Hi, all. My name is Caroline Borowski, and I'm part of the Healthcare Investment Banking group here at JP Morgan. It is my pleasure to introduce Jim Clemmer, President and CEO of AngioDynamics.
Thank you, Caroline, and thanks to JP Morgan for a great conference this year. Appreciate the invitation. So let me welcome you to the AngioDynamics presentation. We'll spend the next 20 minutes or so talking about our company, and I'll be joined by our Executive Vice President and CFO, Steve Trowbridge. We'll take questions. Let me remind you again what you'll hear today from me are forward-looking statements, ideas, strategies, and where we're interested in taking our company to provide additional shareholder value over time. I can't guarantee everything will happen on the timeline I lay out, but we'll do our best to be transparent to each of you during the process. AngioDynamics is a 35-year-old company, founded to serve the interventional radiologist community many years ago. We've established a period of trust over those years, known for high-quality products delivering great patient outcomes.
That was fine for a lot of our journey, but about four-five years ago, we looked at where we were, where we should be, and how to get there, changing and transforming our portfolio first, then even our customer base, to make our company more interesting and more valuable, starting with our customers first, the patients they serve, and ultimately our shareholders, who can benefit from increased value. So we're really a company today in that transformation. We talk about it all the time, but you see it here in our actions more than just our words. We've changed our portfolio more than once. We'll probably change it again as we strive to have a more focused company, focused on technologies that drive patient outcomes that can be measured, and those measured outpatient outcomes can drive physician behavior changes.
So on our journey, we're investing in technology, and we're less interested in lower-tech products or slow-growth markets. Part of our journey also looks at the sizes of the markets we enter and the growth rates of those markets. We know technology drives differences in outcomes. It also drives differences in products that are selected to drive how those care delivery patterns are changed. We're on top of that. Our company, again, is changing our portfolio based upon the knowledge and the courage necessary as a small-cap public company in tough times, but we know we're gonna create more value, again, patients we serve and our investor base through this process. So we're really focused on two main disease states, and obviously, these are the largest disease states that cause mortality globally. You know, one in three people die each year from cardiovascular disease.
You'll see in a moment how our company's structured, but a lot of our efforts are focused on cardiovascular disease and solid tumor cancer treatment. We're in the right spots. It's a crowded field, but this is where innovation and technology drives outcomes and makes a difference. So we think globally, we've got products that are adaptable for these care delivery needs around the globe. When we look at the markets we want to serve... You'll hear in a moment more about our structure. We've got a medical device structure, more focused on everyday products used for, you know, putting chemotherapy in somebody's body or treating people with different, different modalities, but our med tech products, the future of our company, what we're building, is really set up well from a TAM perspective as well.
Looking at the disease states we can serve on this sheet, our products that serve those disease states and the sizes of those markets are really impressive. Back in 2018, when we started this journey to change our company, our entire TAM for our company was just over $1 billion. Today, as you can see from this slide, you see TAMs in larger than that in just the individual disease states we're focused on treating. The products you see here are unique in their technical lineup and how they're built. Science adds to our technology and drives those patient outcomes. Some of these markets are mature, and some are growing and expanding while we speak.
A lot of the work that we'll do with our products is focused on taking share when we get new indications, clinical expansions, or geographic expansions, and some are also focused on market development, opening up and expanding these in new markets through the use of our technologies on that journey. But this is an impressive look at the disease states we can treat with the products we have in our bag today, and each of these products have active development programs, either from product development, clinical development, or economic and geographic expansion of how these products can serve the markets. Today, these markets are really large, and they're growing. We'll be a larger player in each of those. This is a busy slide. We're a complicated company. We have a lot of products in our bag today.
I mentioned earlier, we run our company in two different operating segments, and our results are reported that way. On the left side of this screen, you'll see our Med Tech segment. That's where we're primarily focused. We're investing a lot of our energy and resources in these products and the expansion of these markets. On the right side is our Med Device products. These are paying the bills today. These are stable markets, less growth-oriented. We're not allocating a lot of resources there, but they do a good job in giving us the balance of free cash generation, EBIT, while we're transforming our portfolio and more focused on our Med Tech business. On the right side of the screen, we've actually trimmed that product portfolio recently. Back in June, we announced the divestiture of two product lines that were in that area for a while.
They were not core to us, but they were for another company. We received good economic value. We capitalized our balance sheet. We stand here today with a company with a really strong net cash position and zero debt on our balance sheet. Tomorrow, we look at maybe other portfolio moves as really being more strategic first, still trying to bring in our focus on maybe a couple product lines we're still not as interested in. They may be complex markets, low gross margin, and small, but we're not as interested in fighting those battles to grow in those areas where the outcomes are not as large for us. So if you see a move from us, again, bringing our portfolio in, it's strategy-driven first to align ourselves to our intended goals, and second, there may be economic reasons why it gives a benefit as well.
But the left side of the screen is our focus. If you take a look at those disease states we've outlined there, starting with peripheral artery disease. In 2019, when we started this journey to transform our company, we sold our largest business at the time. It was a kit packing business. We'll call it low tech or commodity-focused. We sold it to Medline, a really great company, a really great kit packer, and does well with that. We would not compete well in those markets growing forward. Well, later that year, we bought a company called Eximo Medical, which today is the Auryon PAD system for atherectomy. We launched that product in September of 2020, six months after the pandemic hit. You know, a small company launches a new product with four really good competitors in that space.
Well, in November, we hit our $100 million of sales since launch, 38 months. We're really proud of that. Small company like us, competing in tough global markets during the pandemic, four good competitors. It shows what we can do when you have a great piece of science, which Auryon is, the way it works, and a company focused on the transformation around it. We aligned ourselves to the market realities with Auryon. We built an entirely dedicated sales and marketing team, a clinical support team to train our users, and the product itself is unique and special. You'll hear more about it in a minute. But that's a precursor of what we're going to do with our other products and other launches. We know we can grow at or above rate in these large markets. We've shown that with Auryon.
A lot of room for Auryon to grow. I'm not going to go through all the bullets in the slide. You can take these home, but you'll see continued investment in this space. We would think we have the most effective treatment for atherectomy today. We can treat people who are affiliated with PAD in the most safe and effective manner possible, and the way this science works, we believe, is applicable in other really large markets. We're really interested in entering the coronary atherectomy market with this space as well. We believe in how we deliver energy through our catheter-based laser technology. It affects what's inside the vessel wall and not the vessel wall itself. We can open up blood flow in a safe and effective way. Our venous thromboembolism market is really important to us.
We've just completed our clinical trial on our AlphaVac F1885 thrombectomy system. The trial was completed last month in December. The trial was intended to open up our pulmonary embolism market for AlphaVac F1885. Today, there's really two good companies in that space who've done a good job expanding that market. We agreed that catheter-based tools like these should be used as a frontline, first-line treatment. Historically, lytics have treated a lot of folks with DVT or PE, as we know. The market is shifting from lytic-based therapies to these interventional catheter-based tools. We've got a great one with AlphaVac. We're happy that we completed our enrollment in our trial. It's a 30-day patient follow-up is being completed as we speak. We'll soon file our data with the FDA.
We expect to be on label by the mid-calendar year of 2024 with a PE indication for AlphaVac F1885. We've got a unique product you hear about called AngioVac for thrombus and emboli. Then on the bottom, really interesting, our NanoKnife product delivers a non-thermal approach using energy, electrical fields, to treat solid tumors. We think it's ideally suited for men with intermediate risk prostate cancer, and we completed our PRESERVE trial last July. We got a 12-month patient follow-up there. We look to file later this year with the FDA for an indication to treat prostate tissue utilizing NanoKnife, giving treatment physicians and men who need this treatment a new option that doesn't exist today for focal treatment of this disease. So we're really excited about the technologies we have. They're unique and they're special.
Auryon is really one of the most special we have. As I mentioned, as part of our journey, we acquired this technology because we had our AngioVac product for venous treatment. We had AlphaVac in design and development with our R&D team, so we knew we'd be a really good company for years to come in treating venous disease. We were interested in the PAD market and artery disease as well. So we found Eximo Medical and found Auryon. We took advantage of it, bought it, and launched it to market. The way this product works is delivering different pulses of energy. 355 nanometer is the wavelength of energy that our laser generates, delivers it safely in the vessel wall, breaking up hard and soft calcification. We can treat above and below the knee and even treat in-stent restenosis, a really amazing device.
To enter the market, we knew we needed something special. There's four good players in this market today. We've taken share in the last three years. We continue to grow this market and take share, we believe, for years to come with Auryon. It's an amazing device. What Auryon does well also is open up other markets I mentioned earlier. We think the same way we deliver energy in the peripheral, anatomy can be used for coronary anatomy and even thrombectomy in the future going forward. Auryon is one example of our change and transformation. From a company that used to sell simple widgets to a science-based solution to a complex medical problem. It's who we are and how we're changing. Opens up a much larger, faster-growing market at much higher gross margins than selling simple widgets, part of our transformation....
The second area we're focused on, I mentioned a few minutes ago, about thrombectomy, thrombus management. You look at the venous thromboembolism market, I'll say that again, venous thromboembolism. It says VTE in the top left, for those of you that don't want a spell challenge today. VTE is a really exciting market. You've got the combination of DVT and PE, which forms the VTE market. As you guys know, there's a couple of good companies there that have done a good job getting out in front of this market, convincing folks that catheter-based interventions can and should be the best way to treat people up front. We agree, and we've designed our products with that purpose in mind. So we think we'll be a major player for years to come with our AngioVac product, which allows for an on-circuit approach to complex disease.
When I say on-circuit, I mean it utilizes a simultaneous reinfusion system to maintain that patient's blood throughout that procedure, put it back in their body safely, as blood loss is a risk that doctors face when treating complex cardiac diseases. AngioVac does a great job of pulling clot, putting blood back in the body, getting that patient healthy and well quickly, and giving that physician confidence they've done their job. Well, the products we have here are really neat. AngioVac is kind of the base for AlphaVac. As AngioVac was getting used more and more by doctors, they said to us, "Hey, guys, you know what? We love the vortex funnel tip you designed." You can see that picture in the top of the slide here. The vortex funnel tip opens up when the catheter is placed inside the venous system.
It enables our product to go wall to wall within the vessel and pull clot or thrombotic out safely. Doctors said, "Boy, we really love that large bore catheter and that vortex funnel tip. If you gave it to us on a handheld version, where we could control the aspiration pressure and use it in more applications, we think you'll have a real winner here," and we did. Our R&D team listened to physicians who had started to use other products for mechanical thrombectomy and gave us ideas of other design challenges that they didn't think were being met. Well, we incorporated those into our design. On the right side of the screen, you see the AlphaVac. Uses that vortex funnel tip.
On the right, that white purpose-built handle there gives doctors the control they always would seek, not just to control the aspiration pressure and the power, it gives them the control to reduce the blood loss they pull in with each pull. Also, steerability components that are not part of other companies' products. You know, when we first talk to people about our product, we tell them how it was designed and why it was designed. You don't need to use a guide wire with AlphaVac to treat. Most physicians say, "Wait a minute, I've been dropping guide wires my whole life. It's what I do for any procedure." You can still use it if you'd like. After they've done three or four procedures, we hear feedback. "Hey, you know what?
I tried it without a guide wire, and oh, my goodness, I can now go from the left pulmonary artery to the right, go back and forth very quickly without removing everything, starting over again. "You guys did a really good job here, really good design elements." So we're proud of the design we did. Again, we completed our PE study last month. We'll be filing for our PE indication soon. That's a really large market we're excited to open up, and later this year, we'll compete in that market, go head-to-head with the other players. We're a smaller company, but we have an amazing device. We'll do really well. We'll give you more guidance soon as to our expectations of this product over the next three years. And finally, at the bottom, I mentioned Auryon a few minutes ago.
The way Auryon works, the way we deliver that laser energy throughout that catheter wall and then ultimately inside the vessel wall, is really special and powerful. We think we can work as effectively for small vessel DVT, and small vessels break up clot and aspirate it out safely in a similar manner as to what we do with plaque and calcium in arteries. So we're building a different version of Auryon, same base unit, same laser unit you see there, four catheters on the right, but a couple new sizes, a bit larger, to serve the venous market, with some other things built in the product to sense blood, know when to pull, when not to.
But we'd love to launch this product within two years, and we'd be another player in that market to go after that DVT small vessel space, giving us a really, really strong portfolio to serve our physician customers, serve the patients they seek, and to compete in these large, fast-growing markets with unique technology and unique designs. This is our future. I mentioned a few minutes ago about NanoKnife. This is a really good story, too, and we've only got a few minutes. It's complex. We are a thermal energy solution with our microwave and our RF products today. We can help doctors use thermal ablation to treat some solid tumors when you can use thermal or heat, to treat that tumor. When you can't, when you've got a delicate organ and a delicate treatment option, NanoKnife is proving to be a great unique solution.
NanoKnife does not deliver heat or cold, no thermal energy. It delivers electrical pulses of energy through the probes that a physician will place around a tumor. Those probes create an electrical field around that tumor, and the electrical field penetrates the cellular wall of the tumor, creating nano-sized particles in the cell wall, allowing that tumor to die naturally and get flushed out of the body in the natural sense. It's a really unique, really special way to do things. We think it's purposely or perfectly designed for men with intermediate-risk prostate cancer, and that's what the PRESERVE Trial is intended to show. Again, we've completed the PRESERVE Trial in July, 12-month follow-up. To give you a scope of where we think it's important, about 40% of the men diagnosed annually in the U.S. fall into what's called intermediate risk.
They've either got a Gleason 3+4 or 4+3 on their scale. I think those are ideal candidates for a focal treatment like this. Again, a focal treatment is treating that gland, keeping it in the body, not removing it in a radical prostatectomy. So we want to reduce those side effects of incontinence and impotence that men still face anytime a radical prostatectomy is done. Whether it's robotic or not, there's still a high risk of those side effects. With NanoKnife, we've seen a lot of published data over the years by global physicians who've used this on many patients, published really strong data about the lack of side effects, how strong the product treats. So we're using the PRESERVE study to prove that.
We look forward to wrapping up that study this year, publishing our data, and then getting on label to give men this option. Urologists also love this, too. We've found that they've done it. The folks treating in our study have said, "Boy, I know how to do this. I use a BrachyGrid today." This follows the same process they know to use a BrachyGrid to place their probes around the intended target. It's also done in 40 minutes or so, not two-three hours like some other focal treatments. Urologists are also business people. They want to treat as many patients as they can with this novel device. Patient goes home that day, plays golf the next day, fishes with their grandkids. There's not a long recovery cycle.
We don't scar or damage the tissue, so three, five, 10 years afterwards, if the patient needs another treatment, whether it's nano or maybe another type of treatment, they can do that. Other treatment options don't exist with that protocol. Usually, it leaves scarring if you use radiation or other things. Nano doesn't do that. It's a special device. You'll hear more from us soon. We believe this is a $700 million US market and a $2 billion global market for the intermediate-risk prostate patient. Again, our company has changed on our portfolio. We're also changing how we do what we do globally. For the bulk of our existence, we've been a US-focused company. Over 80% of our revenue has come from the US. We've not done a great job overseas.
Well, a few years ago, we brought in a really great leader who brought in a great strategy and built a team around it, planning and preparing for us as we did this portfolio change. So today, she has done a great job aligning partners with us. Distribution partners will also give us clinical reach to support the use and training of our products in the field. So you've seen, if you look back over the last six-eight quarters, our international growth has exceeded our U.S. growth for the first time in our history. That's not an accident. It'll happen for the next years to come. We're building a company now, truly global. Even the size we are, the products have enough interest globally. The outreach is there. We'll support the growth, support our users over time.
The next six months of this calendar year, the first half of this year, we expect to see our CE Mark approval for Auryon and our CE Mark approval for AlphaVac-PE both occur in the next six months. So we've really got a great global approach to our technologies, opening up expansion and market opportunities. Finally, we have an off-cycle fiscal year, so we have a June 1 fiscal start. Last Friday, we gave our Q2 results. We also gave some other notes here. This is a quick summary from our Q2 results Friday. On the right side of the screen, you'll see a little bit more notes around the pathway expansion, IDE studies. On the bottom right, one more point I want to make: We've also got a complex manufacturing process. We make a lot of things.
We make PICC lines, we make ports, we have different energy products, we have lasers. Our company was founded in Upstate New York 35 years ago, north of Albany. That was fine 35 years ago. Today, the challenges we face on getting employees, there's an employee shortage. There's been challenges on, you know, the regular cost increases we faced, and we can't make our products fast enough at the rate we need to, to serve our customers. So we announced last week a two-year process to cease our manufacturing in Upstate New York and move our products to partners outside of our supply chain to be part of our supply chain. This is intended to do two things: serve our customers better as we grow, and to take cost out of the system.
We have cost that doesn't give customers or shareholders any benefit. We've got a high level of fixed overhead that is hard to absorb in today's market. We want to move that out of our cost structure. Today, about 80% of our Med Tech products I just talked to you about, comes through third-party partners already that are part of our supply chain, part of our quality network, 80%. In our Med Device products or older historic products, 20% comes through partner networks already. So we think we have a high level of confidence we'll complete this program in two years, utilizing partners that are already part of our supply chain, qualified and validated to be part of our network.
But it's important for us to serve our customers better, more reliably, and to take cost out that gives no value to our business, to our customers, or to our shareholders. So finally, we gave some guidance, changes on Friday. We'll be happy to talk to you about that and love to take questions from you. So with that, I'd like to invite Steve Trowbridge, our CFO, to join me, and Caroline will take questions. Thank you.
Thank you. So as we're thinking about the anticipated arrival of prostate tissue indication in late 2024, early 2025, how do you view IRE's competitive position entering the focal therapy space against its potential competitors?
I'll go ahead and give Jim a little bit of a break after the presentation that he gave. Thanks for the question, Caroline. We really think NanoKnife is a revolutionary treatment in focal ablation. So it's not just a difference of a technology with some small differences. It really is a completely different mechanism of action. So as Jim talked about, NanoKnife doesn't use extreme heat or extreme cold to achieve its desired tissue effect. It uses the electric fields that then create these nano-sized pores in the cell membrane, and then those cells are removed through the body's natural process. With the biggest piece of difference being that critical structures, blood vessels, bile ducts, nerve endings, remain patent.
... So it's an option, it's an opportunity now to treat patients in a way that just wasn't there before with other focal treatment options. The urology community is really looking for a focal treatment option today, more so than they were maybe five or 10 years ago. So we've seen some developments in that marketplace in terms of better resolution for imaging, a real desire to find an intermediate-risk treatment that is maybe something less than a full radical prostatectomy. I think there's been a view that maybe too many men have gone to a radical. Very good survival rates, but really significant quality of life side effects that Nano is able to eliminate. So there's no other treatment modality that can do that.
This really does set us apart, and it starts to build that indication, related to NanoKnife, to go along with the data that we have that sets it apart from other focal modalities.
Great. And how should we think about the growth profile of AlphaVac with the PE indication?
Yeah, definitely, we see the PE indication as a growth inflection point for AlphaVac. You know, one of the-- Jim did talk about the Q2 results. You know, we've seen a little bit of a pullback in our thrombus business. Some of that was, we think, some external factors. Some of that was also because we've had sites in our trial that were starting to pull back after we were getting towards the completion point of that. There's two other competitors on the market. They've got the indication. So although we think it clearly is going to be a growth inflection, it may not be immediate. It may not be something that there's a whole bolus of demand waiting up because there are these other competitive products out there. But there's a lot that we learned through the course of this study.
We learned how our features and benefits compare with the products that are currently on the market, and we're getting consistent feedback from the physicians who use our product that say that there's really an opportunity to address some unmet needs. So, you know, as you—as we get that indication, as we start the launch plan, we're going into, as Jim said, a relatively crowded market, but it's a market where there's still a lot of growth opportunities. You know, we think maybe 10% total of that total addressable market has been turned into a recognized market. So we're gonna grow with the market. We're also gonna be able to take some share. It, it's gonna take a little bit of time, but it's definitely gonna be a growth inflection for us.
In your presentation, you noted a planned Auryon DVT trial late in calendar year 2024. Can you talk about how you view the potential for the platform in relation to your existing thrombus portfolio?
Yeah, it's a good question to think about it in relation to the existing thrombus portfolio, because I think of it more as really additive, as opposed to something that just fits into the portfolio. If you think about the products that we have today, in AngioVac and AlphaVac, they're playing in a very small subset of that overall thrombus management market. And we talk about PE, so that's about half of that entire VTE market that Jim talked about. AlphaVac is gonna be the perfect device to go after PE. AngioVac has really been a product that has been more carving out a niche in, in the right heart. It's a smaller piece of that DVT side.
Neither of those two products are really designed or have the ability to go after the lower extremity DVT section of the thrombus market, and that's the biggest part of this market. So if you think about the morphology and the, and the physiology of the lower extremity market, typically, you've got clot that's a little bit more chronic. It's been around for a while. It's a little bit more organized and sometimes hard. So if you think about Auryon and how we talked about the mechanism of action of Auryon, I think it's perfectly situated to go after that market. A little bit smaller, get down into the lower extremities, address the, the harder calcifications. We've also got, as Jim said, some aspiration there. So you'll have both the, this dual mechanism of aspiration, but also energy-based opportunity to break up that clot.
So, you know, getting back to your question, in conjunction with our portfolio, it really allows us to round out the portfolio to now go after that entire thrombus market that today we don't really have the ability to go after.
For several years, you've talked about AngioDynamics' focus on being in investment mode. Talk to us about what that looks like over the coming fiscal year.
Yeah, great question. So as I mentioned earlier about our transformation, we are investing throughout this period. We've invested in three areas, primarily. First, our products, the R&D work, the design and development work, getting them launched. Second, the clinical and regulatory progress. We've built a great science and clinical affairs department in the last five years, who's guided these studies and guided our physicians who are interested in our products. And a great regulatory team to giving us these global indications and the geographic expansion we seek. And third, selling and marketing and field support for our products. So the balance of those three investments will continue. We've actually got a lot of them behind us, though. You look at Auryon, I mentioned earlier, we bought Auryon from Eximo Medical. They had no commercial people. We launched that product September of 2020.
Since then, we've added 75 people to our field, about half selling and marketing, half clinical support. Taking that business from zero, this year, it'll be between $45 million and $50 million, probably. When we go from 45 to 90, I'd only to double that again. We'll add some more people, but a lot of these investments, kind of realizing now the output of those investments. So you'll see those drop through our P&L in a different manner. We'll still invest, but at a lower rate than we've done to build this change and this transformational process. Again, the investment is still tied to our products being utilized around the globe by physicians who are well-trained to use them to treat people in need. Thank you.
What are your next steps from a clinical study standpoint now that PRESERVE and APEX have been fully enrolled?
Yeah. So the next step is to finish the follow-up period. So as Jim mentioned, with APEX, that's the PE trial that AlphaVac has been used in. We've finished the enrollment, and we just recently finished the final 30-day follow-up period for the last patient. So at this point, we're prepared over the course of the next few weeks to go ahead and submit to the FDA. And in the guidance that we've given, we've built in a typical, you know, five-six-month timeframe to go through that FDA approval process. On the PRESERVE side, the 12-month follow-up period, that's a 12-month follow-up period, so it's a little bit different than the 30-day follow-up period that you have in APEX. We completed enrollment in the NanoKnife prostate PRESERVE trial in July.
So this coming July, we'll finish that 12-month follow-up period, and then we'll follow that same process of getting ready to very quickly, once we get to that end of that follow-up period, get the information into the FDA and then go through that process to get the specific indication.
... Can you walk us through why a third-party outsourced manufacturing model is the right path forward for AngioDynamics, and what are the most significant advantages of this model for the company?
Yeah, good question. You know, I just talked about it a few minutes ago. Our company has a complex manufacturing process. Again, we make simple catheters, extrusion, plastics, molding, assembly, up to energy-based devices utilizing thermal and non-thermal energy, and even two different laser platforms. We're complicated. We do a lot of things. Our team has done a great job serving those markets. But again, to go forward, we've been challenged by inflation on raw materials, some components, transportation, even sterilization rates I've not seen in my 30-year industry career. We've also had employee challenges, and our Upstate New York facilities have kinda done the best they could do. We have not the employee base we need to grow with our company and serve it. So for us, it's important to have good quality manufacturers.
Making this move to vendors and suppliers who are part of our network today makes sense, and it takes risk out. These folks are part of our quality network. Our expectations have been shared back and forth. It reduces that risk. It also makes sure we can do a seamless transformation to those folks. But ultimately, we wanna serve our customers better and take costs out that don't give any value. To our shareholders, you'll see a move in gross margin when this, this move is done. We're gonna take out stranded costs that you can't really find a good mix in the future. Let it drop to the bottom line over time, give us some leverage that we need on a gross margin level.
Yeah, it really does start with gross margin. You asked the question, why is it the right move for AngioDynamics? It starts with gross margin. A few years ago, we started reporting our business into two reportable segments, MedTech and MedDevice, and that's how Jim talked about our products when he was going through his presentation. And as you saw, the higher growth, higher margin products are in that MedTech segment. When we first started reporting this way, you know, less than 20%, around 17% of our total revenue base was coming from that MedTech segment. Today, it's a third, so we're at 33% of our total revenue base.
But if you've watched our margin profile, we haven't really been able to get the full benefit of that mix shift in margins, and that's coming from some of the external factors that Jim talked about, the inflationary environment. You know, as he said, 80% of our current MedTech products are already made by third-party partners, so but about 80% of our MedDevice business is made in our, in our Queensbury manufacturing facility. We buy a little bit of stuff from a whole lot of different people to support a lot of different SKUs. It provides us. You know, makes us very susceptible to that inflationary environment. And then Jim talked about the tight labor market. We have great people that work in our Queensbury facility. They've been with us for a very long time.
The problem is we can't get enough of them, and coming out of COVID, we just haven't been able to fully staff three shifts. We can't run that facility in a way to really allow us to leverage that overhead. So this, this move allows us to work with those third-party manufacturers, complete a process that we have started, and as Jim said, work with partners that we've already got in our network. But then it allows us to fundamentally change our management overhead structure in that operations facility and take out those overhead costs, which are gonna drop right to the gross margin line, which then also drop to the bottom line.
That's very helpful. What is the right way to think about your portfolio over the long term? Will MedDevice still have a place in the long term, or do you expect the portfolio to shift purely to MedTech?
Yeah, good question. I mentioned before, we've made a move already six months ago, moved some products to another home. We may do it again. We think there's a good balance, though, between our MedDevice products that give us some stable cash and EBIT generation, funding investments in our MedTech portfolio. There's also some synergies in sales. You look at our thermal-based, microwave, our Solero microwave system, supporting the use of our NanoKnife non-thermal. Some physicians wanna have both options to treat, so it's nice to have some synergies. They don't exist across the portfolio, but we think a good balance will probably be part of what we do over time. But make, make no mistake, our MedTech business, which is about 33%-35% of revenue today, will grow at a faster rate. That's good for a few reasons.
It'll accelerate our growth rate corporately, but also that gross margin mix we get over time is beneficial, as those are much higher gross margin products continue to mix up over our future.
On your earnings call last week, you mentioned that you were beginning a limited market release of the Auryon radial catheter. What are the advantages of this new product for physicians and for patients relative to the existing setup?
Yeah, now we're excited. You know, our R&D team has worked really hard the last couple of years, and Auryon's a great example. The radial catheter launch, which is happening as we speak this week, is one of six planned launches this year that the R&D team has to add to what Auryon can do. So the radial catheter gives physicians a new approach to the body. Lets it go access through the wrist. Some physicians love this access point, as the patient can recover faster, go home faster. They can do more procedures in a given day. So we're now accommodating that with a specially designed Auryon that gives them the radial access point they seek. For us, we think it opens up a lot of physicians who've told us, "Hey, we love Auryon. This is amazing.
Come back and see us when you've got a radial approach," and we do now. So we're really excited. This is one of a few things we'll do. It won't change a hockey stick approach towards our revenue over time, but all these things over time are doing what our customers have asked, giving Auryon a platform again and a bully pulpit to show it's the best science, the best solution, the best way to treat patients with PAD.
You talked about this a little bit already, but do you want... Maybe can you give a little bit more details on the plans you have for international expansion beyond AlphaVac and Auryon over the coming years?
Mm-hmm. Sure, we do. I mean, I mentioned earlier, the leader we put in place, she's terrific and built a great team of people around them. We've done a great approach leveraging our spend and our investments by utilizing supplier partners in the right regions where we think we're aligned for growth. Getting the CE Mark for Auryon and AlphaVac are important, but it's not all we need. We need to keep fueling that growth. We've also done some things. The team overseas, combined with our scientific and clinical affairs team, has started a series of scientific symposiums. We just did our third one in November. I got to attend it. It was amazing.
For a company our size and scale, even with our complex portfolio, I got to watch doctors for three days interact with physicians who came there to learn about how Auryon works, why it's so special. They're trained on how it's used. What's so unique about NanoKnife? Why are doctors publishing these results that are amazing about the reduction in the side effects, you know, in men with prostate cancer and the treatment work? So we get to interact, you know, in a science-based format with doctors who are also presenting their data, utilizing our products, and how it's affected the outcomes of their patients. So it's been a great series our international team has done. We have the fourth one scheduled for March this year in Rome. Looking forward to that scientific symposium.
But it shows a way that our team has been enabled to graft their business differently in the U.S. We've got a great team of people. They're treating their global markets differently. Well, then, they have great growth, as you've seen. We expect more great things for years to come.
Great. I think that concludes today's presentation. Thank you so much for the time. Really appreciate it, and thank you all.