Well, let's get started. Sorry for the technical incident, and good morning or afternoon to all of you. Thank you for attending this conference call on the Straumann Group's third quarter 2026 results. Please take note of the disclaimer in our media release and on slide two. During this conference call, we are going to refer to the presentation slides that were published on our website this morning. As usual, the discussion will include some forward-looking statements. As shown on slide three, I will start with the performance overview. Isabelle will then cover the financial details, and afterwards, I will share strategic updates and our outlook. We will be happy to answer your questions at the end of the presentation. With this, let's move directly to slide five. I am very pleased to present another strong quarter for the Straumann Group.
Organic growth accelerated to 9.2%, despite a continued volatile macro environment, showing that we keep gaining market share in the segments we are playing in. Third quarter revenue reached CHF 667.1 million, an increase of 10.8% in Swiss francs. For the first nine months of the year, we generated just over CHF 2 billion in revenue, with organic growth of 8.3%. EMEA and Asia Pacific were a highlight. The EMEA region increased growth rates for the third time in a row over the past quarters, and Asia Pacific is back to double-digit growth. I will come to those regional dynamics in a moment. In implantology, our iEXCEL implant system continues to be the major driver of winning new customers in the premium segment, while Neodent is gaining significant share in the challenger segment across all our regions.
The opening of the third Neodent factory in Curitiba gives the brand the capacity to further support its global expansion. Today, I would like to take a closer look at our newest important innovation, the Straumann F.A.S.T. Full Arch Treatment solution, enabled by the new SIRIOS APS technology. It reflects the lead we are taking in shortening time to teeth through our important R&D investments, combining product and digital innovation together. Hence, those developments give us confidence in confirming the full-year outlook. Let me now turn to slide six and our regional performance during this quarter. Starting with EMEA, organic growth reached 10.5% in the third quarter and 8.9% for the first nine months. iEXCEL supported further premium customer conversions, while Neodent and Anthogyr contributed to the challenger segment. Germany, Switzerland, and Austria performed well alongside Poland, Romania, and Hungary.
Our clinical education events played also a key role in this dynamic, helping us introducing our new solutions and deepening customer relationships, as education is critical for innovation adoption and fast market penetration. In North America, organic growth reached 7.5% in the quarter and 7.9% over nine months. This is a very solid performance given cautious consumer sentiment and patient flow that remained broadly stable compared with past quarters. The dynamic pace of customer conversions in premium and challenger implantology, together with continued scanner demand, shows that our commercial execution is allowing us to outperforming the underlying market. Asia Pacific accelerated to 10.3% organic growth in the quarter, bringing nine months growth to 6.1%. Asia Pacific, excluding China, sorry, performed well in the third quarter, with strong growth in Japan and India, supported by iEXCEL and commercial activities around our challenger brand across Southeast Asia.
China also returned to growth after several challenging quarters, benefiting from the combination of a stable patient flow and a lower comparative base. Finally, Latin America delivered 6.5% organic growth in the quarter and 12.1% over the first nine months. Two dynamics shaped this performance. First, in Brazil, election-related uncertainty weighed on patient demand. Purchasing by large dental groups softened and orthodontist case volumes declined while scanner sales remained healthy, although below previous levels. We expect patient demand to recover as this uncertainty eases, and we remain confident in the market's growth potential. Second, dynamics in Latin America continue to expand in Hispanic markets, particularly Mexico and Colombia, where implant penetration remains low. Overall, we will continue to focus on revenue quality and further market share gains in private practices in Brazil.
With that regional overview, I will now hand over to Isabelle to take you through the financial performance in more detail.
Thank you, Guillaume, and good morning, good afternoon also from my side. It's a pleasure to walk you through our financial performance for the first nine months of 2026. Let me begin with the revenue bridge on slide eight. Revenue for the first nine months reached more than CHF 2 billion, up 8.3% organically and 4.9% in Swiss francs. The difference between those growth rates mainly reflects currency movements. Let me walk you through the bridge from left to right. We start the prior year revenue at around CHF 1.95 billion, and translating that base at current exchange rates reduces it by around CHF 60 million, while the M&A effect rounds to zero, giving us a comparable base of CHF 1.89 billion. The regional contributions to organic growth, then, at around CHF 157 million.
EMEA contributed CHF 68 million, or 43% of that increase, followed by North America with CHF 38 million, APAC with CHF 29 million, and Latin America with CHF 22 million. This brings us to the rounded closing figure of CHF 2.05 billion shown on the right of the graph. Currency still reduced nine-month revenue, but the headwind became a tailwind in the third quarter. Growth in Swiss francs reached 10.8%, exceeding organic growth of 9.2%. EMEA made the largest absolute contribution to organic growth, as you see in the graph. This brings me to China and the next phase of volume-based procurement on slide nine. As Guillaume mentioned, our business in China regained momentum in the third quarter after several challenging quarters marked by uncertainty around the next round of volume-based procurement, or the VBP 2.0.
The improvement is encouraging while the tender process remains at an early stage, and the rules have not yet been announced. We expect the tender process to be implemented in the third quarter of 2027. We will be able to assess the commercial implications more precisely once rules are available. The important point is that we enter this next phase with a broader portfolio across price segments and a strong local manufacturing base. Together, these capabilities give us the flexibility to respond to different purchasing conditions and continue developing a market where implant penetration remains very low. With that, I will now hand back to Guillaume for the strategy update and outlook.
Thank you, Isabelle. Let me now turn to the strategy update, starting with the size of our market opportunity on slide 11. When we look at our market position today, two things stand out: the strength of the business we have built on the one side and the size of the opportunity still ahead on the other side. This is the logic behind our Perform and Transform strategy, on which we are continuing to make strong progress. On the Perform side, we build from real strength. We are the clear global leader in implantology, and together with Regeneratives, our brands, clinical heritage, and innovation give us a powerful platform to keep outperforming the market. Leadership is obviously not the ceiling, though. With 35% share in our core implant business, there is still significant headroom to grow, especially with a strong innovation pipeline.
The Transform side adds a second important dimension of growth. In clear aligners, digital equipment, and CADCAM prosthetics, our positions are still small relative to the opportunity. As seen in previous quarters, the innovations we have invested in and launched lately are now starting to deliver results. Altogether, this gives us a very attractive runway for sustained growth. Now, let me talk about how we turn this opportunity into growth by combining product leadership with a better and more efficient experience for clinicians on slide 12. Product leadership starts with innovation. Differentiated solutions such as Straumann iEXCEL Implant Performance System or the SIRIOS intraoral scanner. They expand clinical applications, simplify treatment, and improve clinical outcomes. Being a product champion is only one part of the equation. Health professionals also expect connected solutions that simplify daily practice, support predictable clinical outcomes, and improve profitability.
Straumann AXS brings these solutions together in an integrated digital ecosystem, while education gives clinicians the skills and confidence to adopt them. Across implantology, orthodontics, and prosthetics, the same logic applies. Innovation creates differentiation, digitalization improves efficiency and engagement, and education drives adoption. We are making great progress on this strategy, and our latest investments in product innovation and digitalization are translating now into a real competitive advantage. Let me turn to slide 13 and highlight three areas of very significant progress. First, our scanner business continues to grow strongly and outperform the competition. We now have an installed base of more than 65,000 intraoral scanners across our markets. That scale matters. The scanner is the entry point to digital treatments, and a broad installed base creates more opportunities to connect clinicians to our ecosystem.
Our own brand accounts for the larger share of our scanner sales, and in the first nine months of 2026, we sold more intraoral scanner units than in all of 2025. Second area of strong progress, our Straumann AXS platform is gaining a lot of momentum. The platform now has more than 20,000 regular active users who connect to AXS through their intraoral scanners and use the services and treatment solutions available through it. The investment we made in the platform is now driving customer loyalty, with AXS users substantially more likely to reorder our solutions than non-users based on some initial revenue per customer analysis. Third area of strong progress, our unique end-to-end treatment solutions, leveraging our iEXCEL system and specifically delivered through AXS, are gaining now significant traction.
Together with higher reorder rates, this points to deeper customer engagement and the potential to grow our share of implant and prosthetic sales over time. It shows our product leadership and a connected digital experience reinforce each other. On slide 14, let me then show you how we bring those strengths together with our new F.A.S.T. treatment workflows. Leveraging the combination between product leadership and digital customer experience is at the foundation of our newly launched F.A.S.T. treatment solutions. The F.A.S.T. acronym standing for Fast, Accurate, Simple, and Trusted. Last quarter, we talked about our F.A.S.T. molar solution release, an end-to-end workflow for single-tooth treatment. It can save both clinicians and patients at least one appointment and an additional 30 minutes across the remaining appointments. It also supports the use of common original restorative components, creating additional value around iEXCEL.
To date, we have sold more than 100,000 specific F.A.S.T. molar abutments, demonstrating the rapid adoption of this unique solution. This adoption by clinicians is the proof of the significant value we are creating for each practice. It clearly demonstrates the need of connected workflow efficiency among practices and helps drive sales of iEXCEL implant. We have now applied this approach to full-arch treatment, which is one of the most interesting segments in our implant market. Let me turn to slide 15 and show how our new SIRIOS APS technology makes that treatment simpler. Full-arch treatment replaces all the teeth in one jaw with a fixed set of teeth supported by four to six implants. There are two options.
Patients can wait until healing of the implant placed is complete before receiving their new set of fixed teeth, or they may be able to receive a fixed set right after surgery, the so-called immediate loading treatment. Many patients prefer the second option, as they don't have to wear a removable denture during the healing phase. For clinicians, immediacy treatments require not only very precise, but also immediate information about the final position of the implants placed during the surgical phase. The clinician needs this information to make an immediate temporary restoration that fits the implant. Until today, practices are using a very costly specific scanner only for this. It is a cumbersome process and adds extra significant cost and working time to an already demanding procedure. Our SIRIOS APS innovation makes this process simpler and much more cost-efficient, powered by the new unique full-arch scanning APS technology.
As you can see in the video, small reference components available exclusively for the Straumann Group implant brands help a SIRIOS intraoral scanner capture precisely their positions immediately after surgery. The digital file is then sent to the AXS platform, where the clinician and the dental laboratory can work with the same information. This supports immediate full-arch treatment without dedicated, costly scanning equipment. The SIRIOS APS technology enables the efficient, common, F.A.S.T. Full Arch Treatment solution, which will be launched in the months to come. For practices, this makes full-arch treatment simpler, more efficient, and more cost-effective. For patients, it can mean getting their new smile sooner without going through a removable denture period. For Straumann, more conversions of full-arch cases to the iEXCEL implant system and more SIRIOS intraoral scanner sales. Let me now turn to the orthodontics on slide 16.
ClearCorrect delivered double-digit growth in its priority markets, as we continued to focus resources where the opportunity among general practitioners is most attractive. We are concentrating on commercial investment where we can build sufficient scale, while improvements in production and operations continue to deliver reduced cost. Our new digital tools help general practitioners identify suitable aligner cases and treat them with greater confidence. Case assessments support an optimal case selection. The Outcome Simulator helps clinicians presenting the treatment and increasing their case acceptance rate, while the RemoteCare supports clinicians monitoring the treatment progress between visits. Together, they give clinicians more confidence from the first consultation to the final phase of the treatment so that they can increase their number of case submission. We are beginning to see these tools enter everyday use.
In September, Outcome Simulator was already used in about 30% of the case submissions, while Case Assessment was used in almost 15%. This offering strengthens ClearCorrect's position with general practitioners, while a sharper geographic focus and lower costs improve the economics as volumes grow. Together, these advances keep the business on track to reach breakeven by the end of 2027. Let's move to slide 17. We have talked about our innovations and new solutions, but success comes only with customer adoption. The first quarter was filled with sold-out clinical education events, including International Esthetic Days in Copenhagen with 1,600 participants, and the Neodent symposiums in the U.S. and upcoming in Asia Pacific. These events are critical, helping us deepen customer relationships, drive adoption of our new solutions, and accelerate their market penetration. With that, let me now turn to our outlook for 2026 on slide 19.
Following the strong first nine months, we are pleased to confirm our full year outlook, including the profitability guidance we raised in June. Barring unforeseen events, we continue to expect high single-digit organic revenue growth and an improvement in the core EBIT margin of around 140- 170 basis points at constant 2025 exchange rates. The acceleration in revenue supports our growth outlook, while disciplined cost management and a more efficient manufacturing footprint underpin the margin improvement. We remain mindful of the different market conditions across regions and the pending VBP tender in China. Our positions in implantology, growing digital reach, and disciplined execution give us confidence in delivering the guidance. With this, we are happy to move to the Q&A session to answer your questions.
As usual, we kindly ask you to limit the number of questions to two in order to give other participants a chance to pose their questions within the available time. Chorus Call, can we have the first question, please?
Sure. The first question comes from Hugo Solvet of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi. Hello, good morning. Congrats on the great quarter, and thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, on North America, 7.5% organic growth in Q3. Curious whether you think you can keep up that pace into Q4 as the comps get a bit tougher? Obviously, there are concerns that the U.S. market could deteriorate next year. I know it's a bit early for you to comment on 2027, but could you share with us your view on what do you think is different in this rate cycle versus the previous one? Secondly, on China, I'd be keen to hear your thoughts on this open inquiry process for VBP. What do you think it implies, and whether that changes your expectations leading into VBP 2.0 next year? Thank you very much.
Thanks for the questions. They are obviously at the heart of what the short and mid-term is going to do for us. When it comes to North America, as expressed in our press release and the script, we have not seen any major difference from a patient flow standpoint. It's stable, and we have been playing in the high interest rate environment already for quite some time. We have seen the Fed interest rate decreasing a little bit, but not significantly, and the Treasury 10-years yield, it's anyway stayed always at a very high level. We don't expect this to change. We don't expect this to deteriorate very significantly. We believe that we can continue delivering a really very healthy growth rate in North America along the lines that we are doing right now, thanks to two things.
I think the first one is obviously very strong execution capabilities. I think the new management that came in last year in May is really delivering the sales leadership that we have been expecting, and especially our innovation pipeline is the way where we can continue increasing the speed of our new customer conversion. New customer conversion is the name of the game in a rather sluggish market, and I think as we are being able to demonstrate in the past quarter, we are able to significantly deliver on it. The new SIRIOS APS technology will be another strong one for us. As you know, in North America, full arch treatment is a very important segment of the implant market, and especially they are done by many specialists using a large volume of implants.
Being able to deliver this innovation, which is going to increase very significantly the impression process of an immediate full arch treatment, will create a lot of excitement among the specialist community. We believe that through those continued innovation, we should see still North America being on the good side, I would say, of our performance. When it comes to China, I think we have been already, as you remember, I'm sure, confident about China future. This is at the moment exactly happening as we have planned. We have planned a strong second half of 2026, which is actually coming. I believe that it's going to be the case also in the fourth quarter for two things. As expressed first, because the patient flow is still stable. The patient flow hit that we have taken with the announcement of VBP 2.0 has been happening last year.
Since this, we have been a rather stable patient flow. As we are now combining this with the much lower comparative base that is starting now for the next almost 12 months or until at least, I would say, May, June next year, we still see China as being a healthy region for us. First, because the comparative base again will be easing, and secondly, because whatever come with the VBP 2.0, we believe that we created all the necessary options to play a lot of different scenario. We have now local manufacturing for a year almost. We are, I think, well experienced with this for two of our brands that are the major brands in China for us right now, both Straumann and Anthogyr.
We have also created that partnership with a local player for entering the eco segment with our Medentika brand, that has started just in the beginning of last year, and that will be important to be ready for the VBP 2.0 and to be registered as such. We are playing in all the different price points with all different brands. We are doing local manufacturing with all our different brands also, and we will for differentiation, potentially have the opportunity to launch Neodent by mid-2027. We believe that we have a lot of different options to play the different rules, whatever VBP 2.0 will be coming with. That explaining our confidence on China in the months to come.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Graham Doyle from UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes, morning. Thanks a lot for taking my questions and congratulations, Guillaume. Hopefully, you get some time off now to relax after quite a busy few years. Just a couple of questions. One on China and the second then just on the midterm guidance. Just on China, could you just remind us around the private versus public split here? My understanding is private pricing is quite a bit below where we are in the public direct VBP side. So I am just wondering if there is a little bit of a dilution of any pricing headwind next year given that structure. Secondly, if you could also remind us in terms of the structure and philosophy around setting the midterm guidance. Was that set by the board in conjunction with you?
We have a lot of questions from investors who assume that that guidance very much will hold under Christopher's tenureship. But if you could just talk us through that again, it would be super helpful. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Graham. I think really good question on the China side, and I will try to be synthetic enough. First, private versus the public hospital business is split in between 70%-75% of the total business is private. 25% is public hospitals. Where the VBP is really applied in a mandatory manner is first on the public hospitals, then those 25%. This is where the price of what has been implemented in 2023 on the CNY 7,500 for a single implant case for patients have been still valid for the whole period. However, on the private side, there have been much more competition in between all the different private practices and DSOs. The price of a single implant case for patients went significantly down.
Meaning that from CNY 7,500 , the average pricing for an implant treatment is between CNY 4,000-CNY 4,500 . Okay, significantly below. Meaning that obviously on the private sector, the ASPs have been also decreasing. The question is really interesting, and we expressed that as well, that even though the VBP 2.0 will decrease pricing potentially a little bit, it will anyway still be higher certainly about the pricing that are actually being experienced on the private side. Let's say that you have a 20% price lower on the VBP side. It will have a very strong cushion effect by the fact that the private already lower than this.
That is one of the reasons why we are saying that the overall VBP 2.0 price effect will be maximum 5%-15% down, not more than this, because of the fact that the private sector is already much lower than the VBP 1.0 pricing level. When it comes to the guidance, yes, the midterm guidance has been obviously set very strongly with the board. We had our strategic midterm session with the board last year in April, May, and we all set what we called our go-beyond objective of 10% CAGR for the period with the board, and we do believe that this is our midterm guidance still in place, and this is what Christopher, but also the whole team here at the Straumann Group is committed to.
Awesome. That is super clear. Thank you very much, guys.
Next question comes from Hassan Al-Wakeel from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Firstly, on LATAM, if you could please quantify the Brazil performance in Q3, and discuss whether the weakness you have seen is temporary to your mind and a function of political uncertainty that you see improving in Q4, or indicative of maybe something broader. I think you mentioned the quality of revenue with regards to the expansion. Secondly, on 2027 margins, if you can talk to the confidence in achieving midterm targets next year and the building blocks around VBP 2.0 based on what you see today, some of the synergies from Smartee, Shanghai, the momentum in scanners, but also cost inflation, and FX, which looks to be a tailwind at current levels. Thank you.
Thank you, Hassan. I will take the first question. With regard to LATAM, yeah, indeed, we have seen the Brazil side entering into a challenging environment as the election was coming. I visited Brazil in September and really witnessed myself a very polarized country in between the two sides. That created also a very different kind of vision for the country for the future. The people were kind of in standby in order to look at what things will happen. As there is clarity now, for as much as we can say, based on the news that we have also learned today about Bolsonaro moving outside the country, we believe that we will come back to a more regular situation, and we will see then the higher growth rate when it comes to Brazil and Latin America.
This being said, I think you have also noted an important point. We want to make sure that in this kind of volatile environment, we are ensuring that our quality of earnings stay at the right level. We think that we do not want to buy market share with payment terms deterioration, as an example. We are also going to monitor this, and as we believe volume will come up, we are also going to continue doing that in a manner where we can continue to deliver the right gross margin from an improvement standpoint and for the overall profitability, which is a good segue for having Isabelle answering your second question.
Yeah. Thanks for your question, Hassan . I know that you don't expect the 2027 guidance, but let me maybe start with a more midterm outlook. Guillaume already said we have a very clear strategy. We stand by our commitment of a 10% growth CAGR on the top-line side, and the same is true for the quality of our earnings, which Guillaume just referenced as well. There we said we will see a CAGR of 40- 50 basis points every year. I think to reiterate, the raise in profit guidance this year is not a pull-forward effect. It means we will still see an uptick next year, and we are confident we can deliver on our midterm strategy, on the midterm guidance. I think the biggest building blocks you already mentioned.
For me, confidence in achieving our midterm guidance really comes on the one hand side from the ortho transformation being fully on track. We expect to reach our break even in the later half of next year, in Q4 2027, obviously with a very good contribution from Smartee, where we will then see the full year effect in our COGS. Same, of course, is true not only for the Shanghai campus but for our production network. I like to look at it in a much broader way, that we now really have a strong production network, and we can leverage our capabilities to respond to not only the VBP, but, for example, to tariffs we have in the U.S. to flexibly move around volumes and make sure we can get the best benefit for the group of it.
Last but not least, obviously, the continuation of all the profit improvement measures we've put into place in terms of OpEx as well.
Brilliant. Thank you.
Question comes from Vik Chopra from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning, and thanks for taking the questions. Two from me, maybe first starting off with China. As China returned to growth in the third quarter, I am curious whether you saw any changes in competitive behavior ahead of VBP 2.0, particularly from the domestic implant manufacturers. Then I had a quick follow-up, please.
Yeah, I think when it comes to China, we have not seen a major difference competitive behavior. Over the period, we have seen more aggressive pricing from Koreans, as an example, that drove some of that, also lowering the price on the private sector, but this has been happening now for the past two years. What we see and what has been public is that there have been much more Chinese companies registering for the VBP 2.0, and some that are still at the very early stage, some that are known already from us for quite some time. Then obviously, we believe that we will see some more active local Chinese company competition. But they will first, from our perspective, attack the challenger segment where Koreans are strong.
Once again, we will still need to see the rules that are going to be implemented to be able to map out what will be the next competitive landscape in the Chinese market.
Great, thank you. My follow-up question was on F.A.S.T. I am just curious, is there any pricing premium to this, or is the benefit purely volume and share? When is the F.A.S.T. full-arch launch? I am just trying to figure out if that is a contribution in 2027 or if it is more of a 2028 story. Thank you.
Good question. Yes, F.A.S.T. will come per se, not so much as an additional price, but it will drive our higher-end product portfolio, which is iEXCEL. Then it will drive a positive mix in our overall portfolio sales, which is the effect that we are also expecting, because the F.A.S.T., when it comes to F.A.S.T. molar or even F.A.S.T. full-arch, will be on the Straumann portfolio only the TorcFit connection. That means the iEXCEL connection for those reference components. Meaning that all customers and also the competitors that will be willing to use this very significant cost-effective workflow will need to be using iEXCEL. That is the very strong interest that we have here. As we explained a couple of quarters earlier, all our innovation will come within the iEXCEL environment. That will really significantly drive that mix.
Secondly speaking, we expect to launch it by very early January in North America and Europe and same in Latin America, while we will need some additional registration in the largest Asia Pacific countries such as Japan and China. It will be a 2027, okay, interesting innovation that would support 2027 growth rate.
The next question comes from Aisyah Noor from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, Guillaume and Isabelle. Thank you so much for taking my question. Just following up on Latin America, do you see Brazil's slowdown as temporary or more persistent? How do you feel about consensus 14% growth expectations for 2027? Then a technical question on EMEA. Given the particularly strong Q4 last year, how should we think about the growth trajectory over the next couple of quarters? Are you planning any price increases towards the year end, which on top of the strong performance of iEXCEL, could offset the tougher comp? Thank you.
When it comes to Brazil, then once again, we believe that the situation will ease. It's a bit too early to tell you exactly what we see right now, as an election has just been done last week, and we entered into the quarter only three weeks ago. But when we look at the resilience of this country that has proven to be pretty impressive in the past, we believe that there is no reason why Brazil would not be able to come back to, again, healthy growth rate, especially looking at our capability to keep delivering also innovation. The thing that is going to be interesting is the F.A.S.T. workflow will over time be available also on the Neodent portfolio. There is a lot of full-arch and immediacy treatment done in Latin America and especially in Brazil.
This is the way then the Neodent portfolio has been designed for immediacy treatment. Finally, when it comes to 2027, you know that we will have a major product launch for Neodent starting obviously by mid-year in Brazil and Latin America, which is the new implant system from Neodent, which is going to be the GT Plus replacing the existing, already very successful implant system. Then we have innovation to support growth in addition to an easing of the market situation. Then we are still confident for Latin America for 2027. When it comes to EMEA, you're totally right. I think Q4 in EMEA last year was really strong. But something which is really interesting when you look at our EMEA performance in Q3, we have a very strong performance coming by a super well-distributed performance.
On the one side, when you look at the geographic standpoint, we have very good performance from mature market. We explain in the press release, Germany, Switzerland, Nordics as well actually, but also from our Eastern European countries, Poland, Baltics, Hungary, Czech Republic have done very well during the third quarter. As we are seeing also, then on the Middle East, or at least that spark of these regions, we have Turkey, which has done very well. Then we are not depending on one place in EMEA, it's the entire regions where we have invested, if you remember, from a go-to-market standpoint, especially on Challenger, is delivering very well. The second very healthy indicator of growth is that all our franchises, Premium, Challenger, Digital, and Orthodontics, are all growing either high single digit or low double digit.
Then that means that we have a very well-distributed growth from all the innovations and portfolio that we have in this very large region. Which means that for us, with having a very balanced growth like this, we expect this trend to continue, obviously a little bit lower in the fourth quarter based on the very comparative base, but still very confident for the months to come and also in 2027. Obviously, we are going to plan some price increase, as we are doing every year. That will happen on January 1st, and we are currently finalizing all of this together with the teams.
Perfect. Thanks so much.
The next question comes from David Adlington from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys. Most of my question has been answered. Maybe just a technical one for Isabelle. Maybe Isabelle, could you give us an update on the FX impact on the full year guidance for this year, both top line and margin? That would be great. Thank you.
Yeah, sure. Thanks for your question, David. Happy to do so. I think as we already indicated, Q3 has been the third quarter in a very long time where we had a little bit of tailwind from FX. What we currently see, obviously it's a little bit guess working, but if you just applied the spot rates we saw end of September, we would expect an impact on the EBIT somewhere in between 70-80 basis points and roughly 200 basis points on the top line, obviously subject to how the exchange rates will now develop in Q4. But it is much milder than what we still expected to see when we just closed our half year results.
Super. Thank you.
The next question comes from Julien Ouaddour from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. The first one is on digital, which I think on our estimates, has contributed to roughly 200-300 basis points to group growth so far this year. Is it broadly the right order of magnitude? I saw on your slide, thanks for providing the 65,000 scanner install base. Can you just provide some color about the split between the iOS and 3Shape and maybe just the expected scanner placement for the full year? Just finally on digital, you begin to lap tough comps in 2027. Should we still think about similar contribution to group growth, or should it need to moderate next year? Just a quick follow-up to Graham's question on the midterm targets.
Just in order to reach the ambition of the 10% CAGR in 2027, do you need improvement in the underlying market growth or all the innovation that you have discussed on this call and market share gains alone can get you there? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Julien. You are challenging my memory for questions. We will try to then have all of them then. When it comes to digital, the impact on overall growth, we do not disclose results per franchise, but I would say that it is a really good one. It is a significant impact of digital, but still the biggest in absolute value is significantly implant still. Okay? That is the really good side for business is that while we are still selling much more digital, it is still a driver for core business. This is really what is super important for us. We do not sell iOS intraoral scanner just for the intraoral scanner segment, but also strategically speaking for building up our user base. That is a good segue to your second questions.
I want to also express the fact that while it has been an interesting contribution for our top line, our intraoral scanner has been also a very good contribution for the bottom line by the fact that we have been selling much more of our own intraoral scanner than third-party scanner with a much better gross margin. Then we have a very interesting effect this year from that sense. When it comes to the 65,000 intraoral scanner base that we have, a lot it is still the 3Shape, who we have still very strong development of connected workflows and that are allowing us to deliver this kind of connected end-to-end procedure through our AXS platform. We see this is something that we are starting to analyze. We have higher reorder and higher loyalty by customers using actively our AXS platform as we were expecting than the non-AXS users.
Then we see that loyalty effect starting to come in play. As it is a 12-month spaces analysis, it is still on a small cohort. Then we will not be releasing any number to date. In the future, we will be able to openly explain and demonstrate the significant impact of doing a business model through that platform that will allow us to have those recurring revenue and really strong loyalty through unique workflow. When it comes to our digital sales this year versus 2027, we believe that obviously launching another innovation on the scanner side with that APS technology will then continue to support growth on the digital side. We are still developing a lot of solutions around these digital workflows and those digital scanners. Yes, we are confident that we have the capability to continue to grow on top of what we have done this year.
Actually, something to consider and why I am saying this is that in the past, intraoral scanners were seen as one per practice, and we see obviously more and more intraoral scanners as being one per chair, meaning several intraoral scanners per practice. This is where it is opening up also significantly addressable market that would allow us for much more significant growth moving forward, especially as you want to use the unique workflow that we have been developing. Finally, when it comes to your midterm question, we do believe that we still have our destiny in our hands to be able to then grow along the guidance that we gave. Of course, a little help from a little tailwind from the market, we will not be against this, as you can imagine.
I think we have proven that we have been able to navigate complex environments and having an innovation pipeline, which is allowing us to grow significantly despite the macro that we have to fight against. Then I would say we are still with our innovation and with the development that we have planned implants with Neodent in 2027, SIRIOS new technology in 2027, and some additional things that we will not disclose right now will allow us to continue having a good growth rate to achieve the midterm guidance that we put out there.
Thank you for your excellent memory. Thank you again.
The next question comes from Richard Felton from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. Just one question from me, and it is on China and specifically the Shanghai campus. How much of your total China sales is now being produced in China? Is that facility also being used for other APAC markets? If possible, could you remind us of the benefit to your costs of shifting productions to China and the phasing of those benefits? Thank you.
Yeah. So the good question on our China campus. The way we are selling our product right now is really specifically to the private market, for the China campus. Because on the public market, we need to have our product registered in the VBP because it is really pretty strict. The public hospital in China are only able to order what is listed in the VBP, and our China campus was not, of course, registered at that time. That is why we are also expecting the VBP to come in because we would be able then to deliver 100% of our China product from our Shanghai manufacturing. When it comes to our classic technology. Because when it comes to the private market, we are distributing the larger part of the volume used through our China campus, which is titanium SLActive, meaning the classic version.
While our high-end, which is Roxolid and SLActive, are still only manufactured in Switzerland through imported goods. That is the way we are doing this, and we are still then looking forward having that VBP to serve even more China with our locally manufactured product. We are also, and I think that is also an interesting perspective, as Isabelle was expressing that we are looking at further leveraging our manufacturing footprint that has significantly evolved, for improving our gross margin over time. We are looking at registering our China campus for also exporting options that would be, of course, first for Southeast Asia markets and beyond if we believe that in non-strategic SKUs, it would be a way also to leverage our gross margin.
Next question comes from Julien Dormois from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi. Bonjour, Guillaume. Hello, Isabelle. Thanks for taking my questions. I am only left with housekeeping questions, I am afraid. Would you be kind enough maybe to help us dissect the growth in APAC in the third quarter? I think you did the split between China and ex-China in the previous quarters. I would just be interested to have this for Q3 and maybe how we should think about this into Q4, because I guess comps will also play an important role here in the coming quarter. The second question is pretty much housekeeping again, but I just noticed that on your slides when you represent the market size for digital equipment, in the current presentation, you put it as a CHF 1.8 billion market, while you were at CHF 2.6 billion at the capital markets day last year.
Just curious whether anything has changed here or it is just a segmentation issue on that side. The very last question relates to IDS, which will take place early next year. Anything we should expect from this forum in terms of new product launches or anything that you would like to flag at this stage, or don't want to steal the thunder, but curious.
Okay. Yeah, Julien, good question for a housekeeping question. I think still from a strategic standpoint, it is pretty interesting to look at China and outside China while we will not give really all the detailed growth rate because it was just to give an idea last quarter. China is on the very high single-digit growth standpoint. That outside China will be the low double digit. We have that dynamic in Q4 that will, yeah, potentially reverse. We are expecting strong double digit in China based on the very low Q4 and still high single or low double on Asia-Pacific outside China. We still think a very significant growth anyway from Asia-Pacific in the fourth quarter. When it comes to the segment of the iOS, when we were in the capital market there, we were having digital equipments integrating 3D printers, intraoral scanners, and milling machines.
We decided, because we are not active in milling machine anymore, to remove the milling machine segment. It is only the 3D printer and the iOS in which we are active that we have presented into this histogram. You are totally right with this.
The next question comes from Susannah Ludwig from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. My first question is a follow-up on digital. Can you talk about how the split between SIRIOS and 3Shape has shifted throughout 2026 and help think about the magnitude of the margin impact of this shift? The second is just on ClearCorrect. You spoke about digital double-digit growth in priority markets. Can I just confirm whether the U.S. is included as a priority market?
Yeah. SIRIOS versus 3Shape was the large majority of our units before we launched SIRIOS. The strategy with SIRIOS was really to go into emerging market. Just to explain also how we were viewing this. As our strategy is to enable all our users worldwide to connect with the Straumann AXS platform and leveraging our unique workflow, we have done that through our lower technology at a lower price, that we can really address all our different markets. In the meantime, it happened that new competitors came in, Shining 3D as an example, but some others like Medit that were really aggressive in term of pricing, even in mature market. That's what we also brought our SIRIOS technology.
Based on this, we have seen that on the global market, the high-end scanners that are, I would say above CHF 15,000 or Swiss francs per unit, have been reducing significantly. The major part of the market is now the middle or the entry level scanner, which is going to be between CHF 7,000- CHF 15,000 and SIRIOS has been part of it. That's where we have been able also to compete in mature market with SIRIOS and as a consequence, the largest part of our intraoral scanner today which is something like two-thirds, I would say big picture, is going to be our own technology. When you compare a third-party product like 3Shape, like we were having margin like a distributor versus our own technology, there is obviously a significant difference when it comes to gross margin.
Then it is, I would say, twice as much at least when we compare the gross margin we are doing on SIRIOS versus 3Shape TRIOS technology.
Priority markets and all-
Yes. Sorry. Yes. On the ClearCorrect side, yes, U.S. is definitely, I think, our number one priority market, and we have been very pleased to see growth actually in the third quarter in ClearCorrect also than in North America.
Great. Thank you.
The next question comes from Veronika Dubajova from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thank you for squeezing me in at the end, I really appreciate it. I am going to return to the favorite topics of the day, which is China and the U.S. On China, apologies, I must have misunderstood this, so I just want to make sure for the benefit for all of us that we understand your expectations for next year. Guillaume, when you talk about the 5%- 15% price cut you are expecting, is that across your entire portfolio, so that is the blended average of public and private, or is that just the price cut you are anticipating in the public segment? It was not clear to me. Then if you can remind us, obviously, yes, the market is much more private than it is public, but your market share in the public space is much stronger.
So what your breakdown for revenues is, that would be super helpful. Then my second question is on the U.S. consumer. Obviously, I think the ADA survey that recently came out looked pretty poor. What do you think explains the sort of stability in patient flows that you are seeing and commenting on versus the deterioration in that ADA survey sentiment? Thank you so much.
Veronika, fully understood that those kind of price perception on China are important and need as much clarification as possible. Things to be very clear, when we are saying 5%- 15%, we are talking about what we expect as a consequence from our total portfolio from a price reduction standpoint. Now, again, it will a lot depend on the rules, and when you are saying what it will be between private and public is not yet easy to define because it will depend on the segment that is going to be defined. Are we going to have segment in between locally manufactured and not locally manufactured? Are we going to have segment between high-end technology and lower-end technology, like Roxolid on one side, titanium on the other side?
That's why I was expressing different scenarios. Looking at those different scenarios, we believe we have some really good way to play, saying that when we look at those -5%, potentially -15% maximum, we will have the opportunity on our side by playing all our different options to increase significantly our volume. First, because of the low comparative base on the first six months, and also because of potentially being well-positioned on some of the segment which is going to be defined. At the end, as a conclusion, that's why we are seeing China as positive, as we have been expressing also for the second half and which is happening this year. We believe the different scenario and market structure will allow us still to perform.
Coming back to our own sales, we are still selling much more to the private sector because of the volume than the public sector, even though you are right, our market share in the public sector is higher than the market share in the private sector. But still, the biggest part of our business is on the private side. When it comes to U.S. consumer and ADA side, I think U.S. is the highest priced market when it comes to dentistry worldwide. What does it mean? It means that when you have very low conservative treatment, which is already still expensive, but when you do a decay treatment or when you do a cleaning treatment, some are reimbursed for the people that are having some insurance. The rest is always anywhere co-payments.
If you are short, and if obviously then inflation is eating a lot of your discretionary income, you don't go to the dentist for the small treatments. However, for the people that can afford having an implant, which is already $6,000, $7,000 U.S. dollars, very often this part of the population can still afford having an implant, and the price of the gallon being higher is having somewhat an impact. But when you can really pay $6,000 or $7,000 cash to a dentist, that means you can still be doing it. The fact that we have been working in a high interest rate for quite some times has already eliminated all the patients that were seeking for significant consumer credit for doing their full arch treatment, as we explained in the past.
Those cases did not come back yet because of the high interest rate that stayed then on those kind of level since end of 2022. Meaning that, again, we are not losing them anymore because they did not reappear. The reason that we see some of that stability is because the people that are paying some single implant or several implant cases are still having the financial capability to make it. That's the way we're explaining the difference in between the implant kind of performance and implant development versus the more conservative treatment where a certain part of the population in the U.S. cannot afford that anymore.
Very clear. Thank you, and congratulations again. I wish you all the best in hopefully a slightly more relaxed pace going forward.
Thank you very much, Veronika. Much appreciated.
The next question comes from Brandon Vazquez from William Blair. Please go ahead.
Hey, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. Guillaume, maybe I can ask you a higher level picture as we look into 2027, and I know we will probably get more details on this in the future, but if I could try to get a tease from you on what new products or pipeline products might we be expecting as we go into next year. I think the story, of course, is driven by innovation, and so I think investors are kind of curious what is coming next, or even at least in what segments do you guys think we might see some new products as we go into next year? Then, one follow-up for Isabelle. In the past, you guys have talked about moving your COGS to more of the local manufacturing where your local currencies are to help offset some of the FX headwinds.
I'm curious if you could update us where you think we are in that process and how meaningful of a benefit we could see from that, if you could quantify it at all on a go-forward basis. Thanks, guys.
Yeah. Thanks, Brandon. Actually, I really like. It's a good opportunity to summarize all the opportunity we are creating for 2027, which is explaining a little bit the reason why we are confident whatever the macro comes with. On the implant side, when we come first to the Straumann, then the premium side, we have all our unique workflow, which is going to be launched, just as I explained today. Since January, we will have all that technology, APS, that will allow us to have a very significant differentiation on full-arch. We will continue to roll out the single F.A.S.T. molar treatment. We are going to have also some new development on the Prosthetic side. We will continue to deliver additional options on the Straumann Roote side.
We are also, something important, starting to promote a very interesting design from our iEXCEL implant, which is a machine neck that will allow us to fight against potential complication around implant. You will hear about this, I'm sure, into our full year release in February, where it's going to give another options on the iEXCEL implant portfolio that will be really attractive. Still on implant, we are going to have our new Neodent, completely new system, that it's called already GT Plus, being presented at IDS, launched already in the Asia-Pacific. Then the starting on the second quarter. Then the same for North America, Latin America, fully launched in June with a major national congress. A lot of very important news when it comes to our Challenger brands.
When it comes to our digital side, there are some big news that we are going to work with. Of course, our partner on the 3D printing side, there have been a release of new technology on chairside 3D printer, which is an incredible technology called Nano, which is going to be connected with SIRIOS and the Straumann platform. Prosthetic will drive also the innovation and attraction and revenues together with our SIRIOS APS technology that will drive further SIRIOS sales. We are still working and be excited to work alongside 3Shape. That should come also with some development for IDS that we cannot talk about, obviously, right now. Digital will also be very well covered.
The thing we are obviously excited about is on our ClearCorrect side, where our scalloped trimline will become more widely available with all the different regulatory approval that we should get along 2027. Then in all our different business franchises, we have a lot of things to present that will drive the additional revenue. Really excited about what is coming in 2027 and what the team will be able to execute on it together with, and I want to express that as well. Those kind of congress and significant marketing and promotion and education activities are critical for this adoption. I am really happy to say that we are going to have a huge congress with the ITI World Symposium taking place in Italy in May next year. It is happening every three years.
The last one gathered more than between 5,000- 6,000 participants, driving a lot of sales of our new technology. It will also happen in 2027 together with the International Esthetic Days that we do in the second part of the year and also our yearly Neodent Congress in LATAM, in Brazil. That will be a worldwide congress. A lot of opportunity to not only launch innovation, but present innovation and our team fully ready to execute on the commercial side. This, Isabelle, will answer you the second one.
As excited as Guillaume is about the innovation, as excited I am about the lower exposure to the Swiss franc, obviously. Very good memory, Brandon. Just to remind everybody, a lot of the translational impact we saw was coming from the fact that we had roughly 20% of our cost base in Switzerland, but only 1% or 2% of our revenue. One of the big measures we took to mitigate this a little bit is, point one, the Shanghai campus, where we now produce in RMB for China, and then transferring more volumes to our campus in Andover, close to Boston, especially for the U.S., the South American market. This is now
I would not say fully finished, but Andover is up and running, which was one of the huge mitigating measures for the tariffs as well. Shanghai, as Guillaume explained earlier, a lot of the private market is now already delivered via the Shanghai campus, the public market not yet, given we will need to wait for VBP, but this is to come in 2027. Having said this, we are very confident we can reduce our Swiss franc cost base by roughly 3 percentage points compared to last year. We expect it to be just looking at it isolated is roughly 4 percentage points, but obviously still a little bit more to come, especially in China once the VBP has taken place.
Thank you very much.
The last question we can take today comes from Beatrice Fairbairn from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes, we can.
Yes.
Thank you. Just on ClearCorrect, you highlighted a more focused allocation of resources in Europe. Would you be able to expand a little bit on this and how this is impacting business performance? Just quickly on following up on LATAM, and sorry if I missed this earlier, but would you be able to perhaps quantify the growth in Brazil versus LATAM ex- Brazil and give a sense of how these markets compare relatively in terms of size? Thank you.
Yeah. When it comes to ClearCorrect, in EMEA, we have a good traction. We have been continuing obviously to focus on more the Western European side of EMEA when it comes to ClearCorrect, which is the most interesting market. We are actually delivering very well along the plan. We are going to continue to drive that growth before investing further in go-to-market for getting the critical mass on this side. Again, when I look at all our 14 focused market that we have been defining worldwide, we have a really good contribution from all of them. Yeah, really looking forward to keep this dynamic in 2027. When it comes to LATAM, Brazil represents something like 80% of our total business in Latin America. It is still a very big part of our business there.
However, we know that the market potential of all the other Latin American countries are representing much more than 20%. We have a double-digit strong growth rate in the what we call Hispanic hub. Country like Colombia, like Chile, like Argentina right now, driving really strong growth. That is where we are also investing additional resources as we have our own subsidiaries. Most of our competitors are still acting through distributors that are, let us say, cautious when it comes to investment. We have the benefit of really driving all our activities ourselves with our direct selling teams. We believe that Hispanic is going to take more and more share of our overall Latin American business. We see in, generally speaking, the ratio Brazil, Latin America is more 70/30 than the 80/20 that we have on our side.
That is where we believe that while Brazil will continue to grow, we expect our Hispanic hubs with the investment we have done will continue to really supersede growth of Brazil and take a larger share of the total business. With this, I want to thank you personally for your continued interest in Straumann Group. As I obviously now handing over to Christopher Norbye, my successor, this is my last time speaking to you at this earning call. I have valued a lot of our conversations, dialogue, and the trust especially that you have placed in us over the years. Your questions and your perspectives challenged me and the rest of the team in a good way and kept us always focused to deliver the highest potential performance.
I believe deeply in our strategy, obviously our team around the world, and the purpose we share. I am also confident in the Straumann Group future and in Christopher's leadership to continue our legacy, but especially to bring now Straumann Group in the next growth phase. For those of you I will not have the chance to see you again, thank you and goodbye for now. Since it is a pretty small world, I hope our path will obviously cross again. Thank you all for joining us today. Wish you a very nice day, and goodbye from Basel.