to orders. Our outlook for our different regions, Americas, EMEA, and APAC, is positive.

A key priority for us right now is also to develop and optimize our sales channels to ensure our now very broad product portfolio has the best global reach. After the end of the quarter, we announced that we had won a procurement amounting to SEK 52 million in a Southeast Asian country. This order is for a virtual or mixed reality solution to train military medical personnel in emergency situations and in emergency procedures. This order is expected to be delivered over 18 months, with work starting in quarter one 2025. We consider this to be a breakthrough order, which is very exciting and holds great potential as it relates to a new innovative product for a new and potentially very large customer segment for us.

There are many similar types of customers around the world, and the need for training in these types of procedures and environments is very, very high. Looking a little bit at Industry OEM, which has performed strongly throughout 2024, we continue to perform well also in the fourth quarter. Sales amounted to SEK 127 million, with an increase of 21%. Our sales of simulators towards non-robotic customers in the medical device space grew by 124% to SEK 43 million, which was an all-time high. This result is due to a combination of existing customers making repeat purchases from us, as well as an increasing number of new customers who are buying simulators from us for the first time. It's clear that simulation is becoming an important tool for med device companies to train their customers and sales teams, as well as use in R&D and development efforts.

We also received orders for several large development projects during quarter four from robotic manufacturers and medical device companies around the world. These orders did not materialize into revenue in quarter four, but will do so during the coming quarters. Licenses. License revenue grew by 1% during the quarter to SEK 76 million . Surgical Science gets license revenues from several robotics companies, and customers can either be invoiced for the licenses they consume during the quarter, or they can buy licenses in packs for several quarters ahead. This means that revenue development can be lumpy in nature depending on when our customers purchase their licenses. As has been mentioned previously, there are several robotics manufacturers right now that are coming into the market and who are in various stages of the regulatory approval process prior to the start of sales and marketing.

These new companies all now have a steady growth of new procedures, which means that the systems are being used by more surgeons, and each system is being used for more types of procedures. This, in turn, will drive the need for training and simulations on these new systems. And since many of the companies are customers to Surgical Science, eventually it will also turn into license revenues for us. We can do little to affect the later part of the commercialization efforts of the robotics companies, and we are dependent on their success, of course, in their robotics sales. One major milestone for our company during the past two quarters has been our new agreement with one of our main customers and the world's largest robotics manufacturer, Intuitive.

This agreement, where prices are set for the next four years, means that Intuitive will equip and ship all new da Vinci 5 systems with simulation from Surgical Science. Da Vinci 5 is the latest and most highest performance robot of Intuitive. We have, in our existing contract, had a significant portion of subscription revenue, and starting now in January 2025, the revenue model will become entirely subscription-based. And this new agreement is fully in line with the 2026 financial targets that we have regarding Intuitive. Another very important event for us during the last quarter was the announcement of our intention to acquire U.K.-based Intelligent Ultrasound. Intelligent Ultrasound is a Cardiff-based company within ultrasound simulation, and which has a broad product portfolio. The acquisition makes Surgical Science the market leader in ultrasound simulation, which is an exciting area with strong potential for us.

As was announced by a press release yesterday, the scheme of arrangement has successfully been completed, and yesterday we were happy to welcome the Intelligent Ultrasound team into the Surgical Science family, and we look forward to the continued journey together. We see a lot of users who need training and simulation in order to use ultrasound to ensure efficiency and quality of diagnostics. In Industry OEM, we can also see several major application areas combining ultrasound with other technologies. A few of these, of many others, are needle training, anesthesia training, and drug delivery. This acquisition also means that we will open up a sales office and establish ourselves directly in the U.K. market, where we see good growth opportunity both Educational Products and Industry OEM. Profitability for the quarter was SEK 39 million , or 16%.

The quarter saw higher costs related to sales incentives and a higher share of sales from distributors, which affects our margins negatively. Furthermore, similar to previous quarters, we made investments into our sales and R&D teams to increase our geographical coverage in sales and our capacity to handle R&D projects and respond quicker to customer requests. An important focus area is and will be our ability to scale the company efficiently to make it possible for us to handle more customers and revenue with an increase in our internal efficiency. We also see many opportunities in the market right now outside of our traditional segments where we invest for growth. We approach these investments with a careful and financially very prudent approach. Cash flow for the quarter was strong, and net cash increased by SEK 66 million for the quarter.

On the topic of our operations after the end of the quarter, the decision was made to expand the production capacity of our existing premises in Tel Aviv in order to continue to grow and handle the increased volumes. As I mentioned in the quarter three report, the focus has been on strengthening delivery capacity in R&D and developing our sales and distribution channels to cover the market better. We are, during quarter four and also in quarter one, reorganizing R&D to increase our capacity to handle development projects and our ability to respond to customer requests faster. We've also reorganized the sales function into a regional division to get closer to our customers and distributors and to more effectively leverage our shared resources. And finally, the management team has been reshaped and reduced from eight to five members to create clear ownership and ensure quicker decision-making.

Niclas Olsson has been appointed to the new role of Chief Revenue Officer with responsibility for all sales, for all our business areas, and Ariel Ben Moshe to Chief R&D Officer. And with that, I would like to hand over to Anna.

Anna Ahlberg
CFO, Surgical Science

Thank you, Tom. So, as Tom mentioned, we saw a strong end to the year with all-time high sales coming in at SEK 251.5 million, up 11%, and that was the same then in local currencies. Educational Products sales was up 2%. We saw a market increase in Asia, and that was all due to China. We also said that we have a positive outlook on China for this year, for 2025. Europe was also strong, both if we compare to Q3 and Q4 of last year. We had a large order in Romania if we compare to Q3. We also had that in Q4 of last year, so we also had other markets being strong. But then, as Tom also mentioned, the North and South American region was weaker. Brazil was strong, but the U.S. was weaker. And we are cautiously optimistic looking forward for the business area.

Industry OEM up 21%, and although not with much, we still saw all-time high sales for license revenues,SEK 76 million . Our simulator sales continued its very strong development, up 124% for the quarter and at all-time high level at SEK 42 million, coming in at SEK 42.5 million , while development revenues for the quarter were somewhat weaker. That meant that for the full year 2024, our net sales came in on par with 2023, SEK 883 million compared to SEK 884 million for 2023, which, in light of our very weak Q1, we see as positive. For the first time in a long time, the currency effect is working against us. As you know, we have more than 80% of our sales in U.S. dollars. If we look at sales in local currencies, it was slightly higher, plus 1%.

Educational Products then weaker, minus 15% for the year, although finishing better than it started, for sure. And Industry OEM continuing its very strong growth journey and being up 21%. And that meant for the full year, you see the graph is then the split between our two different business areas. And for the full year, sales between the two business areas was 50/50. And if we compare to 2023, it was 59% Educational Products and 41% for Industry OEM. Looking at our revenue streams, as mentioned, license revenues were at all-time high, but a bit lower than Q4 last year as a percentage of total revenues, 30% versus 33%. And for the year, license revenues decreased by 2% and came in at SEK 272 versus SEK 278. That meant 31% of total revenues. That was both for 2024 as well as for 2023.

As you know, and as Tom also talked about, they are more bumpy for new entrants since they purchased the licenses in batches, and if we compare to 2023, that is what we see that has affected these revenues during 2024. Simulator sales was the strongest it has been since Q4 2022, and a lot then, of course, due to the strong growth within Industry OEM. Simulator sales within Industry grew by 160% for the full year 2024, and development revenues consist of both robotics projects and projects tied to sales of simulators within Industry. This was, as I mentioned, weaker in Q4, but it is not a sign of new projects being fewer. We have commented before that this can be also bumpy if we are in between SOWs or statements of work, for example, for long projects.

As you know, we also announced the Singapore deal, which entails development revenues, and we also said that we closed some robotic orders where we have development revenues that will come during 2025. Costs and EBIT margin. We had a gross margin of 68% versus Q4 last year when we had a very strong gross margin of 71%. 68% was also the number for the full year compared to 69% for 2023. And compared then to Q4 in 2023, we saw a lower share of license revenues, as I mentioned, 30% versus 33%, and that had then a negative effect on the gross margin. And since the U.S. market was weaker, that meant a lower share of direct sales, and we also had some more service cases affecting the gross margin for the quarter.

If we look at our sales costs, approximately SEK 5 million of those were costs of a more rare nature related to things such as demo equipment, provisions we had for a few accounts receivables, and higher commissions, and that depends on to what country we sell, how these commissions fall. We also had five more people joining this team in Q4 in four different countries. So we also invest for the future and for the prospects we see. Admin was 9% of sales, and we still have some higher double management costs both for current and previous CEO. R&D costs were higher, and if we compare to Q3 of last year, we again invest in this organization and we continue to employ more people, so we were more employees. However, it is also important to remember that our R&D costs end up on three different lines.

They end up in cost of goods sold on the actual R&D line and also in the balance sheet as capitalized. And if we compare to Q4 to Q3 of last year, since development revenues were lower, that meant that less of the R&D costs for Q4 were moved to cost of goods sold. When we adjust for these effects and look at the total R&D costs for Q4 compared to Q3, they were in line with each other on the same level. For the full year then, for these different functions, we see that we increased sales costs with 5%, admin costs 6%, and R&D costs 8%. Again, all investing in the future to meet all the possibilities that we see ahead. On the line other, primarily two items, option programs, that was 1.5 for the quarter, and then FX effects, and they were quite large during Q4.

We had a volatile U.S. dollar during the quarter, especially towards the shekel. EBIT then came in at SEK 39 million for the quarter, 16%, and for the full year, 144 or 16%. Organization-wise, we were 14 more people in the organization going out of 2024 compared to going out of 2023, and you can see the split between our different countries down to the right. Adjusted EBIT for the quarter came in at SEK 45 million , a margin of 18%, and for the year at 169 or 19%. Finance net for the quarter, slight positive. We have, of course, interest on our bank balances. For this quarter, we also have the interest cost for the GBP loan that we took in conjunction with the IU acquisition. On the negative side then, we also had revaluation of internal loans towards subsidiaries and an IFRS 16 effect.

There is a large number in the comparative figure. Last year, we had the last part of the continuing consideration for the Mimic acquisition. A smaller part was paid out in the beginning of last year, SEK 1.1 million, but the rest was then reversed in the finance net, so that is why that number is so high. That was SEK 70 million. The net result for the quarter was SEK 36 million, and for the full year then SEK 132 million. Cash flow, as Tom said, we had a very strong quarter in terms of cash flow, making up also for the weak Q3 we had. From operating activities, we had a positive of SEK 57 million, and we had a slight negative from changing working capital. Looking at the balance sheet in absolute numbers, we can see that inventory and accounts receivable, they increased somewhat. However, this is all due to FX.

In local currencies, they were actually both a bit lower going out of Q4 than going out of Q3. And then cash flow from investing activities, that's mainly investments in development costs. Cash flow from financing activities, then, of course, affected by the fact that we took this loan, this short-term loan, GBP 17 million for the IU acquisition. That was then a positive in the cash flow with SEK 235 million. That meant that we had closing cash of SEK 968 million. However, looking instead on net cash, excluding the loan, we were at SEK 733 million, which was then a positive in the quarter of SEK 66 million. And we can see that accounts receivables as a percentage of sales last 12 months was on the same level as last quarter.

So this is usually my last slide, but since we had a number of news events after the year-end, I just wanted to summarize them here. On January 15, then we announced the LOI with Intuitive that Tom talked about. Then on February 3, the election committee gave their proposal for the AGM in May, and the proposal is for all board members to be re-elected, and for Gisli, our previous CEO, to be the chairman. Roland Bengtsson, who's been the chairman for many years, has declined re-election. On February 4, then announcing the contract in Southeast Asia, SEK 52 million over a period of 18 months, and then both development revenues and products.

Then we had three different releases, actually, on the Intelligent Ultrasound acquisition, but the most important, of course, being the one yesterday, which announced that it has now come into force, and IU will be consolidated as of the date. We are now starting our post-completion review that we also talked about when we announced the acquisition. Payment will be executed within 14 days from the date. And as you might have seen in the report, we had no costs in the P&L for this acquisition in 2024. That will be in Q1, and the costs are estimated at SEK 25 million.

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

Thank you, Anna. I would like to conclude this presentation by saying that we can look back at the positive and very eventful quarter during quarter 4 of last year. And the team and myself, we are excited and energized for the continued journey for Surgical Science.

We are world-leading products. We have a highly engaged and global team. We have the stability and brand of a market leader, and we operate in a growing and rapidly developing market with prominent customers. We have great momentum in Industry OEM. We also strengthened our relations with the key robotic companies during the quarter. In Educational, business climate is improving, although at a slower pace than expected, and Intelligent Ultrasound is an exciting addition to the company and an opportunity to grow further within ultrasound simulation, and with that, I would like to open the floor for questions. Thank you.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Maria Karlsson Osipova from DNB. Please go ahead.

Maria Karlsson Osipova
DNB, Equity Research Analyst

Hi there, Tom and Anna, and thank you for taking my questions. First, congratulations on an all-time high revenue levels. Very nice to see. I have two questions, one slightly longer, one slightly shorter. And I'd like to start with the expansion of the sales force and the expansion of the R&D force to meet all the requirements that you've talked about. Could you talk a little bit about the timeframe of this? How will that translate on, for instance, the employee levels? And which regions are you looking at? So in total, this project, how long do you think it will take and what will be the numbers? Can you talk about that a bit?

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

Yes. When it comes to the sales reorganization and expansion of the sales force, what we're doing is that we are, first of all, trying to rearrange our internal resources to more efficiently serve the salespeople that we have out traveling, meeting customers so that we can be more efficient with our internal resources. That means then that we will be able to have financial efficiency as we scale the sales team. And then we are selectively recruiting salespeople in regions where we have direct sales representation. Now, that would be mainly EMEA and Americas. And we see investments going both into Industry OEM with key account sales as well Educational Products with territory sales managers.

When it comes to R&D, what we're doing is that we are reshaping the responsibilities of the R&D team to be able to create competence hubs and to be able to speed up the development speed and development projects as well as handle more projects simultaneously. So it's primarily utilizing the same resources from the beginning, but we're also within the R&D recruiting to meet the increased customer requests that we get primarily on the Industry OEM side. And we will see a continuous investment into both sales and R&D. I don't foresee it to be like stepwise big steps, but rather a continuous smaller investment into both these areas. I hope that answers your question.

Maria Karlsson Osipova
DNB, Equity Research Analyst

Yes, it did. Thank you very much. And the shorter one, do you talk about the proportion of direct sales that you have?

Could you paint us a bit of a broader picture on that and what effect it might have on the gross margins?

Anna Ahlberg
CFO, Surgical Science

Educational Products, we sell primarily through distributors, but we do have the US as, I mean, our largest direct market. So, of course, the margins there are, the gross margin is, of course, higher since we have our own sales force, so that's why that is being affected. So we don't have the exact split, if that's what you mean, but you can see the split between geographies for Educational Products. And there you have the North and South America region. And, of course, a lot of that is the U.S.. Did that answer your question?

Maria Karlsson Osipova
DNB, Equity Research Analyst

Yes. Yes. Thank you. I'll get back in the queue. Thank you very much.

Operator

The next question comes from Ulrik Trattner from Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Ulrik Trattner
Equity Research Healthcare, Carnegie

Thank you very much.

Let's start off with license revenues. I know it's lumpy between quarters, 1% growth in this quarter. You talk about a very positive outlook for 2025. Looking at rolling 12 months, which I guess is the best proxy to get some kind of sense on the direction, it's at 7% and been sort of gradually declining. Where should we sort of look for in 2025? I know there's expansion of robotics provider, and you are the simulation provider of these customers, as well as on the dV5. In their communication, they state that the software suite will be available on their dV5 platform by end of this year. You talk about this new collaboration being effective from January 2025.

So if you can just help us decipher what that entails, as well as what that does entail for the close to 300 already sort of sold system for the dV5, will they retroactively be equipped with your software and that would be recognized as revenue, or how should we look at it?

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

Hi, Ulrik. I can answer that question. So first of all, on the question of kind of general growth levels for the year ahead across both business units, our messaging in the last couple of quarters has been that we see a very strong customer activity and growth rate increase in Industry OEM, around the 20% mark, and we have a very positive outlook for Industry OEM going forward.

We have a stated 10%-15% growth ambition Educational Products, and we have been below that, primarily due to the very, very weak quarter one of last year, and then we have seen improvements, gradual improvements. We would have liked them to go faster, but we definitely see a more positive outlook, and then the question is rather on the velocity of the improvements there. We have visibility into the pipeline a couple of quarters ahead, so we can already now know about how the market is turning. When it comes to the question,

Anna Ahlberg
CFO, Surgical Science

If I can just jump in because we had another question on visibility and a written question, and as you know, also Educational Products, there are usually in many markets very large tenders. And we have a very good visibility on these, but they often run for a long time.

That's something we discussed many times before. It means we have good visibility, but it's very hard to say exactly in what quarter they will fall. You saw also we talked about the order that we now announced in the Southeast Asian country. We talked about that already in Q2 and Q3. So it is hard to know exactly when these tenders will be ready. And then on visibility within Industry OEM, again, we have the bumpiness for the licenses. It means we have good visibility long-term, but it can be more bumpy in the quarters because when we get an order for license revenue, we immediately recognize them. If we get a batch order, it's not dependent on when the robotic company actually then sells the robots or these licenses that are connected to that robot.

And then, of course, we have many novel projects that we discussed, such as, again, the Southeast Asia where we were in new areas where we now invest, where we see great potential, but it's something that is more novel.

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

And then regarding your question about Intuitive, Ulrik, we have signed now a four-year agreement to supply Intuitive with simulation software for their new dV5 robot. We have already had an agreement regarding the older Intuitive robot, and that's still in place. And this new agreement then is valid from January 2025, so that all robots that are shipped from January 2025 and onwards will carry the so-called SimNow package of Intuitive where Surgical Science is a supplier. It is the ambition by Intuitive to also equip the DV5s that have been sold during 2024 with this SimNow package. However, this is a process that will take more time.

It will take a couple of quarters. The ambition is for this reinstallation to happen during 2025, but it can be even longer than that before all the units that were shipped in 2024 are equipped because there are also hardware implications to this upgrade that they need to do.

Ulrik Trattner
Equity Research Healthcare, Carnegie

Okay. Can I just get a sort of a clarification on that? You mean that effectively from January of this year, all robots that are shipped from Intuitive dV5s then are equipped with the sort of full software, including your simulation, and it's not because what we've been hearing from Intuitive's earnings call is that their ambition is for all the software to become effective by end of this year, so if I can get some clarification on that.

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

Okay.

We will, starting January, all the units, the dV5 units that are shipped will be offered with the SimNow software, which includes then the Surgical Science simulation. So that is the case. Yeah.

Ulrik Trattner
Equity Research Healthcare, Carnegie

Okay. That's great. And secondly, on the Educational segment, and you talk about good visibility, but hard to predict when in the quarter that these will hit your sales. How about sort of the political uncertainty that is in the U.S. as of current with different types of efficiency measures put into place? Does that play into further delays from what you saw in 2024, or how does that come into play on your end?

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

Yeah. As I mentioned in the text in the year-end report, it is unpredictable climate now in Educational globally, I would say.

On the one hand, we see an improved market climate, and you can, of course, see the sales growth here quarter on quarter in Educational. On the other hand, we know that many of the hospitals and training centers have a constrained budget, and that deals take longer to close than before. This is definitely the case in the U.S. as well, and now, with the new administration, there might be even further implications for that, but I don't foresee any major sort of differences to the situation that has already been. I mean, the truth is that the budgets are constrained, but we are still feeling more and more optimistic, both in the U.S. as well as globally, with the business traction that we have within Educational Products. because it is so that, I mean, our customers still need to perform trainings for surgeons.

This, in many cases, simulation is not a nice to have. It's a must-have for our customers, so they can delay purchasing for some time, but it's critical for them to ensure healthy patient outcomes and good surgery quality, and that then speaks in favor of sales then coming back. Hope that answers your question.

Ulrik Trattner
Equity Research Healthcare, Carnegie

Can I just get a quick sort of follow-up, it'll be a quick one, I promise. Would you say that the majority of your Educational Simulation sales is related to replacement of old systems that are on the market, or is it completely new purchasing, i.e., sort of new training centers?

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

It's a very good question, and it's a very healthy mix between existing customers who want to increase the capacity of their training centers, either for making more students go through a specific procedure, or they want to grow the number of applications that the training center can provide. But also many new customers that have not used simulation before and are jumping on the bandwagon, for example, smaller hospitals in smaller cities outside of the main university hospitals. So there's a healthy mix of existing and new customers.

Ulrik Trattner
Equity Research Healthcare, Carnegie

Great. Thank you very much, and I'll get back into the queue.

Operator

The next question comes from Viktor Högberg from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Good morning.

Viktor Högberg
Equity Research Analyst, Danske Bank

So yeah, on the Intuitive agreement, without delving into the contract specifics, you've said that Intuitive's part of the 2026 targets, and that already a substantial part of license revenues are subscription-based from Intuitive, that is. More than half, I would assume. Could you confirm that it's above 60% or say anything about the already now subscription-based revenues just so that we get the base to model from?

Anna Ahlberg
CFO, Surgical Science

Yeah. We know that it would be good information to have how much has been recurring and not. What we have said and always say is that when we acquired Simbionix, the revenues they had from Intuitive, the largest part was recurring. And again, as Tom said, we did have a good portion of recurring already before, and now we're moving to a fully subscription-based model. So sorry, Viktor. No, I cannot give you any more detail than that.

Viktor Högberg
Equity Research Analyst, Danske Bank

Okay. Fair enough.

We have to try and on the Intelligent Ultrasound acquisition, it dilutes the group margin three percentage points to begin with. Optically, it makes it increasingly hard to reach the 40% EBITDA margin target for 2026, but you're still keeping the target. Just what kind of levers are you going to pull within 2025 and 2026 to be able to come at least close to the 40% target? Is it relying mainly on maybe a software acquisition that you have lined up that would increase the group margin, or is the implications from the Intuitive deal accretive to margins? Just some of the drivers for basically doubling the margin from 2024 to 2026 that would be helpful.

Anna Ahlberg
CFO, Surgical Science

Yeah. Yes, we still have the financial goals for 2026 of SEK 1.5 billion in revenues and 40% adjusted EBIT margin, and I mean, that's something we, of course, constantly look at.

What we said when we announced the IU acquisition is that, of course, all things equal, that will make it easier to reach the revenue target and harder to reach the margin target. As we also talked about, we are now entering this post-completion review, and that is a process we want to look into. We also talked about the cost savings that we anticipate, but we need to do this post-completion review.

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

To add to that, I mean, the profitability goals that we have set up for 2026 implies that we have a large increase in the license revenue from several big robotics customers and that it would be back-end loaded as well, more towards the latter part of 2026. We still have very strong belief in the kind of underlying growth in the robotics market.

It's also mentioned about the strong procedural growth, about the new entrants that are coming in. We still feel very, very positive about our opportunities to get license revenues from these players.

Anna Ahlberg
CFO, Surgical Science

You also asked about acquisitions. I mean, we just announced one today, and we said before that, and that's the same answer now, that that's an important part of our strategy, and it continues to be. The goal that we had for 2025 clearly said that it can entail complementary acquisitions, which this one then was. Do we still have Viktor on the line?

Viktor Högberg
Equity Research Analyst, Danske Bank

Yeah. Tom, I only had two questions. Sorry, I'll get back in line and ask some more.

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

Thank you.

Anna Ahlberg
CFO, Surgical Science

Thanks, Viktor.

Operator

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad.

The next question comes from Christian Lee from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead.

Christian Lee
Equity Analyst, Pareto Securities

Thank you and good morning, Tom and Anna. Thank you for taking my two questions. Sales of simulators within the Industry OEM have been really strong in 2024. So it would be very helpful if you could give us some color on the outlook for 2025 if you expect to keep the strong momentum.

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

We definitely expect it to keep a strong momentum. Simulation is becoming a very important tool for the med device companies in both their revenue-generating activities for the new products that they launch into the market, as well as for the education activities when they educate customers on these new products, and then also for the R&D activities. And many times, there are no alternatives really to simulation for these companies. They can't use live people or any other tools available.

This is then now becoming more and more aware. This is becoming awareness around this is becoming bigger within these companies, and that's then driving the demand. We see repeat business from existing customers with increased volumes of simulators, and we also see new companies and these new companies buying simulators from us. Some of these medical device companies are very, very big companies. That can mean that we move from one division or one function into another division and one function within the same company, but it can also mean completely new big companies.

Christian Lee
Equity Analyst, Pareto Securities

Thank you. That's very helpful. Educational Products, the U.S. market has been a little bit weakish, but you sounded a little bit more optimistic about the growth opportunities.

Was it for the long term, or do you also see any changes of the market easing up in the short term?

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

It is quite difficult to predict the pace of recovery. That's probably one of the areas where there are the biggest question marks. Because on the one hand, we see a very healthy pipeline and optimistic sales team and lots of very good dialogues, both globally, but definitely also in the U.S., and definitely also in the short term, Christian. On the other hand, we know from experience now in a couple of quarters back that, as I said, growth rates within Educational Products for certain areas have not been where we wanted them to be. And that is then due to the budgetary climate. It's not that we're losing out on orders for competition. It's rather that they become frozen because of budgetary reasons.

And then, of course, to predict how this will develop, also perhaps given new political developments and so on, becomes difficult. But if you look at kind of the visibility that we have in the pipeline and the other sales-related KPIs that we follow, we see a positive development in the short term, both in the U.S. as well as in the other countries. But then we are also cautious about it given the past performance and some of the difficulties that we've had in closing those deals. So it's that kind of balance that is difficult to get our heads completely right around, which makes it a little bit difficult for us to be more specific in our kind of forward-looking statements.

Christian Lee
Equity Analyst, Pareto Securities

Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much. I'll get back to you.

Operator

There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for written questions and closing comments.

Anna Ahlberg
CFO, Surgical Science

Okay, so let's just briefly look at the written questions. We have a question saying, "Given the procurement deal of 52 MSEK, large development projects starting and dV5 start, what does that mean for margins revenue growth going into Q1 2025?" And maybe more a general comment on 2025, not Q1. And this development, the deal in Southeast Asia is, of course, for 18 months, so it only just started now towards the end of Q1. So we will not see any effect of that in Q1. But it's, of course, important. I mean, our different revenue streams have very different margins. And that's, of course, why we want license revenues to be as large as possible because that pretty much falls all the way through.

And then we have our development revenues and often tied then to simulator sales or just development revenues tied to license revenues for the robotics projects. And if we talk about these large development projects that we now see and that we discussed, many of them are sort of a novel nature where we are expanding into new areas, finding new niches, etc. That's, of course, very important how we work with these projects. And Tom talked about efficiency in the R&D organization, etc. That's super important that we are able to scale up and use these efficiencies because many of these projects are a bit new to us, and we, of course, need to be very well aware and keep track of hours, etc. At the same time, we are also investing for the future when we do these projects.

And again, going back to the Southeast Asian project, as Tom mentioned, this is sort of a concept that we hope that we will then be able to sell more of. So in some cases, it might be a mix between investments going forward and new projects. And again, the split between our different revenue streams, of course, affects our margins.

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

Can I build on that just a second, Anna? Carl, also, this is one of the reasons to why we did this R&D reorganization, right? Because we see a very strong influx in development projects, both for new areas that Anna just said, as well as for existing customers who want to do more of us. And then our ability to handle more projects with existing staff or only with limited investments into R&D becomes a key growth driver for us, right?

And I think that this is an area where economies of scale are very important. As the biggest company with many, many software developers, we will be able to build platforms. We will be able to reuse assets. We will be able to create uniform ways of working and load balance the teams geographically in a better way. And that then will drive this efficiency and customer responsiveness. So it's definitely a key area here for us to be able to continue to grow both within industry and education. And I guess underlying, it's a very positive problem to have, right? But you have to think about financial efficiency as well as together with the operational efficiency.

Anna Ahlberg
CFO, Surgical Science

Then we have some questions on Intelligent Ultrasound. Maybe I just start with some parts of it, and then you can talk about the outlook, Tom.

So, 2024 revenues, if that matched the guide expectation given in December, it has actually been communicated. The final number was GBP 8.5 million . It was in one of these announcements that were made. And also a question on if it was consolidated then in our P&L from yesterday. And yes, it will be. So it will be consolidated as of yesterday for the Q1 report.

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

And the growth profile of Intelligent Ultrasound going forward, we believe that the growth profile will be in line with the growth profile Educational Products in the short term. And then if you think about the opportunities that we have long term to develop the product portfolio to grow both into new applications Educational Products, but also to grow into applications within industry, we see that we would be able to accelerate the growth from the Intelligent Ultrasound acquisition.

This is a very big market potential for us, but it will take some time to sort of kink the growth curve here and get the synergies from the combined ultrasound offerings from Surgical Science and the Intelligent Ultrasound. Do you expect a material impact from the Intuitive deal on your OEM growth already in 2025? We expect some impact from the Intuitive deal on the growth, for sure, in 2025. And it's dependent a little bit on the mix of robots that are shipped, the different types, models of Intuitive robots that are shipped. And it's also dependent a little bit on the customer mix within the OEM segment, how big that growth rate will be.

Anna Ahlberg
CFO, Surgical Science

I think that concludes the margin profile of the TraumaVR product. Yeah, you saw this is still a very early phase product.

For the large order in the Southeast Asian country, as you saw, it also entails development work. There will be a lot of development work in different versions, etc. Of course, in the beginning, when you start with a new product, it's always you have a smaller scale. We have some products that are smaller. Of course, then the margin is often lower and grows with, I mean, the number and scaling up production, etc. In line with Educational Products, i should say. I think that's all the questions. Yes, I think that concludes also the written questions. With that.

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

Unless there's any more questions? No?

Operator

The next question comes from Viktor Högberg from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

Viktor.

Viktor Högberg
Equity Research Analyst, Danske Bank

Yes, thank you. Last question.

Yes, just a follow-up on the last written question on the growth effect from the new Intuitive agreement. Just if you could say, because in general, when you spread out revenues over time, which was previously paid upfront, that's a negative effect, a hammock effect on revenues. We don't know the number or the share of subscriptions today, but it's fairly high. You've hinted at. But do you expect this to be a positive or negative thing for growth and revenues in 2025? In any other company, it would have been a negative effect to begin with. Just a clarification on that.

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

Long term, we think that it can be a positive effect. But short term, there are so many different factors in play here. It's the number of robots that are shipped.

It's the mix of the robots that are shipped and some other factors as well that we can't go into. So we can't comment on the short term. Long term, of course, it will have a positive effect.

Viktor Högberg
Equity Research Analyst, Danske Bank

Okay. Thank you.

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

Great. And that then concludes our presentation.

Operator

No more questions. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for the closing comments.

Tom Englund
CEO, Surgical Science

Thank you for all those questions. And thank you for listening to our presentation. Have a great day. Bye-bye.

Anna Ahlberg
CFO, Surgical Science

Thank you. Bye-bye.

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