Welcome to the 28th Annual Needham Growth Conference. This next session will feature a discussion with the management of 3D Systems. We have with us today the company's CEO, Dr. Jeff Graves, and interim CFO and chief administrative officer, Phyllis Nordstrom. My name is Jim Ricchiuti, senior analyst in the equity research department at Needham, covering advanced industrial technology companies. So, Jeff, Phyllis, welcome.
Thank you.
Thanks, Jim.
So, why don't we start off with, I guess, look, 3D Systems has undergone a fairly significant makeover, Jeff, since you joined what, nearly five years ago. You've worked to refocus the company, some strategically important industrial and healthcare markets, in addition to realigning the product and solution portfolio. So, on the one hand, you've been investing, I think, in some interesting longer-term opportunities. But let's start with the changes we've seen at the company in the last couple of years for those who may need a refresher out there.
Sure, Jim, and thanks again for having us in. It's a pleasure to be here, as always, so a lot of changes in the last five years. My charter coming in from our board of directors was, make sure the company has a strong focus. We have a tremendous heritage in 3D printing. Make sure we focus on that, what's core to the business, and basically get out of things that are non-core. Particularly as digital manufacturing evolved into its end markets, 3D printing was a distinct end market, so basically, over the last five years, we've divested businesses that were broadly applicable to digital manufacturing. Many of them were how to take a digital image and apply it to machining technology or other things. We've divested all those technologies, either shut them down or sold them off over time.
We got to things that were closer to the core, like software that impacted the entire industry. We said, look, maybe we're not the best owner for that. It's good technology. Maybe we're just not the best owner for that. So, we've divested more recently some software assets. What we have really doubled down on are our three core technologies. That's the designing and building of printers, the printer technology itself. This industry continues to evolve. Most of the markets now are moving into factory environments or more mature production environments. So, how do you develop printers that are robust to either making parts for the human body or for other industrial applications? The materials that those machines use, which in the case of polymers are often unique materials for 3D printing. In the case of metals, they're primarily common alloys for specific applications that printing's moving into.
And then software to control the machines. So, intelligent software to make it easier to run these machines in a factory environment and in fleets of machines. So, the machines can learn from one another and improve their reliability, their accuracy based on one another. So, we've doubled down on those core technologies. We've divested others and through it all evolved our balance sheet to support long-term growth. The magic in it, if you will, is where do you place your bets in terms of where markets are going? So, it's one thing to say what's non-core and what's core. The other one is how do you focus those resources on specific growth applications?
Okay, which we're going to touch on in a moment. But I wanted to just get some perspective on the industry. It's been a roller coaster ride, not only for the industry, for 3D Systems, going back to the pandemic. And certainly the last two years, particularly with the pressure we've seen on CapEx budgets. So, I guess what I'm asking is, where are we, do you think, on this industry ride today? There've been some green shoots, but.
There have been, Jim, and it has been. It's an appropriate way to put it, a roller coaster. The big issue, I think, for our industry, coming out of the pandemic, where most things were shut down, 3D printing went through a real resurgence, so we had a couple of very good years where clearly the technology was getting to the point of a high degree of utility across a variety of industries. That was great, then with inflation going up, there was a fear of the Fed raising rates and the economy's cooling, so customers backed off their capital spending based on just concerns around softening the economy, and then the tariff situation hit. And tariffs for us have not been as much of a cost issue, they've been a little bit of a cost issue.
But we have largely regionalized our production, and we have a great deal of it in the United States. So, from a cost perspective, it hasn't been as hurtful. What did really impact us in the industry is the uncertainty in our customer base about where to spend their money. They're generally very well-capitalized companies, big-name companies in healthcare and in industrial. The question was, where should they put the extra capacity, the incremental capacity, which often involve 3D printing? That's been hurtful. And that's really put a damper on the economy. All that really needs to happen, and it's starting to happen now, is stability. So, we enter a more stable tariff environment. Companies, again, almost immediately start spending capital. We do see, as you mentioned, Jim, some green shoots in areas where companies are coming back saying, okay, I know I need capital in that investment.
Aerospace and defense, clearly the big investment area for the United States and many countries. So, capital spending there freed up. Other more consumer-facing industries, probably not, certainly not as much, but hopefully with stability that'll grow. And then healthcare is driven by the needs of patients. So, that has continued.
Okay. And let's maybe first focus on the healthcare solutions business. And maybe before we dig into that business, which I guess is around, what, 40%-46% of revenues through the first three quarters. You cover a couple of different areas in that dental, but just give us, and other orthopedic and surgical planning, but just give us some sense as to how much of that $130 million of revenues that I guess you generated through the first nine months in that market came from dental and how much came from other healthcare solutions. Maybe just help people understand how that business is comprised.
Sure. So, the general split within our healthcare business, it's split between orthopedic work, which we call MedTech, because it's evolved into some very distinct markets and applications, and dental. That revenue is split close to equally. It varies quarter by quarter, depending on the drivers in the dental business primarily. It can fluctuate more. The MedTech business related to orthopedics [is a] very stable business and growing very nicely. So, it continues, which is more than half of the revenue in our healthcare business, orthopedic related. So, that spans surgical planning with surgeons on how to repair, basically repair and treat bones. So, if a person has cancer of the bone or other damage to the bone from trauma, how does the doctor treat that through surgery? And now moving from the surgery process itself, for example, cutting guides, which need to be FDA approved, into bone implants.
How do we help bones be repaired or even self-grow back to close? So, where our focus in orthopedics, which is a really nice growth driver, is the repair process and the repair objects, if you will, for bone structures in orthopedics. That's been a nice, stable, double-digit growing business, very good business for us, very deep roots, very deep relationships. The dental business, the foundation of that business, if you will, are repair materials under our Vertex and NextDent brand and aligners. So, we're a big provider into the number one player in the aligner business. So, that printing technology and materials has been the bedrock of our dental business. And with that comes some volatility. An emerging part of that business is our dentures, replacement products, replacement for teeth, which I think we'll talk more about, Jim.
But so, going forward, we're very excited about our healthcare half of the company. Orthopedics, steady grower, good double-digit grower, deep, deep roots and relationships. Dental, historically a little bit more volatile, but growing nicely as we diversify now into replacement of teeth. So, very good businesses for us.
Maybe on the volatility in the dental aligner business, how would you characterize the relationship with that large customer right now?
It's a great relationship. It's a 20-year relationship we've had with the biggest provider in that market. It remains great. We signed a five-year contract two years ago to continue to support them with materials and technology. We will continue to do so. They're a great customer and they're very dominant in the industry. We're very proud to be related to them. That relationship will go on indefinitely. It's very strong. We're going two years into our contract with them. We continue to talk about new technologies. Very, very good base. That company is a public company. They talk a lot about their business. Our business basically mirrors their business. When they're up, we're doing well. When they're down, we feel the pressure as well. Last year was a tough year for them.
So, we're hopeful now that things are turning and moving in a better direction.
But this might be a question for you, Phyllis, but if you exclude the dental aligner business with that large customer from the nine months, I mean, how would you characterize the growth in dental? It was still pretty healthy, wasn't it? How would you characterize it?
Yeah, I'd say the growth in healthcare overall, yes, was very strong. And as Jeff talked about, PHS, the Med Tech business, orthopedics continues to grow at double-digit rates. Dental, I think, has stabilized. Again, we'll continue to increase. But really what carried us in healthcare was that medical technology piece of our business.
Okay. And interestingly, Jim, we participate in all four pieces of the dental market. So, straightening, protection, whether it's night guards or not, repair, and replacement. The repair portion of that business was only approved in Europe and elsewhere until just last week. We got the approval to carry our brand into the States, which allows us to sell the materials, which have been around for a number of years, very well respected. Unfortunately, we were excluded from the U.S. until very recently. So, that should add some wind in those sales as well. And then, of course, we have dentures.
Yeah, and that's what I'd like to zero in on now, because that seems like a strong opportunity for you and just the natural for this technology, so where are we with that? You have, what, FDA approval?
We do.
European approval is?
Process.
It's in process. It'll be here this summer. Yeah, we'll have it this summer.
So, I think we can appreciate why you'd be optimistic, but why don't you tell us?
Sure. So, yeah, you never thought when you were a kid you'd get excited about dentures, but the older you get. So, today in the United States, where we have full FDA approval for the printing technology and materials, which are wonderful technologies, there are over 60 million people that wear dentures in the United States. So, that market, if you say the average denture set for a person costs about $3,000, it's an $18 billion market for dentures in the United States to the patient, okay? Those dentures are manufactured by regional dental labs around the country. So, the dental labs are our customer for that. In terms of a revenue stream for us, the addressable market is $80 million a year for just ongoing recurring revenue in that market, $80 million a year. And then you've got the one-time revenue of each time you do a printer sale.
It's materials and printers. A wonderful brand new market that's just opening up for 3D printing. We can make a set of dentures for under $30, okay? Can be made with our technology. They're sold to the patient for, on average, $3,000 or more, okay, per denture set. In that whole supply chain, there's a lot of room for people to make money, to grow the business, to serve patients better. We can turn a denture set around, our technology can in 24 hours, and the cost of the denture is $30. Our revenue stream that we're targeting for that in total is a brand new $400 million revenue stream that we can address today with the FDA-approved printer and materials that we have. The question is why it's been zero, because they haven't been 3D printed in the past.
So, now that they are, how fast can we grow the market? So, my prediction, Jim, would be that that will be one of our largest revenue streams within a few years, because the economics and the aesthetics and the quality of the product, the durability, the toughness. Most dentures fail by people dropping them on the floor, frankly, or in the sink in the bathroom. Ours don't break. Ours don't break under normal use conditions. And they're a beautiful product, which you can patient match. So, perfect application of 3D printing, brand new market that's available to us. We want to capture as much of that printer and material market as we can and hopefully start ramping it this year.
Where do you stand with some of the prospective customers in that, and how meaningful could this be potentially even in 2026, recognizing it's going to be a multi-year growth?
Yeah, the question is how fast can it ramp? The economics, eventually the economics will determine the rise, because the product's beautiful and it works very well. The economics will be the driver, and they're significant. We just went into production in September of last year. We shipped about a dozen printers to some of the largest labs in the United States. The first of those customers actually just ordered another printer last week. So, clearly they like the technology. It's gaining traction. Our goal is to capture as much of this $80 million recurring revenue market as we can, as fast as we can. So, if you look today, our largest revenue stream is measured in the $30-$40 million range. So, within a few years, I think this revenue will be one of our most significant, if not the most significant for the company.
And how much it'll be in 2026, hard to predict. But importantly, there are no dentist approval of the manufacturing process required. It's driven by the FDA. So, the FDA has now blessed all the what we do. It's up to now the dentist to say, "I accept the product. I like the product." And feedback has been fantastic. So, we'll see how it goes. We'll see how fast it can ramp.
Now, you're not the only ones obviously chasing this market opportunity. How would you characterize the competitive environment?
Yeah. It's interesting. We've got one significant competitor that's in the market. The jetting technology that's used is called jetting, is very difficult. It requires obviously regulatory approval. It's a slow process and expensive to get in. It took us three years of development to get in this market. We have one significant competitor who, again, is starting from zero, just like us, about a year ago. Frankly, and it's like you're talking about your children, I like our product a lot better. It's beautiful, but it's also tough, rugged, wears well. Patient feedback has been fantastic. I think we're superior in terms of product performance. In terms of economics, we both should be very compelling. All in all, I think you'll see dental labs switch pretty quickly, Jim.
Okay. And maybe just quickly on orthopedics, the rest of the orthopedics business, how are you thinking about, in your term, in longer term? And then I want to touch on the other area that you guys have invested in healthcare.
So, with orthopedics, and again, we call it med tech, the core of that business is working with surgeons on how to repair and replace bones. That's it fundamentally. We've been dominant above the neck and on the spine. So, we've done, in my book, and it predates me by a long time, a great job repairing skulls, faces, all this. Traditionally, that was done with titanium. Now it's done with titanium in part, but it's also done with a new polymer, medical-grade polymer that's 3D printed called PEEK, which simulates bone structure and performance really well. And it's also transparent to radiation. So, if you have a tumor that's underneath a bone, you can be treated with this bone replacement.
So, there's a lot of growth factors in this business, but the new material application and because the response time now is much faster, we can turn around products within a day or two. We can move into the trauma market. So, the fastest growing part of our business right now in orthopedics are people that have undergone accidents. They've fallen, they've had car accidents, whatever it is. So, getting them a replacement or an aid within a day or two days to allow the surgeon to work on them is incredibly important. And we've established centers of excellence, if you will, in most of the leading research hospitals in the country that handle exotic cases. So, we're on the cutting edge of brand new applications across the body.
So, our strategy is, as we identify applications that are broadly needed in that point of care environment, we can carry them back, go get FDA approval, and then apply them to all the hospitals in the country. Very effective business model, which we knit together and call med tech for us. So, again, double-digit grower, great business, deep roots, deep relationships, large moats, in my opinion, around the business.
How important, Jeff, is that operation that you have in Colorado and Denver?
Extremely important. So, we have our application experts located in Littleton, Colorado, and also an equivalent facility in Leuven, Belgium, to handle European cases. So, in America, it's all about Littleton, which is a suburb of Denver. We have printing capability to make implants. We have application experts to work with surgeons daily to apply them. So, very important facility. And importantly, we've got the quality infrastructure needed and regulatory infrastructure to be fully compliant with government regulations, which has now positioned us to move into aerospace and defense because they rely on the same kind of systems.
Before we move into that, I just want to touch on that final piece in healthcare, which is the regenerative medicine, which, yeah, potentially it could be a huge opportunity. The question is, how do you, how will 3D Systems play in that? How should investors think about what you're doing in that work?
There’s a fascinating area. We have a wonderful partnership since 2017 with United Therapeutics. United Therapeutics, and I love their CEO, a visionary woman who came to us in 2017 with an idea of printing a human lung using materials that are generated in your own body, largely. Our challenge was to develop a printer technology that could print a human lung out of material that you would think looks much like Jell-O, okay? We are now capable, as of last year, of printing a full human lung with all the internal complexity that's native to your body out of material that has the consistency of Jell-O, and then United Therapeutics takes that printer and that product and then cellularizes it to turn it into a functional lung. We're working through those stages of technology. Never been done before.
If you look at the demand for lung replacements in the U.S. alone, it greatly outstrips supply. And that's with a severe limit on the demand. You have to qualify for demand. So, it will be a tremendous business for us when it's demonstrated, effective, and approved. And our partner talks about the timing on that. She said a couple of years ago that within X number of years, you will see a human being walking around with a printed lung in their body. And I have no doubt that will happen. I have great confidence in what we together are doing with them. And I think it's a matter now of timing. So, in a matter of years, I do believe you'll see somebody with a 3D printed lung that's fully functional, just as you have one today. So, everything looks very positive there.
Complete game changer for the company, Jim.
Investments that the company is making in this area?
Largely through our partnership, United Therapeutics has supported a lot of the R&D investment, virtually all the R&D investment. While it's represented in our OpEx, it's offset through reimbursements from them. Great partnership has been required. We've developed it basically there. We will need to buy the components and assemble the printers and ship them. But that'll be our role in the partnership is providing the printing technology, which again is mind-blowing.
Let's turn to industrials. And there was some news that you guys had in that market, actually a subset of that market, aerospace and defense. Maybe you can just help us with what that represents. It's a little over 50%, 54% or so of revenues through the first nine months, I think, of the year. Down double digits. I think it was down about 16%. Before we talk about maybe what led to that decline, and there were clearly CapEx budgets, but what are the biggest pieces of that industrial? And we're going to touch on aerospace and defense, but just in general, what goes into that?
So, historically, our industrial business, we do a lot of business with what are called service bureaus. There are people that make rapid parts on demand through machining or 3D printing. So, that's been a piece of our business. Automotive has been a piece of our business. In the consumer-facing part of the business, we participate heavily in jewelry. These are basically printing wax patterns to make jewelry, gold jewelry, largely for Asia, but also here in New York City, primarily for the big jewelry manufacturers. So, those types of businesses have been impacted by the whole CapEx environment. And that's why our industrial sector in general has been down. The bright spot has certainly been aerospace and defense, which we've invested in consistently. And it takes that over the last several years and is growing very rapidly now. So, we're very pleased with that.
Right. You put out a release, was it last week, saying that that business grew 15% last year, on track to be your largest industrial business in 2026?
Six.
Talk to us about what the company has done to take advantage of what clearly are higher defense budgets and where you play in that market, since it's a pretty large market?
So, if there's one area I'm critical of us in, we haven't really talked enough about aerospace and defense in the past, because we've had a long-term strategy around different elements of the business. What we did in that press release was kind of knit them all together to explain the strategy. Growing out of our healthcare business, we have excellent metal printing technology. And many of the A&D applications are in metals for titanium and highly reactive materials, nickel-based materials that are many of which are used in advanced weaponry systems, both autonomous and human-driven systems, flight systems, weapon systems, things of that nature. So, we had the printing technology for that. We basically, as customers came to us for that, we would demonstrate it and grow it.
Out of that initial interest, which goes back several years, we said, "Look, we're very good at printing new types of metals. Let's look at copper, copper-based materials." Two big markets for that. One is cooling for AI infrastructure applications, copper-based cooling. The other one is shipbuilding. So, copper and alloys are extremely resistant to seawater. So, it's a great business for 3D printing if you develop technology, which we did over time. So, moving into the major shipbuilders, which is a very concentrated industry now in the United States for defense applications, was a natural. The materials and metals are primarily standard alloys that are used. The other big application for us in this, and this is wholly unrecognized, is using polymer printers to print patterns for castings. So, metal castings.
Metal castings are still the dominant way metal parts are made and have been made for a couple of hundred years. What's different is you can 3D print a plastic to make an exotic shape in a casting. It's used today in all the advanced rocketry applications, the reusable rocket, whether it's civilian or military. All of the rocketry applications, propulsion uses this advanced printing technology for castings. Aircraft propulsion, other exotic turbine applications, whether they're land-based for energy or for flight propulsion, uses 3D printing for printing polymers for castings. And then we landed a very nice government development contract a couple of years ago to develop what I believe will be one of the world's largest and most efficient metal printing systems, which we're designing out in San Diego to do advanced metal parts.
So, what we decided was the business has been growing so nicely. Let's expand our Colorado facility where we already do healthcare, leverage all the quality systems, expand to make parts there. Very importantly, many of these customers want to develop the process, and then they want to bridge to a printer by making X number of parts. So, we said, "Let's put in capacity to support them through part manufacturing until they want to purchase a printer." So, when volumes rise enough that they either purchase the printer themselves or one of their suppliers purchases it, we can bridge them from process development in our new facility through initial part manufacturing, and then finally supply them with a printer for their long-term needs. So, that business model is relatively unique and is very popular right now.
This is not a case of 3D Systems going back in time and establishing a service bureau. You're demonstrating the capability to that A&D customer and then potentially, as you say, bridging to the.
That's exactly right, Jim, because these machines are relatively expensive relative to other machines, relative to polymer machines. They often require special capital approvals at customers. So, there could be a significant time lag between demonstrating technology and buying a printer. So, we said, "Well, let's fill that gap." They want us to. We'll fill that gap with some limited part manufacturing and then sell printers. So, it fits in the business model beautifully. They're happy with that approach. And then somebody else will pick up the volume when we're finished.
You also had news, maybe it was earlier in Q4, you had an update on some business activities that you have with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Maybe for those who've missed it, talk to us about the work you're doing both in defense, that's one of the markets, as well as the commercial markets, energy I guess.
Yes. Thanks, Jim, for asking about that. So, we've developed a high confidence level among the U.S. defense contractors, people like Lockheed and Northrop and Huntington Ingalls and others. They have a lot of confidence in our technology. These folks are selling defense systems into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It's one of the biggest. It's very public. It's one of the biggest customers of U.S. defense technology: Saudi Arabia. With those contracts, there's required offset spending within that country, within the kingdom. So, they said, "Well, what an excellent adoption of 3D printing manufacturing." The Saudis now, they can say, "Look, we can bring the technology into the country, staff it with Saudi citizens that are trained in 3D printing, make product that goes into the defense systems they're purchasing from the United States," and U.S. companies need an offset spend within the kingdom.
So, they're incentivized to buy the parts. The kingdom's incentivized to manufacture the parts locally for these new systems. And we provide the technology. So, we formed a joint venture with an extension of the Saudi government over there and recently picked up another partner, the Saudi Electricity Company as a third partner in the joint venture. I think of it, Jim, as a giant application center, which will also have some part-making capability. And again, when the volumes grow, they can sell printers, sell our technology into the Saudi customer base.
Before we get into a discussion on the financials, what new products should investors be focusing on that you guys have introduced that are potentially important for 2026?
Sure, sure. We've invested a lot of money in jetting technology. It supports our jewelry business, but the primary driver of that were the denture products. The denture products for us are going to be huge, without a doubt. It's going to be a very big product line for us. So, we've invested a lot of money, and the feedback on those printers has been excellent and on the materials, as I mentioned. So, I love that investment. We've now developed the, I believe, the world's largest, most reliable SLA system for printing polymers. A lot of that will be toward our defense applications for rocketry, for large castings and rocketry in particular, so that I'm excited about. We call it the SLA 825. It's 825 millimeters in size. We don't have to be too creative with names.
So, that's and it will double the print speed basically of prior versions and keep us the leader in that field, which is where the company was founded back in the 1980s. On the metal side of the business, our ability to print reactive materials is exceptional. Titanium. For those of you that know what a periodic table is, if you look right next to it, the brother of titanium is zirconium. What's one of the biggest applications for zirconium are nuclear power plants. So, we're very interested in exploring the extension of our metal printing technology into zirconium and broadly the support of nuclear power generation for a variety of applications from rocketry to obviously military vehicles, but also now primarily for data centers to power these data centers. So, love the extension into that. It's not a new product, but it's a new application.
And then people should just watch for how many approvals we gain in orthopedics from the FDA for continuing to drive that business. So, that's really where the future's at for us.
Got it. Good. The company had to make some tough decisions from a cost perspective with the demand environment. You had to, you know, headcount reductions. You also maintained, I think, some investments in some of these key areas. But remind us where you stand on the cost actions. And I guess the next follow-up to that is, you know, is there much more to do if we don't see a pickup in the demand environment or?
I'll talk about the strategy a little bit and let Phil talk about a few of the numbers. But fundamentally, when sales declined for the whole industry, everybody had to go into a cost-cutting mode. For us, a very difficult decision, very strategic was in our OpEx category, how much R&D spending do you retain? We were like one year into many three-year development plans for new products that we believe were critical to get to market. We largely maintained our R&D spend, which meant as sales dropped, as a percentage of revenue, it climbed. We peaked out at probably over 20% of revenue in R&D. And I take my hat off to our board of directors, they were supportive. Our stock took a hit for it, but we maintained our R&D spend until we're now able to launch those products.
Now there's an opportunity to bring that down some. And the industry as a whole, I think, spends 10% or more on R&D. But clearly there's a gap there that we can do some reductions in. You'll see over time. There's also, our company grew a lot by acquisition. There's also continues to be a number of sites we can consolidate and headcount optimization to do. So, Phyllis, do you want to share any of the numbers?
I mean, we publicly said we're at $50 million annualized savings at the end of this year. We have two more quarters of our stated cost reduction activities. You'll see that reflected in our budget as we introduce our 2026 priorities and financials associated with that. I think we're making good headway, but we're not losing traction on the things that are most important to our long-term growth.
Yeah, at the end of the day, Jim, and I, this is, people can either like this or not like this about the company. But we have taken a hit for it because our profitability has lagged. But we have been dedicated to spending on new technologies. Because 3D printing is right on the cusp in many industries of being a well-adopted, I'll put it that way, manufacturing process. Will it displace all the machining and casting in the world? No. Will it have a significant niche in the market? Absolutely. But it's for people that can make high-productivity machines that are very robust. And that's been our goal to get those out. So, we've maintained that spending, betting that, look, when the market does turn, that's when it pays off in terms of growth. But you've got to get the balance right.
We've made a lot of hard decisions on cost, and that's what we and most in the industry have had to do.
Phyllis, bring us up to date on the balance sheet, the cash debt position, maturities, as well as maybe the recently announced transaction.
Yeah, I think the thing that we've been most focused on, strengthening the balance sheet as we're doing the cost reduction activities, I think we've made great headway. One of the things that we wanted to make sure is that any current debt that we had coming due, we satisfied or took care of that. So, you'll see the majority of our, the vast majority of our debt is not due until 2030. We did our last of the cleanup here, I think, several weeks ago. That put us in a strong position as we enter into 2026, very, very little current debt remaining. Now what we're focused on is long-term growth and profitability, which we'll see start to come through the second half of 2026 in terms of these new product launches, material pull-through, which then lifts our profitability.
The company will start to look like a different company as we continue on the journey of our strategic priorities. The balance sheet is something we'll continue to look at. We have options in terms of setting our strategy and what we want to do from a financial perspective. We'll continue to make those decisions in the first half of 2026.
And maybe finally, you alluded to how investors are viewing the story and the industry, frankly. Yeah, another tough year. What would you like investors to really take away from the actions you've undergone and the prospects for improved financial performance in 2026 and beyond?
At the end of the day, my takeaway, I've been here five years now as CEO, is folks invest in this technology because they believe it's disruptive and it's going to exhibit outsized growth over the long term. So, the last year and a half has been very tough. And I think companies will be rewarded that stuck to their business, that focused it, that were cost-sensitive and they got as much cost out as they could, but without sacrificing the strategic assets of the business, which I feel good that we have not. You're rewarded on the backside of that. Yes, you take a hit, no doubt about it. You take a hit in the short term with the stock price. And we certainly have what you're counting on is eventually this technology takes off in a way that is transformative and revenue follows.
And then those that have established the right cost structure can make money. And that's where we're headed, Jim. I feel good about the discipline we've had. I also feel very good about the long-term growth we've maintained investment in. And I think you'll see the benefits of that increasingly going forward.
Okay. With that, we're going to end it. Jeff, thanks. Phyllis, thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks for having us.
Thank you.
Thank you.