Ladies and gentlemen, good morning or good afternoon. Welcome to the Straumann First Quarter 2018 Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. I'm Iruna, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen only mode and the conference call is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be a Q and A session.
The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Marco Gadola, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Yes. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this conference call on Straumann's 2018 Q1 revenue. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. We will be referring to the presentation slides that were published on our website early this morning. And before we begin, I have to inform you that our discussion will include forward looking statements.
So please take careful note of the disclaimer on Slide 2 of the presentation and at the end of our press release. As usual, I will run through the highlights, then Peter Hochkel, our CFO, will share the business and regional performances with you. I will conclude with an update on our strategic initiatives together with the full year outlook and then we will be glad to answer your questions. As you can see in Slide 4, we have made a very good start to the year and have succeeded in maintaining the energetic pace that we achieved last year. In the Q1 of 2018, our underlying growth exceeded 15%, driven by strong performances across all regions and all businesses.
Recent acquisitions and a favorable currency effect lifted growth in Swiss francs to 22%, bringing revenue to CHF324,000,000. Our 2 largest regions, Europe, the Middle East and Africa and North America continue to be the main growth powerhouses also both were eclipsed by dynamic revenue gains in Asia Pacific and Latin America. Delaso posted its best quarter in 4 years and is a good example of how our efforts to invest in emerging growth markets are bearing fruit. At the same time, innovation, service excellence and the ability to provide total solutions that cover both premium and non premium requirements has enabled us to outperform the market. From a brand perspective, our Straumann bone level tapered implant range continued to fuel premium sales expansion, while our non premium business benefited from significant increases in demand for Neodent and Medentica solutions.
With regards to strategic M and A activity, we seized the unique opportunity investing and partnered with Dental Monitoring, a young entrepreneurial company based in Paris that has pioneered the remote monitoring system using smartphones and artificial intelligence. This adds another game changing technology to our portfolio. Looking ahead to the rest of the year, our good first quarter results provide further assurance that we will deliver the organic growth and profitability targets that we have communicated in February. Putting the Q1 in a sequential context, you can see in Slide 5 that we sustained last year's very strong momentum, both at group level and in the regions. For the details on how we achieved this and for the financials, I will now hand over to Peter.
Thank you, Marco, and good afternoon or good morning, everybody. As you can see in Slide 7, our top line increased 21.7% on a reported basis to CHF324 1,000,000. On the left of the chart, you can see that our first quarter revenue in 2017 would have been CHF 3,000,000 higher at this year's currency rates. This is due mainly to the appreciation the euro, which more than offset the depreciation of the U. S.
Dollar and the Brazilian real. The effect of acquisitions added €11,500,000 bringing the adjusted 2017 revenue to €281,000,000 Using this as a like for like comparison base, our revenue increased 15% in regional contributors to growth, posting organic increases of 17% 10% respectively. They each contributed 31% to the group's organic growth as you can see on the right. Asia Pacific was our fastest growing region with organic revenue climbing 25%. A current A current update on the overall market development is not yet available, but we are confident of 2 things.
1st, that the market is stable and second, that we are continuing to outperform it significantly. Slides 89 provide some details of the regional performances and the quarterly trend. Our traditional stronghold EMEA grew robustly despite the timing of the Easter holiday, which resulted in fewer business days for customers in Central Europe. The region generated organic growth of almost 10% with an additional 3 percentage points coming from acquisitions. This was mainly due to the consolidation of Dental Wings and Batigroup, the distribution company we recently acquired in Turkey.
Demand for our products was generally strong, especially in the Middle East, Russia, the UK and Turkey. Across the Atlantic, North America reported a 5th consecutive quarter of growth above 17% following an exceptional Q4. The performance was driven by both the U. S. And Canada.
Our premium BLT implant as well as our Neodent range and the rollout of more identical cost effective prosthetics solutions were the key growth contributors. Since their launch three and a half years ago, Straumann has more than 6 100,000 BLT implants in North America, and there is still considerable potential to unlock. Digital solutions also performed well, lifted by the launch of Brahma branded 3 intra hour scanners in January. In Biomaterials, robust sales of bone graft and membrane products offset a temporary shortfall in regenerative sales, which I will explain in a moment. Asia Pacific reported a sequential increase despite the high baseline achieved in Q1 last year.
Organic growth topped 25%, driven by strong performances in all subsidiaries, especially in China, which is benefiting from sales force expansion and intensified training and education activity. There were 3 other highlights that I would like to mention briefly. Our CAT scan milling center in Shenzhen went into operation. We rolled out the Ontogee Axiom PX fully tapered implant, which is important for the fast growing non premium segment in China, and we entered the Australian non premium segment by launching Neodent. Across the globe, in Latin America, we continue to grow strongly in Brazil, thanks to our differentiated offering, integrated supply chain and dual price model.
2 of the key growth contributors were Neodent's new brand MOS implant system and the very successful launch of our ROCEIS range, marking our full entry into the Brazilian Biomaterials market. Elsewhere, Colombia grew dynamically, while Argentina, Chile, Mexico all continued to deliver strong growth. Looking at our overall growth from a business perspective, implants were the main contributor with sales climbing more than 10% in both the premium and non premium segments. Tapered implants grew faster than our other designs and accounted for approximately a third of the premium implants we sold in Q1, a trend that we expect to continue. Our restorative business also achieved double digit growth with both standard and custom prosthetics developing very positively in the slip stream of strong implant growth and meaningful product launches, while our digital business benefited from strong intraoral scanner sales.
And finally, Biomaterials reported strong growth in bone graft and membrane products, but softer regenerative sales due to a temporary volume supply of Emdogain to the U. S. Due to changes in the manufacturing process that require additional documentation for the FDA. The interruption is temporary and we expect to resume a regular supply in Q3. And with that, I'll hand back to Marco.
Thank you very much, Peter. Before we come to the Q and A, I would like to share some of our strategic highlights with you, beginning with Slide 12 and our investments in Dental Monitoring. Dental Monitoring is a highly innovative company that has developed and successfully commercialized the world's 1st dental monitoring system using smartphones and artificial intelligence. It enables dentists to check the progress of treatment without the patient having to visit the practice. Dental monitoring already offers the system in several markets and has developed it further to detect tooth decay, fracture, restoration defects, gum recession, inflammation, infections and other oral health conditions.
In return for an injection of capital, we have obtained a small stake in the company together with global distribution rights. We have also won a partner that is specialized in artificial intelligence and can develop additional applications, for instance to monitor implant treatment outcomes. One interesting application is to combine dental monitoring's algorithm with intraoral scanners to increase checkup efficiency in the dental practice. This will support our goal of providing comprehensive digital solutions in addition to equipment. The full potential of intraoral scanners can only be realized with the corresponding software, which is why we have worked hard to develop our existing KAOS visual platform to support the Straumann branded Trio3 scanner that we are also rolling out in the U.
S. The new Trios Design Studio software has just entered a limited market release. It connects the scanner with our compact C Series mill to provide a seamless chairside workflow from impression taking to prosthetic design and milling, enabling Trios users to offer high quality milled restorations quickly in a single session. Moving to Slide 14, Peter mentioned our CADCA Milling Center in Shenzhen, which went into operation in March. I had the privilege of joining a number of key opinion leaders and customers for the inauguration, and I'm convinced that this will differentiate us further as the market leader in China.
Shenzhen will initially serve the domestic market for implant borne prosthetics and strengthen our global CADCAM milling network, which is shown in the chart. As you can see on Slide 15, we have made good progress in bringing our premium and non premium activities closer together in order to create selling opportunities and to reduce complexity, both internally and for customers. In Q1, we converged the respective activities in no fewer than 50 countries and expect to complete the initiative in all remaining countries by the end of Q3. The initiative has accelerated the rollout of our non premium brands. And in Q1, we launched Neodent in Australia, France, Germany and the Nordic countries.
A major undertaking has been to create and launch a new combined e shop that covers all our brands and all our markets with the German example pictured in this slide. The big advantage is that customers now have one account and can order everything together with one invoice. With NelDent's geographic footprint expanding rapidly, we have been able to roll out the new Grandmose implant system in a number of markets. As you can see in Slide 16, the full market release is already underway in most European countries with the important North American market to follow around MEDIAL. GM is an extremely attractive fully tapered implant with cutting threads and a comprehensive easy to use prosthetics portfolio covering all clinical needs.
It has been very well received in the lead market Brazil, and we expect it to become the preferred choice of Neodent customers within the next 2 years. And finally, let me add a few words on our auto business, which is progressing well. Since the acquisition, ClearCorrect has increased its customer base by 10%, which shows that it is gaining recognition and endorsement in the established orthodontist community in addition to attracting general practitioner customers. The number of cases grew significantly in Q1 and the portion in international markets rose to 15%. We are leveraging our sales teams in North America and have increased territory coverage both in the U.
S. And Canada. In addition, pilot programs are underway in Europe and Japan. These have been positive and we are adding more countries with the aim of moving to a full market release in Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific next year. In parallel, we have also begun a treatment pilot program with Genova in Spain.
That brings me to Slide 18 and our outlook for the rest of the year, which as always is barring unforeseeable events and circumstances. Our guidance for 2018 remains unchanged. We expect the global implant market to grow at approximately 4% and we are confident that we will continue to outperform its organic revenue growth in the low double digit percentage range. Operational leverage should lead to further improvements in our underlying EBITDA margin and despite continuing high levels of CapEx investments and a raise in amortization charges, we expect to achieve a stable EBIT margin. And now, I would like to open the question and answer session.
As usual, I would kindly ask you to limit the number of your questions to 2 and rejoin the queue in order to give everyone else a chance to put their questions. Webcast participants who wish to ask questions anonymously can use the tool in the audio webcast, which you can find in the bottom left corner. So Chorus Call, can we have the first question please?
The first question from the phone comes from Markus Gola from MainFirst. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning and thank you for taking my question. So my first question is on China. I believe you received the regulatory approval for the Straumann premium BLT in Q3. Have you already started to roll out this product? And if so, is it already available in all regions still?
Or have you decided for a gradual introduction in this country? And my second question is on your business unit for dental service organizations. I think it was already fully operational in Q1 2018. So are you happy with the start in this market segment? And have you already signed new clients here?
And also, do you see a strong focus on price and negotiations with these customer groups? Thank you.
Thank you, Markus, for your questions. Yes, BLT was actually launched in Q4 2017 in China. And the dynamic development of our Asia Pacific region in Q1 2018 is obviously also reflecting the fact that we have now this BLT an apically tapered solution for our customers in China. And I would also like to add that we also launched in Q4 of 2017 the Axiom PX implant, which is a fully tapered implant, and this one is actually also driving the under share sales. When it comes to DSOs, yes, we have some significant gains on board.
I guess, you understand that I cannot actually name you concretely who we gained, but we had very interesting gains. The numbers in Q1 are not yet fully reflecting the potential of these gains because we gained the business during the course of the quarter, and we will actually now implement the corresponding processes. We'll actually make sure that the clinics are trained and then we'll start to purchase products from us, switching from competitive products, competitive products during the course of the year.
Okay. Thank you, Marc.
And on pricing, it's clear. DSO pricing is obviously lower priced business compared to a normal dental practice clearly. But we are also not crazy when it comes to pricing. So, whenever we accept to do business with DSOs, I can assure you it's actually profitable business for us.
Okay, very clear. Thanks.
The next question comes from Michael Junglin from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thank you and good morning. I have two questions. Firstly, on ClearCorrect. Can you comment on the organic sales growth development in Q1, not just the K starts, but total organic sales growth in the quarter? And then secondly, on the premium and the non premium implant sort of conversion, can you explain how you prevent the risk or so of cannibalization taking place and eventually impacting your Straumann implants in favor of the cheaper alternatives?
On your first question on the auto business, what I can tell you is that the development of ClearCorrect has been in line with our expectations. The growth has been overproportionate to the growth of the rest of our business. I guess you appreciate it, I will not give you a concrete number, but the development in Q1 when it comes to top line has been very pleasing. When it comes to cannibalization, we have been 4, even 5 years. We started in Spain and 4, even 5 years.
We started in Spain and Portugal in 2013, added the U. S. In 2015, then U. K, Canada came along. We have obviously China, we have a premium and a non premium franchise.
Italy came on board in 2014. So we have now long year experience with actually selling in the same markets to the same organization, the Straumann organization, despite the fact that actually we had separate legal entities in a corresponding market. And the experience has been that cannibalization has been minimum. What we have not achieved yet and that's why we actually decided to amalgamate the InstaDent legal entities, which were selling in the past non premium offering to the corresponding customers in a corresponding market to amalgamate the Instra Dent companies into a strong group company in the relevant market has been the fact that we believe there are huge synergy potentials when it comes to gain additional share of wallet with existing customers, on one hand premium customers and on the other hand non premium customers. We know based on market research that more than 2 thirds of our customers are actually using a premium and a nonpremium offering in their practice.
And now with the opportunity to share customer data between the premium and the non premium organization through having a common CRM system in place, we are convinced that we can actually gain share of wallet faster and that we can actually exploit commercial synergies faster than with the setup we had in place before.
Okay. But Mark, can I just ask on when you say the convergence of premium and non premium activities, does that mean that eventually you will also combine sales forces? Or are we only talking here about back office mergers and sharing of customer data?
Good question. The merging of back office functions that has been in place since the very beginning. So we have always been leveraging our premium back office structure to also build our non premium business. We are now adding the data sharing. So, the exchange of potentials when it comes to premium and non premium customers.
So this is new. When it comes to the go to market approach, we have different models in place. And we have these models actually in place with the specific situation in each one of the individual markets. I'll give you an example. In the U.
S, we still have 2 separate sales forces with 2 dedicated national sales managers, one for the non premium and one for the premium franchise. We have, for example, in Spain, we have all the territory sales managers and area sales managers reporting to 1 national sales manager, who is in charge of the premium and the non premium business. But at the regional level within Spain, we still have the segregation between premium and non premium. In other markets, we even have within a specific regional organization, we have dedicated premium and non premium reps on the road. So, we do this based on the specifics of a corresponding market because not all markets are the same.
Okay. Just to confirm, so the idea going forward will to continue for most markets to have separate sales forces that will not be merged in most markets. Is that correct?
Yes and no. Yes and no. We have I'll give you another example. In our largest market in Europe and I guess you know what I'm talking about, which market I'm talking about. We have also so called key account man up in place.
So these key account managers, they carry the Straumann and the Naledent range. And they are actually more hunters who open up large competitive accounts. So, I cannot give you a clear answer on this. We are taking here very pragmatic and market orientated stance, and we are actually fine tuning our go to market model in line with what our customers
want. Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Carla Benziger from Vontobel. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. My question is also related to Clear Correct. And I was wondering whether you could because I was actually surprised by the strong sales that you reported. Could you comment a bit how this limited market release is already going and in which countries it's active? Is it only DACH or have you already other countries where you're selling it?
And also your comment about the specialists, can you comment a bit on what you are seeing there?
The impact on the auto business from the pilots we are currently running in the European countries and in Japan has been insignificant, to be honest. This is actually not driving the 51% additional K start. So the majority of that is coming from the U. S, obviously and we have also seen a very nice development in Australia and in the U. K.
Where we have actually distributors in place selling the ClearCorrect franchise. So, the European pilots and the Japanese pilots, the contribution to the growth of the business again has been insignificant. What we have been pleased about because up to now, the perception in the dental community has been that ClearCorrect is just a product for GPs because it is limited when it comes to treatments, so the range of indications. And we have now seen also orthodontists or specialists in the U. S.
Converting to ClearCorrect, which is obviously for us a very positive signal that the quality of the product portfolio is compelling and is actually competitive.
Maybe a follow-up here. Or do you think it's also related to the Aitaro issue 3Shape scanner that the line is not allowing the 3Shape scanner to be used for the treatment?
Yes, to a certain degree. We actually obviously what we did already in Q4 of last year, we started a promotion campaign for 3Shape users, especially the ones who were actually working with Invisalign. And we actually we put some interesting conversion packages to the market. And yes, that has been a successful campaign.
Okay. Many thanks. That's it from my side. Thanks.
The next question comes from Sebastian Walker from UBS. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi, there. It's Walker from UBS. Thanks for taking my questions. I have 2, if I could. One is on the guidance for the full year.
So given that you're tracking ahead of Q1, I mean, the reason for not upgrading the guidance for the full year, is that conservatism? Or is there something else there that you'd like to flag? And then my second question, so on the nonpremiumpremium split, could you give us the sales for the quarter, the sales split there? And then would it be possible to comment on margin progression for the quarter or for even the expectations for the full year just directionally? That would be great.
Thanks.
The comment is always the same when it comes to changing the guidance. It's Q1. It's 3 months into the year. We have April obviously also almost through. And we just believe it's still too early to actually change the guidance.
We don't have visibility into Q3 and Q4. So once we will have 2 quarters behind us, we know how these 2 quarters developed, then I think we can with much more confidence also talk about changing the guidance for the full year. When it comes to your question on the margins, Peter, maybe you want to
say something there? I mean, the margin expectation for the full year is also reflected in our guidance. And as Mark has already commented, we are fully on track to reach our full year guidance where we guided that we achieved a stable EBIT margin development due to the rise in higher depreciation and amortization that will be a stable development, whereas we expect a further improvement of the underlying EBITDA margin for the full year.
And your question on premium versus non premium, what I can tell you is that actually that the non premium business is actually continuing to over proportionally grow compared to the premium business. We are happy with the development of the nonpremium business, but also with the premium business. But then I want you to appreciate that we are not disclosing the split between how much is premium and how much is nonpremium. Again, I can tell you that obviously the percentage of nonpremium is steadily increasing because we have we are growing over proportional that is our nonpremium business compared to the premium ones.
Great, thanks. Maybe just one more separate question on ClearCorrect. If you could talk about ASP trends and maybe an ASP comparison with the line, that would be helpful as well.
Yes. Good question. If you look at these new cases and that's actually the stronghold of ClearCorrect, the ASP of ClearCorrect is considerably lower than the ASP of Invisalign. When it comes to bigger users, and especially we talk here about the specialists, the orthodontists, Invisalign has a very compelling program in place for these larger users. So, the larger the user is, the less the price gap between ClearCorrect and Invisalign is.
In other words, we are extremely price competitive when it comes to GPs, when it comes to smaller or medium sized users. The bigger the users get, the less prominent the price cap is.
Thanks very much.
The next question comes from Maja Pataki from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead, madam. Yes, good morning. I have my first question is about the rollout or the distribution of dental monitoring. How are you going to introduce that in your client base?
And which are the countries that you're targeting first? And then my second question is regards to combining the e shop basically for Straumann incident. Can you tell us how much the online shopping actually represents of your revenues roughly? And whether you see this as an opportunity to convert some customers that are, as you say, like increase the share of wallet because they're using different kind of value brands? Thank you.
On the monitoring, Meyer, it's this is important in the future for our ortho business. So, treatment progress of ortho cases can actually be monitored with this application, this device, avoiding that patients have to see a dentist on a frequent basis. They only go to the dental office and see the dentist in case of a deviation between the plans, progress of the treatment versus the actual one. We talked about preventive dentistry. And I think we also mentioned during the last call that we will actually launch some pilots during the course of this year to test what could be a compelling portfolio to general practitioners when it comes to preventive dentistry.
And obviously, also there, dental monitoring could play a role because that application is not only allowing to monitor the progress of an ortho treatment. It can also be used to actually identify, for example, light spots, so early carriers, gum recession. So actually indications which are typical for GP practices. So to answer your question concretely, once we're going to start this the rollout in the European markets of Ortho and we are still in a market acceptance test phase in Europe, we will then also start with commercializing dental monitoring. And we also will actually include this in the upcoming preventive pilots.
Your question on the e shop, our e shop rate is roughly 30%. I think we can state this number. However, it is the 30% actually applies to our Straumann premium business. As you as we pointed out, up to the beginning of this year, we had the premium and the non premium businesses separated. The non premium business e shop penetration rate has been significantly lower.
And what you are pointing at is correct. We obviously hope that now with the new eShop, we can actually convince existing customers that they also buy the non premium business from us. And through being able to offer them one web shop and through being able to actually deliver them all the products in one shipment and sending them one invoice for premium and non premium products, we believe we have a compelling proposition.
All right. Thank you very much. Marker, just to double check, are you using dental monitoring already in your pilot project in Europe? Just asking if
you're not. No, I mean not yet. No, not yet. Okay.
Thank you. The next question comes from Julien Bournois from Exane. Please go ahead, sir.
Hello. Good morning, Marco. Good morning, Peter. I'm just left with 2 questions, which relate to the impact of Easter in Q1 and also to the impact of on the regenerative shortfall and the gain delays that you mentioned. Just curious whether this has been a significant headwind to your Q1 sales growth, whether you could quantify that to give us an estimate of how much you would have grown without those 2?
Do you want to take the question?
Yes. So thank you for your question, Julien. Coming back to the first question on the impact of the Easter. If you look at that from a pure technical point of view, there was one sales day less in the Q1 compared to previous year. But the more important fact is that Easter break in the previous year was in the Q2.
And of course, the dental practices are closed much, much longer than only this technical working day that we have the difference. So there will be a bigger 2nd year because of the lower comparative base in 2017. Coming to the second question on the impact of the Emdogain, where we said we need to deliver further documentation to the FDA and this is temporary hold of the Emdogain sales in the U. S. Market only, we expect to start sales again in the Q3 of this year and the impact that I expect is a low million single digit figure.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Tom Jones from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Mr. Jones, your line is open.
Apologies for that. Thank you for taking my questions. I have 2. The first, I just wanted to follow-up on Michael's question about cannibalization, specifically with reference to fully tapered implants. I just wondered if you made some comment about the wisdom and your decision to launch a neodent fully tapered implant into big key markets sometime ahead of when you're going to be launching a Straumann fully tapered.
I can understand the risk of cannibalization is low when you've got a full portfolio on the Straumann side, but that's the one area where you'll only have a competitive offering on the value side. So some comments there would be helpful. And then the second question is just about the general competitive environment really. I mean, you're clearly shooting the lights out and making your competitors' lives very, very difficult at the moment. But kind of wondering how they're responding, particularly with respect to the value side of the business, the nonpremium side.
They've known you're going to be coming for a while and now you seem to be rolling that business out much more aggressively. We'd just be interested to see what the current pricing trends are, how your competitors are kind of responding to having you in their territory in a big way now?
Your first question and it's interesting that this cannibalization question is now coming up again. After we've been selling we have been selling value and premium products in the same geography, obviously, through strong group companies now for many years. But to be concrete when it comes to the fully tabled implant, there are premium users who use fully tapered premium implants. And they use today Hydra Noble Active or they use 3i implants. So, these are actually the target groups we will go up.
If you look at our premium business, we are still predominantly a single tools replacement premium player. That's our stronghold. Even with BLT, we are making inroads, but very slowly into fully edentulous cases type of all on-four with BLT. But honestly, when it comes to immediacy, when it comes to fully edentulous cases, when it comes to aesthetics, despite the fact that we have now with the 2.9 millimeter very compelling product. The leading company in this space is Nobel, to be honest.
And they are the dominating force. So with BLX, we are convinced that we have something extremely compelling, not only from an implant design point of view, but also with the prosthetic components, with the full system behind it, a co diagnostics, 3 d printing, being able to actually print in the office surgical guides. All this together will make us a very fierce competitor to Nobel when it comes to these treatment protocols.
I mean, if I was being cynical, I could read into that that with Nobel getting Exact together having launched a whole bunch of new products over the last 12, 18 months, that this is potentially a bit more of a defensive rather than offensive move. I mean, would you strongly disagree with that? Or is there an element of truth there?
You mean BLX is a defensive move? No, no.
I mean, the push to launch the Neodent fully tapered implants into your
there is a misconception. We have had the NaledEnd drive already in the market since 4 years. So this is not GM is not a new implant design. GM is a new prosthetic system. We have problems with the Centimeters to convince referring GPs to switch from their existing system to actual Neodent.
So, we have been very successful with Neodent when it came to converting large GPs. So, dentists who do the surgical work and the prosthetic work, but we have been lacking behind in actually converting specialist referral networks because of the limitations of the Centimeters prosthetic components. And with GM, we have now an extremely competitive and compelling prosthetic offering also to GPs. What we also did, we actually added an additional implant design to the Neodent range. It's called Helix.
And Helix is actually a combination between a fully tapered and a parallel walled implant and the reception of the market of this design has been overwhelming. If I look at the percentage of shapes or implants sold under the GM line, the vast majority of the implants we have sold is the Helix implant. So, I think that's a misconception. We have to see and the drive in the market for many, many years. GM is more a prosthetic play to be able to actually convert referral networks and we have added one additional shape, which we call Helix, which is a state of the art design and the reception of that one has been overwhelmingly positive.
Perfect.
That's all great there and thanks for the clarification. And then on the competitive environment?
Yes. We have a little bit of insight into what our competitors did. And one of them, I don't want to name who I'm talking about, they have lower prices significantly. And they were trying to actually make up for their volume loss through reducing the prices and bringing volumes back. And if you look at the development of the sales of that specific company over the last quarter since they actually did the price cuts, nothing has actually happened on the volume side.
So to be honest, there are obviously efforts of some of the competitors to actually gain share back. The only recipe at hand is lowering prices. We have seen some of them lowering prices quite significantly. But actually impact on our business or on their business in terms of gaining share back or reconverting customers has been minimum.
Perfect. That's very helpful.
The next question comes from Keith Lee from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I just have a question on the DSO channel. So is your market share in DSO in line with your overall share in the implant market? Or are you still currently underweight in the channel? If you can just give us more color on that, please.
No, our share in the DSO space is very low. That's actually why we decided to put this dedicated organization in place and to put significant focus behind us penetrating this space. You also have to keep in mind that to make inroads into DSOs, it's not only about pricing of implants. You need to be able to offer comprehensive solutions. More and more the digital workflow is top of mind of DSOs.
They see that they can actually extract a lot of value by actually organizing their network more efficiently. And that actually happens through digitalizing the workflows. We have now a comprehensive and compelling digital offering at hand. And also most of the DSOs, they actually offer premium and non premium solutions. So now with Neodent and with Straumann BLT and in the future BLX, we also have a compelling implant portfolio.
So it's more than just the pricing on implant. You really need to play all the different parameters. And at the end, they need they want you to be considered as a strategic partner helping them to make their network more efficient. And we have not been focusing on this in the past, and we also did not have the whole product portfolio and solution portfolio at hand. We have that now obviously, and that's why we thought it's the right point in time to actually start putting more focus on this segment.
And can I just follow-up on the BLX? What's the expectation for the launch there? Is that a second half story? Are you expecting sometime sooner?
No, we will know? No, we will actually go into a full market release at IDS in March of 2019. That's actually the target date. We already have CE Mark for most of the diameters, but we have now only a limited prosthetic portfolio in place. So that's actually what we are working on.
So we obviously already doing cases with many doctors to document how the system performs. But at IDS in March, we're going to enter the full market release and then we will also have all diameters and all the prosthetic components available.
Okay, great. Thank you.
The next question comes from Veronika Dubajova from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Marco. Good morning, Peter. Thank you for taking my question. I only have one actually. Just looking at the Align numbers last night and obviously it sounds like your ClearCorrect business is off to a very strong start as well.
I'm just curious how you're thinking about the current growth in the Clear aligner market? And if we were to fast forward 4 to 5 years, where do you think the market potential sits based on the information that you now have? Thank you.
If you look at the right numbers, they are all actually the market. So you can take the growth of the line and actually assume their share is roughly 3 quarters of the total market. So, the market is extremely dynamic. It's still predominantly a U. S.
Play. 2 thirds of the revenue our line generates in the U. S. There is still tons of untapped potential outside of the U. S.
The number 2 market is already China. That's actually already the 2nd largest clear aligner market worldwide. If you look at markets like the large European markets, the Germanys, the Spains, Italy, Israel, U. K, France or you even take Japan into consideration. All Latin America, Brazil, it's a huge potential still ahead of us.
And we also know that today only roughly one out of 8 cases also cases which could potentially be done with clear aligners or done with clear aligners. So there the majority is still done the conventional way. And if you have the choice as a patient between traditional wires and brackets and clear liners and you have to pay more or less the same price for a treatment, I guess the majority of the patients they would go for a clear aligner solution. So, we believe that this space, this segment still has tremendous growth potential.
And you're not willing to speculate on whether the 30% plus growth rate that aligns reporting right now is sustainable for the medium term?
That's just my personal view. And if you look at if you get from 1 to 8 to 1 to 4 over the next 5 to 6 years, you can do the calculation yourself, then 30% is actually at the lower limit at the lower band. Yes, I personally believe, yes, that market will continue to grow more than 30% over the next years.
Okay. Fantastic. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Daniel Jelovka from Mirabeau. Please go ahead.
Good morning as well. Just two questions left. One is on BOPTIST. You mentioned in the press release that the potential in Brazil is 500,000 treatments for Biomaterials. So I wonder a bit how fast can you gain market share there?
I mean, I guess, for a product like the GM, it's easier to gain market share, easier in brackets, of course, than to gain market share with Bottice. I guess, Kaistrik and Kor is already there. And also outside of Brazil, is there also potential in, let's say, in Americas in general for Bottice? And that's the first question. The second question is the China.
You mentioned CAT Chem, the center. I mean, how important will that be in the future compared to your other CADCAM centers in Japan, U. S, Europe? I mean, the adoption there, is that quicker or yes, you'll see the point I want to raise. Thank you.
Thank you, Daniel, for your questions. I agree with you that Geistlich is obviously the dominating force when it comes to Biomaterials. And I also I openly admit that, for example, in Germany, it is quite a challenge for us to convert Geistri used bodies. That's not something that happens overnight, okay? In Brazil, the situation is different.
And why is it different? In Brazil, we have 50% market share with Neodent in the implant space, okay? That also means that the majority of the key opinion leaders in the Brazilian market, they work for Neodent. With all of these key opinion leaders, we have contracts. And in these contracts, they are obliged to only use Neodent products, okay?
So, the key opinion leaders in Brazil, they are already jumping as we speak on bodies, okay? And they are leaving guys behind. So Brazil is a specific situation. So I'm convinced that the guys will suffer a lot in the Brazilian market. I also agree with the statement that outside of Brazil, it's obviously a different ballgame and it's much more difficult to actually convert guys to use to bot this.
When it comes to the U. S, we are in the process of registering Votis also for the U. S. And during the course of this year, we are positive to get the registration through. And then we will obviously also launch the bodies range in the U.
S. Market. Your second question on the Chinese CADCAM Milling Center. Why did we do this? Yes, we have a CADCAM Milling Center in Japan.
However, you need to have registration. If you do customized apartments, you do SRBBs, you need registration for these products in China, despite the fact that these are in a way lab products, they are sold to labs. But anyway, you need to have a CFDA registration for these products. So, we could not send mill products in our Japanese milling center and send them into the Chinese territory. That's why we've decided to set up our own billing center in China.
And initially, it will just serve the Chinese customers. We believe that actually the potential is obviously huge. The Chinese market is the fastest growing dental implant market worldwide. And we are now very well positioned to actually support our customers and already known customers with the prosthetics and restorative element. Just to mention, we will offer not only Straumann prosthetic solutions, we will also offer MPS.
So, solutions to competitive systems out of our Shenzhen milling center.
Okay. Thanks very much.
The last question is a follow-up question from Sebastian Walker from UBS. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi, there. Just a quick one, an update on the ceramic new ceramic implant launches and how they're tracking?
Yes. We have just recently launched our Straumann Pure 2 piece ceramic implant. We had until just recently only a monotype ceramic in the market. Now we have also a 2 piece ceramic implant available to our customers. We are working on an injection molded based ceramic implant, which we will also launch during IDS in Q1 2019.
Thank you.
So, thank you for your interest and your questions. In closing, I would like to draw your attention to the Investor Relations calendar, which you can find on Slide 21 and on our website. Thank you again for joining us. Have a good day and goodbye.
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