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Citi’s 2025 Medtech and Life Sciences Access Day

Feb 27, 2025

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

All right, I think we're going to get started. Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining the next session, actually even the last session of the day. I am still Joanne Wuensch, and I'm still the med tech analyst here. I am absolutely delighted that we have GE HealthCare management here. We have James Saccaro and Carolynne Borders, and I hope you've had a great day.

Carolynne Borders
Chief Investor Relations Officer, GE HealthCare

Yes.

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

We have. Yeah, thank you so much for the invitation to the conference. So nice to see so many investors that we know, and thanks everybody for the interest in our company.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Yeah, it's a great day. So anyway, I want to get started with several big picture questions, but really importantly, you've been at GE HealthCare a year.

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

Coming up on two years.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

No worries. Okay, so what would you say is your most significant finding or acknowledgment or aha moment since you joined? And what do you think has been the most accomplishment, strategically correct, in the GE HealthCare spin?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

We are really proud of the progress that the company's made over the last couple of years since the spin-off. It's a remarkable organization. We have a remarkable team. And so I think there are a lot of things that I would point to that we're very proud of. The progress on innovation has been really tremendous. We have increased R&D spending substantially, but we've also adhered to timelines, and so the fidelity of our timelines and our programs is intact. It's no small feat to deploy that much incremental money in a smart way. So really proud of that R&D aspect. I would also say that navigating a highly complex global macro environment has been something that our commercial teams have done incredibly well.

I would say further that our ability to expand margin despite that complex environment that we're operating in is another area where our team has done tremendous work. And so those would be a few things. And then, of course, it's easy to say, "Hey, you got off the GE Transition Service Agreements." So that's obviously, but it's a hard thing to accomplish that. And I would say that our teams did that relatively flawlessly, allowing us to unlock the next level of growth in a lot of different ways. So those are things that I'm proud of.

As far as surprises, I knew that we had an innovative portfolio when we joined, but the excitement around some of the products like Flyrcado, what we're doing with digital, some of the new products that we're launching in imaging and ultrasound. I'm very surprised by the quality of the innovation opportunity that we have. The other thing I would say is we have implemented something called a Lean culture at the company, which is a business management system that's focused on safety, quality, delivery, cost, and innovation, and managing that all in a systematic way. One of the ways that that manifests itself is in gross margin improvement as your variable cost productivity initiatives impact the bottom line in a very positive way.

I would say for me, another surprise is that area, that gross margin improvement opportunity and what we've been able to get after.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Okay, lots to unpack there. Let's start with what you presented, which was the TSA transition. That's complete?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

Virtually. I think that there are a couple of agreements left in place and couple of million or less of spending, which, gosh, we've come an incredibly long way. W e are essentially off the TSA service. And I think it's a testament to our IT team. We converted like 50,000 email addresses, rebadged computers, lots of other teams involved as well, but a really nice, clean, seamless transition to our standalone situation today.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

How do you think about reaching your medium-term margin goals of high teens, too?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

I was very heartened by the margin performance all of last year, the year before, but in particular in the fourth quarter. We had well over 200 basis points of margin expansion, and it was really a whole host of items that contributed to that. We had price, volume, mix all driving in a positive way. And by the way, the volume and mix did benefit from new products that we had launched during the year. And then also we had our productivity initiatives providing support. And then we did some work in terms of being smart about SG&A and G&A in particular. So all of the dimensions of the margin program were on display in the fourth quarter. I feel as we thought about the long-term opportunities that we have, one of the revisions to our midterm guidance is we added a plus.

We said +20% is the midterm aspiration, and I think the good work that we've done thus far, plus the size of opportunities that we see going forward, gave us an increase in confidence in our ability to drive margin over the medium term.

Carolynne Borders
Chief Investor Relations Officer, GE HealthCare

Joanne, maybe I would just add that in addition to these variable cost productivity initiatives that are happening across the broad organization, platforming is another one that will help us get to those longer-term goals in MR, in CT, where we can just get more efficient in what we are offering to the customer without sacrificing features and benefits.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Thank you. And that leads right into my next question, which is how do you think about the imaging market in general? I mean, I'm constantly getting questions from people about the health of the market, market share, and how GE HealthCare differentiates its portfolio versus the competition.

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

Sure. I would say that the market is healthy. We saw it in the fourth quarter orders number, 6% company-wide growth, but so much of our company is imaging that it's a big number within that. We announced a recent deal with Sutter, which we're so excited about, and it's a great collaboration with a preeminent healthcare institution. Another illustration, though, that it's a good market today, and then we do our surveys, and the surveys indicate, of course, there's macro regulatory uncertainty, but to date, and as we sit here in our most recent iteration, we feel good about the capital market for imaging. It's a high priority item, and it's a high priority item because imaging centers in many cases are constrained. If you want to get an MRI of a certain specialty, you have to wait or a CT scan.

Maybe there's more availability there, but generally speaking, the market is tight for these critical procedures and there's procedure growth, and so I would say generally we feel quite good about the imaging market. The U.S. is doing very well. Europe's been a little bit slower growth. Outside of Europe in the developing world, very robust growth, and then China, for the first time, we saw some green shoots of hope in terms of orders growth in the fourth quarter. We'll watch this very closely, but that was an important signal that confirmed some of our thinking around China, and so generally, the demand side is there.

As we think about the supply side and what differentiates us, there are a number of elements in play. We have invested so heavily in artificial intelligence to support high-quality imaging, to support the workflow of our products. And so we feel like we've made a lot of progress there. And things like AIR Recon DL have been a real differentiator for us in the marketplace. And we continue to increase attachment rates in that particular product area. And so with great technology along with artificial intelligence is a clear way to differentiate ourselves.

What I would say also is the commercial organization that we have, along with a world-class service organization, are other elements that allow us to differentiate ourselves in a really positive way as we bring our products to market. I think we've had success with that, and we see it in some of the partnerships and some of the orders numbers that we started to put forth.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

One of the things I'm asking every management team today is the big picture stuff coming out of Washington. I'm sure you haven't been asked any questions today about tariffs, NIH funding, FDA. I'm sure there's another thing that I'm missing that's big.

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

Yeah, so with respect to tariffs, we've incorporated tariffs from China into our numbers. That impacted our EPS growth by a point. We did so because those tariffs were announced, planned, and started implementation, I guess, last month. And so we reflected that in our guidance. As far as the other items, we're carefully planning. And so when you think about tariffs, there are a number of elements that you could consider. Is there a pricing offset? Is there an opportunity to think about different sources of supply? Longer term, do you consider footprint and how you think about that? And how carefully and closely are you working with your own suppliers to manage these impacts? And so all of those elements, we're hard at work at really trying to figure out and mitigate. And I think at the end of the day, it means agility is of paramount importance.

And so I think we've proven that we can do that. Through COVID, we had to get alternative sources for a lot of our products. And so we were able to do that very quickly. But now it's about doing it in the context of tariffs. As far as the other items, listen, we haven't seen an impact on our business. And I would say also in our surveys, we still see buoyancy in the capital markets that we deal in. So if it does change the economics of hospitals and things like that, we'll have to watch it very carefully, but we just haven't seen that yet.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

I had planned originally to talk about China much later in the conference. You made an announcement this morning that I'll bring it up. You have a new head of China.

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

We do. We announced we have an executive, Yihao, who just retired, and Yihao is a remarkable individual and a remarkable business leader. He's led the China organization for years. He grew that business enormously over time, helped us really address many of the opportunities in that market. We increased our manufacturing, increased our R&D presence, is a wonderful human and a wonderful business leader, and then now he was retiring. We're in a situation now where, thanks to good communication and good planning, we're able to conduct a very robust search, and we found an outstanding leader. I think it's a testament to the attractiveness of the company and the attractiveness of the business opportunity we have in China that we were able to bring Will on board, who will be joining us in the coming months, and there will be an orderly transition from Yihao to Will.

We're thrilled with how this went. So appreciative of the work that Yihao has done, but also so excited to welcome Will.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

So while we're on the China topic, we're just going to get it out of the way here. Green shoots. What does that mean?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

China has been a market that has been very difficult to predict. And a year ago, right? Since our meeting here a year ago, we lowered our guidance $600 million, which is a lot from a sales standpoint. And when we see green shoots, we saw orders growth for the first time in four or five quarters in the fourth quarter. And so, and more importantly, we talked about this four-phase process from pre-tender authorization all the way through to order. And we've started to see things move into different phases and to new buckets and then to convert. And so I would say that our position has solidified since October. It's kind of solidifying in a consistent way. We sort of anticipated a muted first half with a bit of recovery in the second half. And that's kind of what we've seen since then.

I think as we look at next year, it's first half, you're going to see a decline of mid-single-digit, second half, sequential improvement versus first. So on the full year basis, we're expecting to be down low single digits, and I'm hopeful that that's the guide. We do better than that. Let's see how it goes. But as of now, that's our view, and we'll watch it really carefully, recognizing it's been a really volatile market. The only other thing I would say is amidst this volatility, the installed base is aging in China. So there will be opportunity at some point to replace equipment, to upgrade equipment. In that case, when that time comes, we want to be ready and well-positioned to take advantage of that.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

So one of the things I think I had to get my head around was let's say things open up and you're starting to see green now. What is the cycle to that becoming revenue? And then is this one of those things where it slowly builds throughout the year and then continues to build next year? I mean, I know you don't want to talk about next year, but I'm trying to understand the path.

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

It's interesting because if the equipment is a year and a half older than it was, the installed base or 15 months or whatever specifics, the propensity to replace and get new equipment is higher. It's increasing, and so the question is, what is the pace of that payoff, and we don't have a great line of sight to the multi-year, but we do believe that over time, this is a mid-single digit grower. The question is, do you have a catch-up at some point, or is it more linear? These are open questions we don't have a great answer to at this point, but we're optimistic long-term about this market. It's been a very robust market for us over time, and there's a line, which is the growth in the China market, and then there is volatility around the line, stimulus, anti-corruption, stimulus, and all of those things.

But at the end of the day, it has been a solid long-term attractive market for us, and we think it will remain that way.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Right. But I build models for a living. And so when I think about this, I put this year down pat, but I'm trying to figure out the pathway forward.

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

Yeah, we think, like I said, we look at this over three years -ish , and we've said mid-single digit growth.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

In China?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

In China, consistent with the overall company. Does that mean 2026 is faster or slower? I think we'll have to get a fine-tuned understanding of that. But this point about equipment age and really getting to be in a situation where you want to replace, because then I think we'll start to see that at some point here.

Carolynne Borders
Chief Investor Relations Officer, GE HealthCare

And think about the new socket opportunity too, because the government has committed to expanding access to care for the population. That means not just converting over capabilities at the large tier one hospitals, but also in some of the more rural communities where you would be placing new instruments. And so we have a JV with Sinopharm. The more recent one is to go after the non-premium segment. So that is also an opportunity.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Very helpful. If I'm not talking about China for GE HealthCare, you know what I am talking about.

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

We do.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

And then you've begun sales.

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

We did. We've sold and dosed our first, used our first doses. And we're so thrilled with this announcement. Flyrcado, we believe, is a very exciting opportunity for our company, but also a real improvement for healthcare generally. And so we dosed our first patients a few days ago. And now it's about just kind of getting the early, we're very early stages of launch. We get some further pricing in early April, and then we'll proceed from there with accelerating of the launch. But we're quite excited about this opportunity long-term. We've talked about a $500 million plus opportunity in Flyrcado. And so far, I mean, we've only had a couple of doses, but doctors that we've discussed this with are incredibly excited about adopting. We're spending a lot of money in terms of getting the launch correct.

And so part of the reason we pointed to flat margins in Q1 is some SG&A spending related to this launch so that we can get it set up for success on our way to $30 million this year. And so far, so good.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Why is $30 million this year the right number?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

It's a good question. I mean, I think what we've wanted to do is put together a reasonable number. It's probably you won't really see a meaningful impact in the second quarter. You'll probably see perhaps $10 million in the third and $20 million in the fourth, that kind of sequencing. But for us, getting that fourth quarter run rate correct starts to become an important unlock for the next several years of really good growth. $30 million represents a very small amount of the total market opportunity. But there's some work in terms of converting. If you're an existing, we've kind of viewed the market in three pieces: existing PET users, people who don't use PET, but who have PET capacity, and then people who don't use PET and don't have access to PET. The third category will be the most difficult.

The first two categories require different sales pitches and different orchestrations to get those to the right spot. But both represent good opportunity. And $30 million is a small penetration rate at this point. And let's get it right, get it launched correctly, and then set us up for very strong growth in the coming years on the way to $500 million.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

We did a survey in December. I don't know if you saw it. And essentially, the physician feedback we had was everyone really liked Flyrcado. Everyone wanted to use Flyrcado. We thought it might take some time. How do we define time, though?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

Yeah, I think that we have accurately, I think we have a reasonable assumption in this plan in terms of there's always early adopters and then reluctant. And then in between is where the big battleground takes place. And so we will very quickly go after the early adopters. Folks interested in converting from other rubidium, for example, that's the first port of call. And I think those should be swift. The early adopters in the second category too will happen fairly rapidly. And then the real question is, how do you get to the mass market? And that's going to be the key thing. And having success with some of the early adopters, getting those situations organized and delivered appropriately, and getting great outcomes from the work that we do, that's the real focus.

Because if you get that right and you service those customers correctly, then the likelihood to convert to the mass is much higher.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Yep. That makes sense. Will you be bringing out the contributions from Flyrcado each quarter?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

We'll have to, we'll look at that. I mean, we've made some with Vizamyl, which is another great product for Alzheimer's. We've made some comment about it and the growth rates. But we don't have a formal mechanism to break out Vizamyl sales. I understand the importance of Flyrcado from our investors. There's a real interest in it. W e'll have to evaluate what the best way to keep you all updated on the good progress in that arena. We did. We issued a press release. We gave two doses or however many doses. That was important for us.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Okay, very good. Are we done with Flyrcado? Anything else to add?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

Sure.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Okay, very good. I do want to talk about the imaging market, and I want to talk about what you are seeing as it relates to the competitive environment, and I'm going to toss my second question then right now. How do you think about integrating artificial intelligence into these systems, which helps in the competitive environment?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

Yeah, it's interesting because our MR portfolio has really benefited from AI. And I made the point earlier, AIR Recon DL has made our product line that much more attractive.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Let's pause for a second. What makes AIR Recon DL so good?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

Yeah, so it's a great question. There's really two elements. One is it enhances image quality by reducing or enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio. And then second, it allows images to be captured for a lot of different procedures in a shorter period of time. And so think about this, right? If you're running an MR suite, you're constrained. It's 45 minutes to get the image. It's quite a bit of time. Whereas AIR Recon DL can reduce that in some cases dramatically. So for a hospital, there's those two benefits: better images plus reduced image time. And so that's an example where we've taken a digital-first approach to making the product line that much better. Now, it's not to say that you shouldn't upgrade the hardware. And it's clear that you should, and we are. And so we're launching a photon counting device. We're launching whole-body PET. We're launching new MR devices.

All of those will be upgrades to hardware, but they will also have embedded in them some of this artificial intelligence and some of the technology that we bring to the market. As we think about AI, really, there's a couple of different ways that we think about it. First is integrated into the device, okay, or attached closely to the device. And why do I draw the distinction? Because the revenue model may be different depending on what you're doing. And so things like Caption Health, artificial intelligence that helps ultrasound sonographers capture an image and maybe even in a faster way. Or folks who are not trained in sonography, they're able to capture images because they're guided by artificial intelligence. That's a big improvement.

I mean, frankly, you talk about where this can ultimately go. It really unlocks a whole new population who can take ultrasounds. So piece one is in the device or attached to the device. We've had a lot of success in that arena. Piece two is helping with workflow, for example, in radiation oncology or how the hospital is managing its systems and how a department is organized. And so with our Command Center product, we help organize hospitals more efficiently in terms of workflow, patient scheduling, and things of that nature. So that's a second area where we're working in artificial intelligence. Another thing I would say, though, is we've invested a lot in foundation models. And what they simply do is they allow our development teams to build faster using artificial intelligence to support rapid development of new products and new features. And so that's another way.

Now, you don't see that right away. Where you'll see that is in compressed timeframes in the future for developments of our products. But in the near term, you're not necessarily going to see that. So those are a few ways that we've invested in artificial intelligence. And a lot of the increase in R&D spending that we had is geared towards artificial intelligence and digital because we believe that it's a real differentiator for us. And we have a great competency, and we have a tremendous team led by Dr. Taha Kass-Hout.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

When you think about not necessarily phase one where it's integrated, but some of the other phases, how do you generate revenue from those phases?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

So there's different models. We talked a little bit at our Investor Day about software as a service. So designing it with a subscription fee in mind. And our next generation of Command Center 2.0 will be more of a software as a service opportunity. And we'll have the opportunity to price that way. Some of the Caption Health, so long as you host it in the cloud, you have the opportunity to think about how you want to price that into the product, more of a subscription model versus not. And so what I would say is most important is that you have a really compelling digital offering. If you have that, then the discussion around how you price for it, do I build it into the product price? Do I build it into a subscription? Or do I use it as a defensive mechanism?

All of those discussions are good discussions that you can have. But the point is you've got to have a product that people really want. So AIR Recon DL and some of the close cousins to that, like Sonic DL and our other products, are all well regarded and allow us to differentiate and then ultimately capture economics because we're creating value for hospitals.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

One of the things you announced at the analyst meeting was the timeline for photon counting. I believe it's 2026, if I remember correctly. Why do we need to hear about photon counting?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

Yeah, photon counting, we're really excited about the offering that we have. We're going to be filing in the second half of this year for regulatory approval. And so hopefully we'll have more to discuss around this topic as we approach the end of the year, start taking orders, and then hopefully have some level of impact next year. And photon counting is just a different way to take the CT. And we believe that we will be able to enhance both spatial and spectral resolution, higher quality images with a radiation dose that is appropriate, and end up in a really good place in terms of differentiating for a higher-end institution with respect to CT. So we think it's a great innovation for us. It's one that some of our competitors, at least one prominently, has photon counting. And they've made some inroads with this product portfolio.

But bringing this product to market will allow us to close some of those gaps and then also start to drive progress on our own.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Good questions. What percentage of the market today is currently photon counting? And what percent?

Carolynne Borders
Chief Investor Relations Officer, GE HealthCare

Small.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Small.

Carolynne Borders
Chief Investor Relations Officer, GE HealthCare

Yeah.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

And is it possible that somebody will hold back on making a CT purchase because they're waiting for this?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

Perhaps. I think that by and large, we have a lot of wonderful high-end CT devices that people are interested in buying today. I think generally speaking, we'll continue to sell. And that business is a very good business. The CT for us today, with some of the innovations we've undertaken over the last several years, has been a really nice business for us. I think people will continue to buy. And then as photon counting becomes available and we get closer to that, and also as we get people excited about the launch and start to talk about it more, then you'll start to see people incorporating our launch into their decision-making around new equipment.

Carolynne Borders
Chief Investor Relations Officer, GE HealthCare

That product is a great example of why it's important to have a large installed base, which we do globally. It's the type of product that you can go to your own installed base to sell into. So that's part of what we'll be doing next year for photon counting and also full-body PET.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

So is that more of a software upgrade than?

Carolynne Borders
Chief Investor Relations Officer, GE HealthCare

No, it's a hardware sale. But if you know that you've got inside your installed base hospitals that have CT that are on the lifecycle, those are going to be prime targets to go in and sell photon counting.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Okay. What will make your photon counting device different than others?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

It's difficult to talk about things like feature price in a product that's not yet approved. We'll stop short of comparing it to what's on the market today. We are excited about the aspects of image resolution and elements inclusive of that. We're excited with what we're going to bring to the market.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Okay. I think that makes a lot of sense. One of the things that really caught me on the fourth quarter as you were giving your statistics of book-to-bill, back orders, and things like that, and those are increasing. How do I think about translating that to dollars and cents? I mean, obviously, they're strong indicators, but what does that mean for the translation process?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

Yeah, I think we were really pleased with what we did commercially in the fourth quarter. We had 6% orders growth. I believe the book-to-bill was 1.09x , and we also had a record backlog for our company, and then following that, we announced the largest deal in partnership in the history of our company, and so really good momentum around the order book, and what I would say is it gave us confidence in the guidance that we gave for this year. Now, some of the ordering was in imaging, and it's a few quarters out, so part of the reason why you see a second-half acceleration, some of it is just kind of China normalizing, but some of it too relates to the fact that we have now slotted in the second half some of these orders from the fourth quarter of the year.

Some of it is slotted into 2026. Certainly, a lot of the Sutter deal will be targeted to those future years. A s we look at that performance in the fourth quarter, it gave me very good confidence in our ability to drive the multi-year plan that we've put together. We feel good about it at this point. It's one thing to point to surveys, but it's another thing to have revenue earmarked for third quarter, fourth quarter, first quarter of 2025. You start to build that book now, you feel even better about where you can take this.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

You want to talk about the Sutter deal because it was different than I would have expected GE HealthCare to do.

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

In what sense different?

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

You're going into your providing services.

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

Yeah. So we do service equipment today.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Okay. Service equipment versus a broader service base is my understanding of the--

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

We do some of that today. Here's the Sutter deal. Sutter is a wonderful California-based institution. I think they serve 3.5 million patients a year. It's got a tremendous mission. We're proud to partner and humbled to partner with an organization like that. It turns out they want to renew their fleet. They want to expand their fleet. They want to build new alt- site centers, among other things. It represents a tremendous opportunity. What came to bear in this is we have a tremendous commercial organization, which is focused on deep partnerships with our customers. If you saw Catherine present at our Investor Day, you would have heard her talk about how she represents the entire GE portfolio capability with our customers. That commercial is one element.

The second piece is you have to have really strong products in the portfolio along with products that work together well along with digital overlay. And we have that. And third, you have to have a world-class service organization capable of supporting your products or others. And so you put those three elements in place. And we were proud to feature and be able to address all of Sutter's needs with the deal that we put in place. Now, it's not really going to impact 2025 revenues per se, perhaps more orders than revenues. Maybe there will be a bit. But you have to understand that some of the equipment is related to new centers and building new centers with earthquake codes and so on takes time. So it's more of a 2026, 2027, 2028 where you see the peak revenue associated with this.

But I think for me, it's just an illustration of what we're trying to do from a commercial partnership standpoint and then having products that work in a service organization that can stand. Really excited about that. We have more of these kinds of things in the works. And by the way, we do smaller versions of this all the time. We're deeply embedded with the hospitals that we support. W e do smaller versions of this all the time. But that was quite a big deal and one that we're really proud of.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

So should we expect more transactions or agreements of this type?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

I certainly hope so, and we're certainly working on it.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Is there a way to quantify the benefit from these?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

I would say that it allows you to feel better about our mid-single projections going forward. Would I recommend that in your model building process, you add a row for large deals or something like that? Probably not. I think that there are different ways to think about it. But this is just an example of de-risking the future. And by the way, the other interesting thing about this is with Sutter, a lot of it's capital equipment. But when you have a long line of sight to capital equipment and the partnership, it allows you to be really planful. Capital behaves more like recurring or different kinds of revenue versus just this episodic thing that you're waiting for the order. It's a very planned conversion to a sale, which is a great way. It's a great way to de-risk the business.

We announced another one in the U.K., another wonderful institution that we're so proud to support, Nuffield. And it's a similar partnership, different scope, but same ideas in play. So listen, we're hard at work doing these deals all around the world with governments in some of our international region. And we were honored to be selected in those instances to highlight it with those great partners.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Shifting gears just a little bit, one of the things that I've been impressed by over the last two years is that research and development has steadily moved up, and how does the process, or what is the process internally of getting those funds allocated, and what's the consciousness around them?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

Pete and I worked together for the first time in 2004 at Baxter. And when we were at Baxter in 2004, Pete brought with him a process called the Worldwide Product Planning Process. And what this is, is--

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

At WWPP.

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

WWPP. And so for every single one of your initiatives above a certain threshold, you do customer back, you do product fit, market, down to economics, and you have a model for every single one. And then we as a team would get together at Baxter every week. That's a process that he brought from GE. Now, years ago, it kind of morphed and changed and kind of went away. But when I talked to Pete about joining, I said, "Hey, did you bring back WWPP?" And he said, "Yes, we're doing that." And what it allows is a very scientific way to approach innovation. And the other thing is you're not going to be good at it the first time you do it.

But if you commit to doing it every year and you commit also to learning from every time that you do it, then you start to get better. And so what's happening now is this is the third iteration since I've been there of the WWPP. And we're able to compare back not only to financial model assumptions, but also the overall, what was the market? What did you think about the customer? What changed and why for all of our major programs that have survived this long and haven't launched? And even for the launch products, then we can say, "Okay, how good are you relative to what you said you would do?" And so it's an incredibly robust way to manage the R&D pipeline and to manage the portfolio of investments that you have.

We do that in the summer, and then it rolls elegantly to our budgeting process in the winter, and it rolls into the numbers that each of our businesses get. I do think it's a best practice in terms of innovation management. And personally, I'm excited to see the models this year versus last year. What we learned? Did we maintain the integrity of the timelines? All of those things are things that we'll discuss in July.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Wonderful. In our final few minutes when we're sitting here next year talking, what do you think we're going to be talking about?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

I certainly hope we're talking about continued margin performance. I hope we're talking about excitement around Flyrcado in its second year of growth. I hope also that we're talking about photon counting and whole-body PET, along with a number of other innovations and how they've impacted things in the near term. And I hope we're talking about a stable regulatory and macro environment. All of those things would be wonderful to discuss same time, same channel in 2026.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Anything you don't want to be talking about?

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

No. I mean, listen, we're happy to talk about. I mean, I hope we're talking about a normalized China too.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

There you go.

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

That would be great. That would be really great.

Joanne Wuensch
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Healthcare Research, Citi

Excellent. James and Carolyn, thank you so much for coming.

James Saccaro
CFO, GE HealthCare

Thank you.

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