Good day, and welcome everyone to today's strategy update presentation. Thank you for joining us via our live video webcast. I'm Thomas Bernhardsgrütter, Head of Investor Relations at Sonova. Today marks an important milestone as we present our refreshed strategy that lays out the building blocks for Sonova's next phase of growth. You'll hear from our leadership team on how we plan to strengthen our market leadership and chart a course towards CHF 6 billion in revenue. The presentation will last about one hour, followed by a 45-minute Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question by phone, please register for the dial-in details by clicking the button on the left side of your screen. There will be a short break after the presentation to allow you to dial in.
Please note that today's event is focused on our strategy and long-term vision and is not a financial results update. We will publish our full year results and detailed outlook for the coming financial year at our results presentation in May. We kindly ask that questions focus on the refreshed strategy presented today. We will not address current trading performance or other financial details beyond what is covered in this session. In addition, please note that going forward, the hearing instruments business will be referred to as the wholesale business, and the audiological care business as the retail business. These terms will be used consistently throughout the presentation. Before we begin, let me point out that this presentation contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. I encourage you to review the disclaimer in full. Moving on to today's agenda.
Our CEO, Eric Bernard, will open with an overview of our industry position and the market context, and then lead the strategy update. He will be joined by Anders Rosengren, Group Vice President, Research & Development, and Roberto di Fiore, Chief Operations Officer, who will elaborate on initiatives in their respective areas of responsibility. Elodie Carr-Cingari, Chief Financial Officer, will then cover the financial aspects of our strategy, including our midterm targets and capital allocation. Eric will close with a summary before we open the floor for questions. With that, I hand over to Eric. Eric, the stage is yours.
Thank you, Thomas. Good morning, afternoon, and good evening. It is a pleasure to speak with you today. Over the past months, I've had the opportunity to take a deep look at Sonova, our portfolio, our people, our innovation engine, and the markets we serve. What I have seen is clear. Sonova is a strong leader with even stronger potential. Today, we are here to share with you how we will unlock this potential with a sharper strategic focus and a renewed ambition to scale our leadership. Let me start with what I observed in my first months. When you walk into a new house, you see what's great and what's not. What I saw at Sonova is powerful. A purpose that naturally aligns business objectives with a vision that inspires people to come and work for us at Sonova.
As a result, we can attract top talents. Strong market leadership positions in the U.S. and Europe that are not accidental, they are earned. A technology engine that continues to set the benchmark in AI-driven audiology on top of a strong pipeline. A financial foundation that gives us flexibility to invest where we can make an impact. At the same time, the upsides are equally clear. We can innovate beyond traditional form factors like RIC, receiver-in-canal. We can accelerate profitably in Asia, a clear opportunity for Sonova. We can operate truly as one integrated hearing care company, retail and wholesale together, meaning more value can be created, including for our wholesale partners. We can better leverage synergies between hearing aids and cochlear implants, and we can raise the bar in operations from manufacturing to customer service, knowing that this industry is a device and service industry.
All of this creates a simple conclusion. Sonova is strong, and with sharper focus, it can be even stronger. Now let's look at some recent highlights. Our latest launches show what happens when technology leadership meets disciplined execution. Products like Infinio Sphere, Virto R, Ultra, and EasyGuard have each reinforced our leadership position in our core business. As a result, we have outperformed the market over the past 12 months. Virto R, for instance, is a strong proof point. When we put world-class audiology into a design people want to wear, we reduce stigma and expand penetration. The proof is in the data. The black model pictured here has reached 30% of total sales in most markets. This device looks and feels like a very cool earbud. In total, this product has now reached an annualized sales level of CHF 130 million.
In the Veterans Affairs channel in the United States, certainly a good proxy for the general strengths of any supplier, Virto R has brought our share to a five-year high. In the specific category of the custom rechargeable products, the share of Virto has exceeded 60%. This momentum gives us confidence as we enter our next strategic chapter. Let's now briefly talk about the market. We all know there has been a lot of discussions in the market recently, but when we step back and look at fundamentals, the picture is remarkably consistent. Demand for hearing care will continue to grow, driven by aging populations, longer treatment horizons, stable prevalence, and penetration opportunities. This is why we say confidently, the structural growth of our industry is intact for the decade ahead, and Sonova is very well positioned to capture it.
Let's now have a closer look at some numbers. When we look at the fundamentals, the picture is pretty clear. Across regions, the 65+ population is set to grow steadily through 2035 by over 300 million people, creating a significantly larger addressable base over time. Adoption is still far away from what it should be. Even in developed markets, take France, for example, with a very well-established reimbursement system, strong awareness, and the ability to pay, penetration after all is only slightly north of 50%. In emerging markets, as you can see on the slide, the penetration upside is very, very obvious. When we talk about Sonova's opportunity, it's simple. The world is aging, adoption will grow, and we are uniquely positioned to close that gap market by market with solutions that address these needs.
With that context, let's now move to our strategy. As part of sharpening our strategy, we have made one clear portfolio decision to divest the Consumer Hearing business and focus on hearing care. The rationale is straightforward. When we acquired the Sennheiser consumer division back in 2022, the objective was to explore hearables and early and free consumer hearing solutions and to bring the relevant technologies and insights into Sonova. That mission is now complete, and those learnings have been fully integrated into our core businesses where they can create stronger value. That brings us to the business itself. Consumer Hearing sells its products under the licensed Sennheiser brand with its strong heritage and global recognition. Consumer audio follows its own market logic and dynamics, making it better suited to a fit-for-purpose owner.
For Sonova, focusing fully on hearing care lets us better leverage R&D synergies between hearing aids and cochlear implants, accelerate our innovation roadmap, and allocate capital where it has the greatest strategic impact. We are now starting a structured process to identify the best owner to take this business forward. With this decision made, let's turn to Sonova's renewed strategy. At the center of this strategy is a simple, focused ambition to grow Sonova to CHF 6 billion in revenue by FY 2031. We are going to deliver this through three pillars. One, we innovate to drive adoption. In just a moment, Anders, our head of R&D, will walk you through how our technology and our design choices translate directly into stronger adoption. Two, we win country by country with a multi-brand, multi-channel approach.
I'll come back to this shortly and give you a bit more color on how we succeed market by market. Three, we excel in operations to support growth. Here, Roberto, our Chief Operations Officer, will show how we improve efficiency and productivity while also turning service into a true differentiator. Let's have a quick look at each priority now, starting with innovating for adoption. Innovation that has always been part of who we are, and now we are making it drive broader adoption. How? By pushing design and form factors toward more lifestyle-aligned solutions, strengthening our connected platforms, and bringing AI and digital deeper into the entire customer experience. To strengthen our innovation roadmap, our cochlear implants business will benefit from more leveraged synergies with our hearing aids R&D. Finally, we are going to innovate specifically for Asia.
The second pillar is about succeeding locally country by country, deploying a multi-brand, multi-channel playbook. This is about delivering the right brand in the right channel at the right price. In practice, that means addressing each market with a portfolio of clearly differentiated brands. It also means thinking vertically integrated, unlocking more synergies between wholesale and retail with faster customer and consumer feedback into R&D. Sharing marketing assets to all channels, and a smarter use of our lead generation engine. Finally, it means expanding retail in a targeted way, focusing on strategic markets where we need to build scale, and I will come back to this later. All of this helps us win country by country with sharper market activation, broader reach, and minimal channel conflict. Which brings me to our third pillar, Excel in operations for growth.
Hearing care is both a device and a service market, and that gives us a unique opportunity to do two things at the same time. One, boost productivity. Roberto will come back on footprint optimization, more automation, streamlined processes, and strong value engineering. Two, build service into a real differentiator. When we deliver on time and on quality, this supports our wholesale partners, drives loyalty, and ultimately improves our share. Now, to deliver on this strategy, we have the leadership in place. Over the past months, we have built a very international leadership team with deep industry expertise balanced with fresh perspectives. A team that is now fully ready to execute on our plans. The only piece of the puzzle missing is the chief digital officer, a very important addition to the team and a role that will be filled very, very soon.
A few words about the new regional structure, which will become effective on April first. We are moving to a four-region model, as you can see on the screen, and each of the regional heads leads an integrated wholesale retail business. With this setup in place, the four region heads can provide constant customer feedback to the central strategic functions supporting them. This enables us to better put the customer at the center of everything we do, and in return, allows us to better meet the diverse regional or even country needs. Now that we have covered the team and structure, let's return to our first pillar, innovation. Anders, over to you.
Hello, everyone. My name is Anders Rosengren, and I'm leading R&D at Sonova. It's really a true pleasure to speak to you today about what we are doing differently in innovation as the industry leader. Our focus is, I mean, really simple. It's about innovation for adoption. It's about deliver solutions people want to wear every day. Because they perform reliable, deliver outstanding experience, feel right, and are effortless to use. How do we make this possible? This is really a combination of leading audiological research, engineering at scale, and establishing thorough clinical evidence. Starting with the research and science side of this, in the last year alone, we delivered more than 30 scientific conference presentations. We delivered 26 research study publications, and we hold over 1,800 active patents and design rights. This scale of research and science, that feeds directly into our engineering organization.
This is how we secure continued leadership, and this is how we enable to deliver world-leading products. Talking about products and moving on to our recent launches, and talking about how we are leading the industry across functionality, design, and usability. Starting with functionality, our Sphere platform that introduced direct speech extraction powered by our proprietary deep neural network chip. This is real-time AI engineered specifically for hearing. Talking about design, here I of course think about our Virto R and how that demonstrates how high performance audiology can be delivered in the smallest, most discreet, personalized form factor, and how we are using RightFit AI-driven creation for our custom form factors. Talking about usability, our amazing EasyGuard solution simplifies everyday handling with a sealed dome that significantly improves wax protection and reduces services needs.
With EasyGuard, we can reduce service time with up to 38%, and this is of course extremely valuable both for our users and our audiologists. Is this where we are? No, of course, this is just a starting point, and I'm extremely proud looking forward to our next wave of innovation, where we will focus on real-time AI in a more compact form factor, where we will focus on more aesthetic lifestyle aligned solutions and AI functions beyond speech and noise. All of this is the design to drive even better performance, to grow adoption and increase lifetime value. Why do we know that this matters? Because research driven, innovation-led development, this is how we keep on shaping our industry. With solutions grounded in clinical evidence and built for excellent performance made for everyday life, this is how we are shaping our industry.
Moving on to the next slide, let me take you through a very, very simple but also very powerful idea, how better hearing supports quality of life. The pyramid or the stairs on this slide, that shows the progression. It begins with audibility, making sounds accessible. Comes speech intelligibility, understands words clearly. Ease of listening, reducing the effort it takes to follow conversations. Above that, we see cognitive and physical well-being, and at the very top, social participation and overall quality of life. When we think about this from an R&D perspective, our philosophies is fairly simple actually. It's to design technology that creates measurable gains at every single level of this pyramid. Even more importantly, we validate these effects with rigorous science, and our evidence is truly strong.
In our latest pioneering studies where we use Infinio Sphere, we see outstanding speech intelligibility, and we do that even in fast dynamic conversations. This is exactly the situations where people struggle the most. This is where we really need to deliver value. We also show significantly reduced listening effort, demonstrated not only through, you know, subjective ratings, but also by objective measurements of the blood flow in the brain. I mean, this is truly cutting-edge research. It shows physiologically that our technology, our products reduced neural load in the brain of a user. This is pioneering research, and we were super proud to see this published earlier this year. We can also show improved ability to memorize words during dynamic conversations, and this is a clear sign that our products lower the cognitive load and frees up mental capacity for our users. This is true value.
We also show exceptional sound quality and very high spontaneous acceptance at first fit. This means that people walk away immediately feeling comfortable with the sound experience. Most importantly, we also see a positive impact on social participation with Sphere. Our users report less fatigue, higher engagement, more willingness to take part in conversations and social activities. This is why we do our stuff. This is the core of our business. Why do we know this matters? Because these benefits, they accumulate. When listening becomes easier, people engage more socially, when they feel less fatigue, and when they experience a higher quality of life, these outcomes compound. This is not something we just, you know, believe. This is something we can prove with hard science data.
This is the value our innovation delivers, and it's the direct results of Sonova's long-standing commitment to scientific engagement and pioneering research. With this, moving on to our AI leadership in hearing care. Our experience is that leadership in AI, you know, this is not defined by one capability or one breakthrough. This is a system advantage that we built over years. We own and we integrate the full technology stack. From our proprietary deep neural network silicon, through our rich data pipeline, our real-world training data sets developed over years, through our deep audiological expertise, our clinical validation, and a full integration of algorithms, AI, DSP, and system architecture. This full stack control allow us to optimize every layer for real-world performance, and this is something competitors cannot easily match. Let me break this down a little bit more for you.
I mean, we are a leader in this field because we have the full stack control. We have our own chip, we have our own software, we have our own AI, and this means optimization at every layer. It means faster iterations and enables us to drive better power performance trade-offs, and something we deliver directly into the ear of our users. It's also built on a purpose-built training and data pipeline and our pioneering science. This is years of audiological research, real-world training data, and clinical validation that ensures our models are tuned to hearing outcomes, not generic audio, and that's hard to copy. We also come from a leadership through our software-first platform. We expand beyond speech in noise into personalization, context-aware adoption, and automation, and this keeps improving with every cycle. The result is continuous performance gains release after release.
Why do we know this actually matters? Because this creates a compounding system advantage. Our continuously learning data pipeline, our training environment, keeps improving our models and create real-world performance gains, which in turn, of course, improves user outcomes. This cycle consistently reinforces our leadership. To round off this segment, it's time to talk about how we are driving the next phase of adoption, how our innovation is building on a continued focus of connecting audiology and lifestyle, as well as innovation based on feedback and data from users and retail network audiologists. Our Virto R product has shown this really clear. When outstanding performance meets great design, demand rises and friction drops. We will build on this momentum by expanding design beyond our receiver and canal portfolio into a much broader lifestyle and healthy aging solutions.
At the same time, we see value shifting to software slowly. With our Infinio Sphere Ultra product, we deliver over-the-air updates. We deliver continuous performance improvements and deeper engagement throughout the user journey. This is extending life and value of the install base. Finally, we are pulling together and building a cohesive digital ecosystem. We have devices, apps, fitting tools, and support working together, really connecting to create a connected, seamless experience for users and audiologists. Why do we know that this matters? Because if solutions look and feel great, and if they are meaningfully connected in a digital ecosystem, more people will start and will stay with hearing care. This is how we are driving adoption, and this is how we are continuing to improve people's lives, and this is why we are a leader in the industry. Thank you very, very much.
With that, I'm handing back to Eric.
Anders, thank you very much. Let me now move to the Asia opportunity, an opportunity we will address in two steps. Today, our market share in Asia is well below our levels in Europe and the U.S. The first step is simply to reach what I would call our normal share level. How do we do that? By having the necessary focus that maybe was missing before, by placing the right people on the ground. By marketing our existing portfolio of products to the more affluent segments of Asia, and by adding solutions like Virto R in markets such as Japan, to give you a concrete example, where we have recently seen high double-digit growth as a result. Step one is simply about having an appropriate focus on the region. Before I get to the next step, let me outline some key parameters of the Asian equation.
Large and aging populations, low adoption, low awareness, sometimes challenging access, and obviously a rapidly growing middle class. Which brings me to step two, develop made-for-Asia solutions, products and cost-efficient care models tailored to local needs, affordability levels, and just different consumer behaviors when shopping. This will be developing over the next three years. In that context, I can share that we have just reached a general understanding with the Singapore Economic Development Board, EDB, to establish a regional innovation center in Singapore. This center will, amongst other initiatives, develop innovative quality hearing care solutions tailored to Asian needs. Sonova will lead on this initiative with very strong support from the EDB. Altogether, this creates a clear and profitable midterm growth pathway for Sonova in Asia. With that, let's turn to how we win locally in each market. To put it simply, hearing care is local.
Country by country, the mix of channels, reimbursement models, and customer expectations looks very different. Even within the country, each channel values different things and has different needs. That's the starting point for how we want to compete. If you look at the pyramid on this slide, this illustrates our wholesale playbook in one simple picture. To meet the specific needs of each channel, we use a portfolio of clearly differentiated brands, and in doing so, we meet those needs precisely while minimizing channel conflict. With the multi-brand playbook logic defined, let's now look at how we unlock the wholesale/retail synergies. A major advantage of our integrated wholesale retail model is the synergies it enables.
With the new leadership structure, the four regions, the new CMO and CDO roles, and a unified R&D function, all reporting directly to me, we now have the setup needed to fully capture those synergies. Let me give you three very concrete illustrations of what I mean. Let's start with synergies for innovation. Because we operate an integrated wholesale retail model, we get direct visibility into consumer needs and fitting behavior through our store network. Those insights flow straight back into R&D, giving us faster feedback loops, more targeted feature development, and tighter coordination between platform innovation and real-world use. This is a clear advantage. What we learn in retail directly feeds our technology roadmap. Second, creating synergies for market activation. Our integrated model will allow us to run coordinated launch campaigns and deploy global marketing assets consistently in our stores and with our wholesale partners.
This gives us optimized brand and product presence across channels, and this is exactly what we did when we launched Virto R. Third, synergies for consumer reach. We have a unique tool, our lead generation factory, and until now, it mainly sent leads to our own stores. Going forward, we will also use it to support our wholesale partners in areas where we don't own stores. That widens our reach and drives market share without adding physical locations. We are piloting this successfully in Italy and more markets will follow. This brings me to how we want to scale retail in selected strategic markets. In any given country, why does scale matter in retail? Pretty simple. When at the right scale, everything improves. Overall cost per store goes down, local brand visibility goes up, cost per lead decrease, and we can attract the best talent.
There is a clear correlation between optimal scale and profitability in retail. Our business in Germany is a good illustration of that. I could also have mentioned Belgium. What we will do next is simple. We will replicate this playbook of reaching optimal scale in selected strategic markets. With that, I hand over to Roberto, our Chief Operations Officer, to take us through the operations chapter.
Thanks a lot, Eric, and my real pleasure to be here today. I am Roberto di Fiore, and I joined Sonova in November last year. Yes, I am still relatively new to the company, but really not new to the hearing care world, as I have been in operation in this industry since 2017. I had the chance to experience what excellence looks like in operation in our industry. In this regard, let me share something about Sonova. Sonova has strong basis on which we can build on, and we have a number of opportunities that we can capitalize from. I will be back to this high potential later, but allow me to start highlighting something that is often underestimated. Hearing care is product-driven, no doubt about this, but at the same time, it's fundamentally a service industry.
Customer experience is absolutely crucial, but not always given the strategic attention it deserves. Let me reflect on it with something indeed personal. My dad was hearing impaired, and when he had this device out for repair, to wait weeks to have it back was really painful for him and us all. I know firsthand that building the best-in-class customer experience in service and quality is vital and can make a competitive difference when it comes to customer loyalty. Therefore, our ambition in operations is bold and very clear, to be the best in cost, on quality, and on-time machining for our customers and users. This ambition will be built on three core pillars. Firstly, on quality-enhanced customer experience. We will focus on enhancing customer proximity where it matters, in particular, when it comes to custom manufacturing and service.
This can be a true differentiator to be chosen over our competitors. At the same time, by fully digitizing sales and post-sales customer interaction through a unified ecosystem, we will make service significantly easier for customers and partners. They do want seamless, simple, predictable experience when it is after sales, repairs, customization, and support. By doing this, we create strong stickiness to be chosen again at the moment of the repurchase. Quality is a prerequisite. Consistency on time is a must. Being close to our customer elevates service quality to be capitalized by consistently delivering on time. To secure this advantage, we are strengthening the resilience of our value system, enhancing interoperability across our sites, and reducing geopolitical exposure by reinforcing our regional vertical presence. On quality, on time, while driving cost leadership and efficiency to the next level.
We are accelerating our journey towards best-in-class efficiency in operations by specializing selected sites as true centers of excellence by expanding automation across manufacturing and beyond manufacturing and by advancing value engineering. Executing across these dimensions, we unlock significant productivity and reduce structural costs. This is the North Star of our journey. By being consistently on time, on quality, on cost, we can truly differentiate. Let me share also how to execute our roadmap disciplinedly. We have four strategic levers to improve productivity. The first is about footprint optimization. Sonova has a strong foundation built through past investment. The next step is to maximize value by giving each site a clear mandate per each value stream. Some sites focus on proximity and cost and outstanding efficiency, and select sites on specialized capabilities.
We have a clear roadmap to reshape our footprint, simplify intra- and inter-site flows to increase agility and reduce logistics cost. Let me share also the second lever. While optimizing our footprint, we identified significant untapped potential in our processes. We see clear opportunities to simplify and accelerate through end-to-end process streamlining, through modernized forecast-to-planning with agentic AI, through strengthening local-for-local to ensure cost-effective product availability while reducing working capital. While these actions increase speed and agility through things customers immediately feel, their bigger impact is cost reduction. By removing complexity, we free up resources that can be redirected toward strategic initiative. For us, pushing automation is really strategic. We know that our industry moves fast with a high pace of innovation. This means full end-to-end automation is neither practical nor optimal, but targeted automation will be a major accelerator.
Here we will focus on three clear opportunities. Reliability. Automation must support our teams by making quality more consistent and less dependent on manual steps. Handling and sorting. This activity offer attractive returns when automated. Order entry and after-sales, I have touched upon some minutes before. This is a big opportunity. By digitizing and automating these processes, we significantly improve customer experience and transparency while reducing industrial and internal workload. This is not automation for its own sake. It is automation that simultaneously improve experience, quality, speed, and cost. Last but not least, we will enhance engineering to increase value. Value engineering is where material cost and product competitiveness come into play. Our plan focuses on three priority actions.
Aligning our make or buy strategy with the reshaped footprint, strengthening redesigned to cost across the existing portfolio, and building multiple sourcing options, including regional suppliers to reduce risk and dependency. Value engineering has a significant untapped potential at Sonova, and we are committed to fully unlocking it. What does all this mean financially? Bringing these four levers together, we are targeting CHF 90 million in annual cost savings versus current baseline at the end of year four, with net savings already in year two, while supported over the first three years by CHF 50 million of additional transformation investment. Are these targets ambitious? Yes, they are, but they are achievable with the roadmap we have in place. We have a strong starting point, clear priorities, significant opportunities, and even more importantly, the right outstanding skill set.
I know the operation will play a decisive role in delivering on Sonova's new strategy, and we will make it happen. I look forward to your question in the Q&A session. With that, it's my pleasure to hand over to our group CFO. Thank you very much, and to you, Elodie.
Thank you, Roberto, and hello, everyone. Let's dive into the financials, and I'd like to start with an update on our current trading. First, we have seen continued momentum in the wholesale Hearing Instruments business with a strong growth in the second half, well above the market. This momentum was driven by successful product launches, as you've heard previously in this presentation. In our retail business, Audiological Care, we have continued organic growth, albeit versus a higher comparison base and with limited contribution from M&A. Consumer Hearing has returned to growth in the second half, and following the decision to divest, will be treated as discontinued operations in FY 2025, 2026 result. In cochlear implants, we have seen a challenging environment with headwinds from the VBP implementation in China and upgrade sales in the CI segment declining due to product lifecycle maturity and increased competitive pressure.
Maintaining our 2025-26 guidance. We expect to come in at the lower end of the guidance range, as was previously mentioned. Let's now turn to the midterm, and I would like to give you an overview of our midterm targets. Excluding Consumer Hearing, we are targeting a sales growth of 5%-10% CAGR and core EBIT growth of 7%-12% CAGR, both of which are in constant currency. This is assuming a gradual market recovery over the course of 2026, moving towards a 3%-5% in the midterm. The growth drivers are the ones you have heard throughout today's presentation. First, market share gains, supported by our accelerated innovation roadmap, the expansion of our portfolio and geographical expansion. Scaling our retail network through bolt-on M&As and greenfield openings.
From a margin perspective, you have heard from Roberto di Fiore the operational excellence program, which should bring around 1.5 percentage points of gross margin improvement by 2030. At the same time, we will make investments to enable market share growth and margin improvement with increased investment in R&D to fund also the modernization of the IT infrastructure and our digitalization initiatives. Last but not least, we are introducing core EBIT as our key profitability metric, replacing normalized EBITDA. Core EBIT includes amortization, which gives a more comprehensive view of the economics of acquisitions, which are an important part of our growth strategy. It will exclude restructuring and other non-operational items, providing a clear view of underlying performance during transformation. How do these elements translate into our longer-term growth ambitions?
I have shared our midterm targets, and I now would like to explain the building blocks and how it reconciles with the CHF 6 billion sales ambition Eric talked about. Starting from our fiscal year 2025/2026 revenue base, the path is built through several sources of growth. First, underlying market growth, which we expect to gradually move towards 3%-5% annual growth. Second, market share gain. We expect this to contribute approximately one-three percentage point of additional growth. Third, bolt-on M&A and greenfield expansion, which we also expect to add one-two percentage points annually. Together, these elements define the range of our midterm targets. To reach the upper end of our ambition, CHF 6 billion, we see additional upside from larger strategic acquisitions as well as from the full execution of our strategic initiatives.
Let me now walk you through the building blocks behind our core EBIT expansion. We start with sales growth, which we expect to be in the range of 5%-10%. From there, we will benefit from operating leverage driven by growth and innovation, contributing approximately one-two percentage points. Next, we see additional contribution from operations, footprint, and supply chain optimization, adding around two-three percentage points. At the same time, we will make investments to support the growth path of the business and the strategic initiatives. First, in operations, where we will invest CHF 50 million to drive the ambitious savings plan. Second, in R&D, where we will ramp up investments to accelerate and continue to develop our products and solutions roadmap. Third, in our IT infrastructure and digitization initiatives to strengthen our technology and data capability as we see this as strategic.
This represents a margin investment of around one-three percentage points. When we combine these elements, they create a clear pathway from revenue growth to earnings growth, supporting our core EBIT CAGR target of 7%-12%. Now, I'd like to cover an important topic as we are a Swiss-based company reporting in Swiss francs, and we have seen significant currency movements this year. First, Switzerland remains a core strength for the company. It is our headquarters and primary center for innovation, giving us access to world-class talent pool, a strong innovation ecosystem, a stable macroeconomic environment, and a predictable and competitive tax framework, while also benefiting from a strong Swiss franc that provides an attractive currency for acquisitions.
At the same time, we have a structural currency mismatch in our cost base. Today, around 15% of our global cost base is denominated in Swiss francs, while less than 1% of our revenue is in Swiss francs. Given the structural strength of the Swiss franc, this is something we need to manage proactively. We have therefore consolidated all mitigation measures into a dedicated program to strengthen our natural hedge. Our ambition is to reduce the Swiss franc share of our global cost base from around 15% today to below 10% over time. We will do this through procurement currency optimization, better alignment of our cost base with our revenue currencies, especially as we grow, and the expansion of international capability hubs. Importantly, this does not change our commitment to Switzerland.
These measures will not eliminate the impact of the Swiss franc, but they will meaningfully reduce the structural exposure over time. Let me now turn to our capital allocation framework. Our approach reflects a disciplined prioritization of capital to support growth while delivering attractive shareholder returns. First, to support organic growth and making investments. I have covered those in the previous pages. Second, with retail bolt-ons, we will continue to scale our store footprint with investments of approximately CHF 80 million-CHF 100 million per year. Third, strategic M&A. We will pursue selective larger acquisition in strategic countries alongside targeted technology acquisitions that support our innovation roadmap. Fourth, an attractive dividend policy with a payout ratio of around 40%. Fifth, maintaining a healthy balance sheet, targeting a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 1-1.5 times. Finally, share buybacks.
Given our strong M&A pipeline, we do not foresee share buybacks in fiscal year 2026, 2027. This will be reviewed thereafter once the leverage target is consistently met. I would like to conclude with a brief reflection of our financial foundation. Over the past years, Sonova has delivered consistent and resilient financial performance with sales growth of around 9% CAGR and core EBIT margins averaging above 20%. We have maintained strong cash generation with free cash flow conversion of around 90%. Our balance sheet is disciplined, with leverage consistently in the range of 1-1.5 times net debt to EBITDA. Importantly, we have delivered attractive returns with return on capital employed between 18%-20%.
The strong financial track record provides the capacity and the flexibility to continue investing in our strategic priorities and support the next phase of growth and shareholder returns. With that, I will now hand over to Eric for the conclusion.
Elodie, thank you very much. Let me bring it all together as we close. First, we have a clear ambition, an ambition of reaching CHF 6 billion in revenue by 2030-31 through strong capabilities we are building across the company. Second, we have a sharper focus by concentrating on hearing instruments and cochlear implants and divesting Consumer Hearing. We are creating a more focused Sonova, directing our resources to where we lead and where we create the most value. Third, we have confidence in our future. With a clear strategic direction, our technology leadership, the talent across our entire company, our financial strength, and the right structure in place to fully unlock the potential of our integrated wholesale retail business, we are well-positioned to successfully shape the next chapter.
Think of Sonova as a leader with a significant upside and a team that is ready to deliver. With that, I want to thank you for your time, your interest, and your trust in Sonova. We will now have a few minutes break before we continue with our Q&A. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Eric. We'll now take a short break to allow those of you who would like to ask questions to dial in. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please register by clicking the button on the left side of your screen to receive the details. We're now ready for the Q&A session, which will last approximately 45 minutes. I kindly ask you to limit your questions to two. Once again, today's event is focused on our strategy and long-term vision. We therefore ask that questions focus on the refreshed strategy presented today. With that, I'll hand over to the operator.
Thank you. Before we start with the Q&A, I will explain shortly how you can raise a request to speak. To ask questions, please press star one four. I repeat, star one four. If you wish to withdraw your request to speak, please press star one five. We are now waiting for the first question. I will now open the lines one by one. As soon as your line is open, you will hear a corresponding text on your own line. Please introduce yourself by name and company before asking your questions. The first line is now open.
Hi, can you hear me?
I can hear you, yes.
It's Hassan Al-Wakeel from Barclays. Thank you for today's session. Two from me, please. Firstly, can you talk about how you think about the phasing of these top-line targets, given there is clearly a softer market backdrop that has lasted a lot longer than we expected? How have you factored this into your thinking alongside the potential for pent-up demand longer term, as well as Amplifon's acquisition of GN Hearing? Then secondly, in terms of your core EBIT, implies decent margin expansion over the medium term. How much of this margin expansion is expected from structural cost actions? And how do you think about pricing and mix impacting the margin? And what about next year, given this market softness, is the lower end of the range more reasonable? Thank you.
Thank you very much for your question. You can imagine I will not speak in details about next year because this is not the right setting to talk about the guidance to come. To go back to your first question about the phasing of the top line, we expect to see an acceleration coming from both the market recovery and also for the different initiatives that we have described that will deliver more and more effect over the next four years. About the short term or the shorter term perspective, we expect a recovery of the market towards the end of 2026 calendar year to be specific. About margin expansion, maybe Elodie you can reflect on this.
Yes, I'd be happy to. On the margin expansion, as I covered in the bridge, we have three main elements. One is related to operating leverage. One is related to investments we are going to make, and I'm gonna focus on the third one because I think that was the core of your questions. The third one is related to our operations excellence program and supply chain. From this part, we do expect, as we covered during the presentation, to get a benefit of about CHF 90 million per annum run rate towards the end of our midterm. That will require some investments, as we discussed, CHF 50 million, with a ramp-up of savings starting in year two.
Amplifon's acquisition of GN Hearing and how you intend to offset that, and whether you see any opportunities from the tie-up?
Yeah. In general, we do not comment on the strategic decisions made by market participants. I would say that we are not particularly concerned by what happened. We see opportunities as a result of this announced acquisition.
Perfect. Thanks.
Can you hear me?
We're struggling to hear you if you are trying to speak now. No, we cannot hear you.
Hi, can you hear me now?
I think we can hear you better now. Go ahead.
Perfect. Sorry for that. This is Julien Ouaddour from Bank of America. I have a couple of questions. My first one is on the midterm sales outlook. Clearly just exited an extremely strong product cycle where wholesale has grown well above market, and I think today you're close to a record high market share. The question is: how do you foresee the threat from competitors to potentially catching up on real-time AI, for example, during the next strategic plan? And how can you be sure to accelerate the growth from such tough comps and current high market share, especially to reach the upper end of the guidance, which is roughly 8%-10%?
I want to understand if it's based on the pipeline you have in terms of products, or it's more on the new market penetration you, like, mentioned for Asia. Also, if you can just size the Asia opportunity for us, that would be great. The next question is, I mean, looking at the CHF 6 billion sales target by 2031, using the midpoint of the top-line targets seems that you will need roughly CHF 800 million coming from larger acquisitions on top of the bolt-on. I mean, can you just give us a little bit more, like, color on what are you looking at? I mean, there is not a lot of large assets left in the hearing aid space from what we, like, understand.
Any idea or, like, any examples of where you could go to find this CHF 800 million would be super helpful. Thank you.
Julien, thank you for these many questions in one go. First, you said CHF 6 billion target. We called it CHF 6 billion ambition. This is what's going to drive all employees, all teams around the world at Sonova to get there, CHF 6 billion. Let me go back to the concerns that you seem to raise about the fact we have a very strong market share based on innovations that were launched over the past 6-18 months. The pipeline is rich, and without going into too many details, you can expect us to come with a new platform before the end of this calendar year, additional designs to the pipeline that we have and more. We are rather confident that thanks to a very strong pipeline, we will continue to acquire share over the last 12 to 18 to 24 months.
Going into the granular details of what brings what Asia and so on and so forth, we will not share these details right now. About the size of acquisitions, you've understood, I hope we were clear that we want to scale up in retail where we believe in selected markets, we have not reached the optimized scale, which drives clearly optimized profitability. This is what we are talking about, which is bigger than typically bolt-ons. As you know, typically on an annual basis, the bolt-ons bring CHF 80 million-CHF 100 million. Think about larger retail acquisitions in the order of that type. Elodie, anything you'd like to add?
As I explained, I mean, we are targeting 1%-2% from bolt-on acquisitions and greenfield openings. That's in our path to our midterm targets. Beyond that, see potential upside from larger acquisitions. You can understand, Julien, that we will not go into the details of that part.
Sure. Thanks, Eric, thanks a lot for that. I mean, maybe the very quick follow-up on the, like, on the first question is, I mean, how can you get to the upper end of the, like, of the top line guidance, I mean, like the 8%-10%? I mean, looking at the history, it seems to be a pretty optimistic scenario. Just want to understand exactly, how, and if it can get, you know, from 27 onwards, or it's more at the back end, as you said in the first question from Hassan. Just trying to understand how, like how to get to the 10%.
Understood. Market growth 3%-5%. We're outperforming this market growth thanks to a very strong pipeline and a number of initiatives. We could mention building a competitive edge in service, for instance, bolt-on acquisitions, and then these larger retail acquisitions that we spoke about. That's pretty much the model that gets us to the very upper end of the target that we have described. You know, clearly an acceleration as you go towards the end of this next cycle of four years. Again, Elodie, anything you'd like to add?
I think, Julien, when we prepared the bridge of how we see our revenue growth going forward, you have seen the four elements that Eric has just described. We put in these four elements because all of them are important and all of them will contribute towards us reaching the midpoint and above of the midterm guidance. First, we talked about underlying market growth. Our assumption is 3%-5% with gradual recovery. Then for market share gain, 1%-2%. From bolt-on and greenfield, 1%-2%, and then potential for a larger acquisition. As well, by the way, the full potential of the execution of our strategic initiatives.
Perfect. Thank you much.
Thank you, Julien.
Next line to be open is from Graham Doyle. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Oh, hi, team. It's Graham from UBS. Thanks for taking my questions. It's just a follow-up to Julien's question just there. In terms of this sort of larger scale M&A, it'd be good to. I know you obviously can't talk about specific targets, but I think it'd be useful to get an outline of what your financial constraints or what you think your sort of rules are. You know, in effect, if I look at CHF 800 million and think about some of the deals done recently to get that revenue, that would imply like potentially a quantum of like three times more leverage. Would you guys be comfortable being north of three times net debt to EBITDA for any given period?
Could you maybe talk about the kind of return metrics, the ROIC you would use to look at that? Then just a second question, it's just because given the world we're in now, we've got a spike in rates, and it might be more difficult to do this type of M&A. Where in that 5%-10% do you think organic growth should likely land, if that's possible, even just a range? Thank you very much.
Maybe, Elodie, you take the first question.
Yes. So I'll start with the M&A side. Rest assured that our M&A views will remain very disciplined. I have talked about our very healthy balance sheet between one and 1.5 times EBITDA. We have a very strong cash generation, and this gives us some sizable firepower to do some targeted M&As. Again, we will be extremely disciplined as we look into it. That is why part of it is that we are moving with our key profitability metric to core EBIT. We will include in that amortization, which will give a view of the economic performance of the M&A and really be transparent about what those are. That's going to be our approach when we look at our M&A. Eric, there was a second part of the question, I believe.
Yeah, which was about organic growth. You could refer to slide 29. I have it in front of me. We won't put it back on screen, but I think there we were quite explicit about what we expect in terms of organic growth. If you assume a market growth of 3%-5%, we intend to add 1%-3%, coming from market share gains, and you can do the math to make it simple.
No, that's completely fair. I appreciate that. Can I just another one. Sorry, Elodie, just on that leverage. In order to get some of these deals done, I just wanna understand. I think shareholders want to just be comfortable. Is there a hard stop on a leverage level you will not go above? Just to understand that.
As I said, we will remain very disciplined. I've shared in our capital allocation strategy that our broad allocation will maintain a very healthy balance sheet 1-1.5 times. That will be our guiding light towards our acquisition strategy.
Okay. Appreciate that. Thanks a lot, guys.
You're most welcome, Graham Doyle.
Next. Sorry. Next line to be open is from Angela Stoyanovitch. Go ahead, Angela. Your line is open.
Hi, this is Angela from BNP. Just two questions on my side. Maybe the first one is on the market. You assume now 3%-5% growth. Can you confirm this is in value terms? It's lower than previously communicated 4%-6%. Can you just give us the main drivers that impacted this lowering of the market assumptions and confirm that 3%-5% is also for 2026. The second one is maybe follow up on Julien's question on innovation in this space, and particularly the pace of introducing new products. You have previously commented on around like 24 months launch window. Do you see this changing with the increased innovation pace not only for you but also for the competitors?
When you said that you're going to launch a new product by the end of this fiscal year, that's Infinio platform. If you can just confirm that. Thank you.
Angela, thank you very much for the questions. I will start with the second question. Yes, indeed, you've seen that Sonova historically has been extremely consistent in delivering relevant innovation every two years. If we look back at the very recent past, Sphere was launched in August 2024, and less than 14-16 months later, in October, we came up with an upgrade. We will come up with a new platform before the end of this calendar year, as I've explained it. We're gonna be very consistent at our pace of innovation. What's in your question is, what about software innovation, over-the-air upgrades, and so on and so forth. This will also be part of our future equation. Maybe Anders, you want to add to this?
Yes. I mean, as you said, we are continuing our release cycle and strengthening that. If we look ahead into the roadmap that we have, we will see Sphere in a more compact form factor. We will see AI beyond speech and noise, and we will see more aesthetic design form factors as well. We will continue well beyond just receiver and canal portfolio. We will definitely maintain also the cycle then and accelerate that.
Thank you, Anders. Angela, about your question about market growth, 3%-5%, yes, value term versus 4%-6%. Yes, we are cautious for the short term. You've seen the demographic fundamentals that I've highlighted early in the presentation. You know, the category will keep growing. It's going to recover, as I said, we believe towards the end of 2026 calendar year. There's been many hypothesis about the slowdown, but yeah, 3%-5%, this is where we think it's gonna be heading.
Thank you.
Next line we open is from Veronika Dubajova. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I'll keep it to two, please. The first one is, I just want to understand the reiterated FY 2026 guidance and whether that includes or excludes the divestiture of the consumer health business. If you already can just maybe clarify whether those growth rates are including or excluding consumer healthcare. Maybe just a brief word on what the most likely outcome in your mind is when it comes to the consumer healthcare asset. Is this a monetization? Is this just a wind down? Kind of when you'd expect to have an update on that divestment? That would be my first question.
My second question is sort of related a little bit to your ambition of M&A and growth in particular in Asia Pacific and how that ties into operating leverage. I think, you know, when we look historically, obviously, what we tend to see is prices outside of U.S. tend to be ASP dilutive, expansion both in wholesale or retail when it comes both to you and your peers in some of these, you know, OUS and outside of Europe markets has tended to be margin dilutive. Just help me reconcile that kind of. I get the higher ambition on the revenue growth. Makes sense.
I'm having a hard time bridging the gap from that higher growth ambition on revenues to an appropriately sized ASP and mix dilution on the margin front. I think that's probably Eric for you and maybe for Elodie to comment on as well. Thank you.
Yeah. Veronika, thank you very much for these questions. Very useful because they give us a chance to react or reflect on the reports that were published recently. The first point I would make is that not being Asia-focused would be sacrificing a significant potential for growth over the next five, 10, 15 years. It would be a massive strategic error not to invest in Asia. Now, specifically, I hope I was extremely clear, it's going to be a two-step process. The first step is just by making sure that Sonova is more focused on Asia than it was before. Our share there is absolutely not what it should be. This is not about operating at lower ASP, this is about operating in a more focused manner in Asia.
I gave the example of the success of Virto R in Japan recently, which got us to grow double-digit in this market where you can be profitable. Asia doesn't equal lower profits, especially when you operate in the premium tiers of the market, and we were not as focused as one could be or should be in Asia. Over time, it will be about benefiting from these obvious demographic trends and needs emerging from Asia, potentially at lower ASP, but also with lower cost to serve. By the time we really get there, we will have optimized a number of items that are building the cost to serve, from COGS to simply service and delivery. Don't expect a drop of profitability over the next 18 months or 24 months because we will grow in Asia.
On the first question about CHB and how it's going to be part of 2026 guidance and so on and so forth, maybe Elodie, you can take this one. I will just make one point. It's not going to be a complex carve-out at all for us.
Yes, Veronika. If I understood your question correctly regarding CHB, first of all, I think you would like to know if for our current trading and the fact that we maintain our guidance for 2025, 2026, if those numbers are included. Here the answer is yes, we have done this update on a similar scope as what was previously communicated in terms of guidance. No changes there as we wanted to be transparent also on our current trading. As I mentioned, CHB will be treated as discontinued operations in this fiscal year. As we give you our earnings update in May, when we announce our earnings for the full year, you will of course get a lot more details about how this impacts exactly the performance.
Thank you, Elodie. Can you just quantify the profitability of Consumer Hearing and what we should be moving into discontinued ops? I'm sorry, I just wanna understand, are you expecting any proceeds for a sale or is this a one down? Thank you.
I just want to say that, first of all, Consumer Hearing represents roughly 5% of our revenue for Sonova. This has a relatively, I would say, limited impact on the sales side. On the profitability side, I think it was said at the time, roughly after the acquisition that the impact of Consumer Hearing was about 200 basis points dilutive to Sonova. I think that's an assumption that I would not go back on. Overall, I would say, about 5% of the top line for Sonova with a dilutive profitability.
Proceeds not expected in the fiscal year 2025, 2026, and obviously more to come in the next fiscal year.
The next question now will be Jack Reynolds-Clark. Line is open.
Hi there. Thank you for taking the questions. It's Jack Reynolds-Clark from RBC. My first question was on penetration. Could you kind of talk through where you expect penetration to get to across, I guess the various severity levels within developed markets? And what do you think needs to happen to reaccelerate penetration, and over what timeframe? Kind of joined to that, in the other markets, how long does that take to kind of trend towards developed markets? My second question was just kind of a clarification on the wording of guidance. Do you expect EBIT to grow at least 7% every year-on-year for the medium term, or is the 7% a floor for the average growth rate over that time period? Thank you.
Thank you for your question. I will let Elodie answer the question about EBIT. Penetration. You know, the barriers to penetration are pretty well described, and their importance vary country by country, but you can list awareness, access, affordability, clearly stigma, and a very complex and sometime cumbersome consumer journey and consumer experience. By working on these five dimensions, we can increase penetration. An example of what we did recently to anchor my comments in something real, Virto R. I remember when we launched it at the EUHA back in October, I faced a bit of skepticism. I could see that we had a fantastic design, a small device performing extremely well, a very cool design.
Again, I will repeat that this is an example of a product that moves the needle, that gets people in the category, whereas maybe before they were not considering it because the product looks cool. This is about stigma. This is about design. When and so, you know, a lot of people in the more mature markets are hesitant because they don't want to look old, because it's complicated. It's all of this we have to tackle. You heard Anders talking about a different take on design we will be looking at. If you look at what will be, what are the faster-growing markets, the emerging markets, there it's a full spectrum. It's access that needs to be reflected on. It's certainly affordability, and probably a different way to provide access over time.
I will stop here. I've said enough, I believe. Maybe, Elodie, you can reflect on the EBIT question.
Yes. I think your question was about the 7-12 midterm guidance regarding core EBIT. Here it's a 7-12% CAGR in the midterm. This is what we would like to communicate. Clearly, there will be phasing in some of it, as I explained, because one of the building block is the operational excellence program that will ramp up over the period, so that will contribute more as time goes by. For specific phasing, I will not comment in details on next year's guidance. We will communicate that when we announce our earnings in the month of May.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for the question.
Okay.
Next line to be open is from David Adlington. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thanks for taking the question. Two, please. Firstly, you talked about large scale M&A, but also as part of that, you talked about strategic opportunities. I wonder if you could expand a little bit what you mean. That's secondly, just coming back to Asia, you on slide 19, you talk about phase two and resource.
David, if I may, could you repeat the question? I'm sorry, you know, it was hard for me to understand. Sorry about that.
The large-scale M&A that you're talking about to get to that CHF 6 billion, as well as large-scale M&A about other strategic opportunities. Could you expand on what you mean by other strategic opportunities? The second question, and you're talking about phase two and resource deployment for 3 years. Could maybe quantify the amount of investment that might be required.
Yeah. You can imagine that we are not going to disclose the details of M&A opportunities that we see ahead of us. The only thing I will repeat is what we have shared so far, which is that in retail and in selected strategic markets, we want to get to the right scale that allows us to have optimal profitability as we've been able to achieve it in a number of markets. We have a playbook, we have a model, we're going to replicate this. I will not comment any further for obvious, you know, sensitive, competitive reasons about maybe resources. That was the second question.
I think, part of your question, if I understood well, was related to other strategic opportunities as we described it on our building blocks towards the CHF 6 billion potential. Here, it's the realization of the full potential of our strategy, all the different building blocks that you have seen throughout the presentation, and realizing the full potential from that, we also see as a potential for upside towards the CHF 6 billion. This is what I wanted to cover. In terms of investments, we have planned a number of investments, as I've explained, to support our growth initiatives. These are investments in R&D. We have investments in our Operations Excellence Program. We have investments towards IT transformation and digitization.
This includes also the ramp-up of our Asia presence as Eric explained before.
I would just add that, we need to keep in mind that, you know, Sonova has got a very strong cash conversion, is a very profitable organization, and that gives us firepower without challenging our leverage. Just to make things very clear.
Next line to be open is from Henrietta Rumberger. Please, your line is open.
Yes. Hello. It's Henrietta Rumberger from AWP. Thank you for taking my question. I have one on what you said about strengthening your natural hedge in terms of currencies. What does it exactly mean? Are you planning to produce more in other countries? Do you plan to shift something like that? Maybe you can sort of elaborate a bit more on that. The other one is the Asian expansion. In which markets are you already present, and are you tackling or targeting special markets in Asia? To start with, is it like India or China? Linked to that, I remember reading in the press release that you said, first of all, you want to target the more wealthy ones and then you want to go into mass business.
Is that not a rather dangerous thing to go into mass business there? Thank you.
Henrietta, thank you very much for your question. I will start with Asia expansion. Again, as I've explained it, and you have this on one of the slides we presented, our market share in Asia is not at all at the level of where we have in other markets. I will be anecdotal here, but I think it will tell a clear story. The head of Asia Pacific for Sonova was based in Switzerland. It means that we were not focusing enough on Asia. Step one is to increase the focus on Asia, to think Asian for Asia, to have people on the ground who are Asian experts.
I gave the example, and I will give it once more, of what we did recently in Japan by bringing, it happens it is Virto R, a custom product, which is typically the type of product that the Japanese market appreciates very much. There, this is sold at a very high ASP. It's very profitable, so there's no issue about playing in Asia for phase one. About phase two, we could ask ourselves another question. We all know about the demography in Asia. We all know that Asia adds tens of millions of people reaching their sixty-fifth birthday every year. Do we want to leave this space wide open to others, or do we want to be an actor? What can we learn from there? How can we bring the best of Sonova and becoming more Asian?
That's also the intent we have with this initiative we are starting, supported by the Singapore government and its arm called the Economic Development Board. Not thinking Asia for the next five to 10 years would be, in my view, a significant strategic mistake. About manufacturing, first question of yours, about manufacturing in Switzerland, manufacturing elsewhere. Gradually, what we do in Switzerland will be building a center of excellence. In Switzerland, and I go back to what Roberto explained earlier on, this is where we are going to create, invent, redesign, so that we can then export at some point when it's ready in lower cost manufacturing. No drama to be expected, Henrietta. You know, you have natural attrition. There is aging of our population, so don't expect anything dramatic in Stäfa, to be specific.
Okay. Next question will be from Susannah Ludwig. Go ahead, your line is open.
Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. I have two, please. I guess first on your innovation roadmap, you talked about more compact AI solutions and more personalization. Can we assume that a more compact format can come as early as your next platform launch for RIC products? Maybe could you elaborate on sort of what types of personalization might be possible? You know, is there a future where devices could learn to prioritize voices of the user's close contacts or sort of what other signals might be able through personalization to help devices know what sounds to prioritize?
Second, just as a follow-up to the questions on retail acquisition, I understand you do not wanna give away too many details, but was wondering if you're able to share anything about the balance between further retail in Asia versus elsewhere?
Susanna, thank you for all these questions. Anders, I will let you reflect on the more detailed questions about innovation, but I will just make one comment. In the VA, where Sonova has a very strong share, we have been, in spite of the bigger size of Sphere, and we know it's about 20% bigger than the competitor's product, we have been very successful, and that's on the back of a superior audiological performance. The AI, you know, keeps learning and then eventually needs less consumption for same performance. Yes, you can imagine that in the next generation, we will come up with a smaller device which will address the weak points of the product, which is nevertheless very successful.
About retail acquisition, I'm sorry, Susannah, I will not tell you much more than what I have said already for obvious reasons. Maybe you want to reflect, Anders, on the other parts of the question.
As you said, Eric, about getting to a more compact form factor has, of course, been our major next step, and it's gonna come here with the next platform launch. This is something that we are building. I talked earlier about our continuously improving AI, our data pipeline, our training pipeline, how we continuously improve, and now that helps us create a moat here, but also drive forward. That also reflects, of course, into additional capabilities. We talked about personalization, and I need to take the balance here between what we can resolve and or make visible today and where we need to come back at a later stage. This is something that we are working on, where we see AI going well beyond speech and noise as a next step.
Great. Thanks.
Okay. Next question will be from Martin Parkhøi.
Hello. Martin Parkhøi from SEB. I just need to come back to the form factors again because it's part of this new strategy, but I also, of course, acknowledge that it takes time to develop new products. Do you already have, you know, new form factors in place that you started way before Eric came up with this new strategy, maybe even before he entered Sonova? Or is it something which are more to be realized in the second part of your new strategy plan? Also, if you look at form factors, is it just a matter of looking what is out there now and then make a best in class of that?
Can Sonova even make new form factors which we haven't heard about before, of course? Then just to be 100% sure on the comment on the smaller version of Sphere or what the next name will be, can you do it smaller and then keep the same level of performance as you have today? Then, Eric, of course, I know that you would not like to talk too much about Amplifon and GN, and I will not ask you how it will impact you, but how do you think it will impact the industry?
We of course know that GN has been the Prügelknabe, if I can say that, it's not much German I can, but I can say it, for decades. Will it actually be positive for the pricing on the wholesale side in the market that you take away this pressure that normally is in the industry?
Martin, great. That's many questions and some very pointed.
two.
Bringing innovative, relevant form factors. This is not just in my head. I was extremely lucky when I came on board, and I go back to you know this image I was using before. You get into a new house, and you see everything that is great and everything that can be improved and, you know, that leads to many upsides for us, but also great things. Virto R, for instance, was an example of I come into the company and presented this product, and I realized how great a success it can be, and maybe it was not as much perceived that way. There are other products in the pipeline, not in three years, but I won't tell you when exactly, but, you know, soon.
Second question was about, is it looking at what currently exists and improve it, or is this about going different beyond? I trust you've understood that I've got a team surrounding me that is extremely ambitious. You can imagine that we are reflecting on what could go really beyond what currently exists. I think I've answered the question about the smaller version. Could it perform as good as the current one for Sphere? Yes, absolutely. Maybe even a bit better. About Amplifon, I will not comment too much. I don't think it's appropriate to do so. It's too premature.
I would just say, though, that this confirms what I have described and explained, I hope, convincing all of you that Sonova is very well-positioned to act as an integrated wholesale-retail players, that we have practiced that for a while. In a way, we are ahead of the curve, and we're gonna double down on this, and yet without forgetting our wholesale partners.
Okay, thank you.
You are welcome, Martin.
Okay. Last question from Daniel Buchta.
Yeah. Good afternoon. It's Daniel Buchta from Zürcher Kantonalbank. Two questions. The R&D synergies you mentioned between implants and instruments. I mean, over the last 20 years, I heard that a lot, you know, GN, Cochlear, and it actually never worked. Of course, for Sonova it's different because you own the brand, but I just wonder how that works in daily business. I mean, they are still in the U.S., I guess. That's the first question. The second question is about you talked a lot about multi-brands, which is not a surprise with your background, of course.
Mm-hmm.
How easy is it to establish brands in Asia? You know, I mean, Demant has the Philips brand, WSA has the Siemens brand. Every Chinese knows that brands, and I'm not sure what brands you will bring in markets like China, if it's also Phonak in the second round, maybe with a lower version, or do you revitalize some older brands like even an Argosy brand and so on? Those are the two questions. Thanks.
Thanks. Thank you very much. I will start with the multi-brand question. You know, a brand is only as good as the substance it has behind it to make it strong. It's not good enough just to put one brand on the same product you are selling and another one. I will stop short of telling too much here, but we have clear plans ready to execute, and you will see a first move before the end of this calendar year in that space. Then if I may, you quickly jumped to China. Asia goes well beyond China. I would say that what we do in China will be specifically for China. There it's not maybe one or two brands you need, but maybe more, and you have to be extremely creative.
As you may remember, that's the game I have, or a play I have practiced in my past, quite extensively. About R&D synergies between the hearing instruments and the implants, we are in a unique position where we own both the cochlear business, and we are the designer of the hearing aids. For a number of reasons, we have not enjoyed the synergies that can come from this. In terms of organization, our first decision was to have Anders, who is next to me today, supervising both and looking at what can be done in that space over the next few years. Maybe, Anders, you want to add a few comments to this to put more meat on the bone?
Yeah. No, but, we are now looking into how we can continuously accelerate, CI roadmap building on our leadership in hearing instruments. Of course, I cannot go into details here, but there are significant opportunities that we see ahead of us here to really deliver more in the cochlear implant business.
Okay. Thanks very much.
Okay. We are closing the Q&A session, and I'll hand back to Eric Bernard for the closing remarks.
To all participants, thank you very much for your attention. Thank you for the questions. I will just close by repeating that we are very ambitious at a time where conversations were rather pessimistic, if not negative, about what we firmly believe is a category that will continue to grow. We intend to keep leading in the premium segments, but also be more creative so that we can really surf the demographic wave that are coming our way. I hope you've seen that with my three colleagues. I hope you sense that. We have a very cohesive team, very international, and it's the same if you go beyond and you look at the larger executive committee group. We are committed to perform and deliver profitably for our shareholders. Thank you very much.