Welcome to the Q1 fiscal year 2020 ResMed Inc. earnings conference call. My name is Chris, and I'll be your Operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Amy Wakeham, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Amy, you may begin.
Great. Thank you, Chris. Good afternoon, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us, and welcome to ResMed's first quarter fiscal year 2020 earnings call. This call is being webcast live, and the replay, along with a copy of the earnings press release and our updated investor presentation, will be available on the investor relations section of our corporate website later today. Joining me on the call today to discuss our quarterly results are CEO Mick Farrell and CFO Brett Sandercock. Other members of management will be available during the Q&A portion of the call. During our call, we will discuss several non-GAAP measures. For a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures, please review the notes to today's earnings release. As a reminder, our discussion today may include forward-looking statements, including but not limited to expectations about our future performance. We believe these statements are based on reasonable assumptions.
However, our actual results may differ. You are encouraged to review our SEC filings for a discussion of the risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements made today. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Mick.
Thanks, Amy. Thank you to all of our shareholders for joining us today as we review the results for ResMed's first quarter of fiscal year 2020. On today's call, I will discuss our long-term strategy. I'll review top-level financial results, some business highlights from the quarter, and a few key milestones. I'll hand the call over to Brett, who will walk you through our financials in further detail. We have started fiscal year 2020 right where we left off with 2019. Our team achieved another quarter of balanced growth across the portfolio, driven by continued strong performance in the mask category. We are taking share with recent new product introductions, and our solutions are enabling increased therapy adherence, as well as expansion of resupply programs to those who need it. Our dedicated team of more than 7,500 ResMedians around the world have again delivered strong results.
As the world's leading software-driven medical device company, we continue to use technology to advance our leadership position. We have sold more than 10 million 100% cloud-connectable medical devices into the market, and our AirView cloud-based ecosystem manages more than 11 million patient accounts. In the last 12 months, we changed over 15 million lives by providing a person with a ResMed device or a complete mask system to help them breathe better and live better lives. In addition, our Brightree and MatrixCare-branded out-of-hospital software systems are helping to manage 93 million more people. During the last 12 months, we improved more than 108 million lives with ResMed products, services, and software solutions. We are well on our way to the ambitious goal to improve 250 million lives in 2025.
Our connected solutions are providing us with valuable access to de-identified therapy data that we are using to derive actionable insights to benefit patients, physicians, and providers, as well as to inform future innovation in products and software. These datasets are growing exponentially, and we now have 5 billion nights of medical, sleep, and respiratory care data in the cloud. Our relentless focus on product and software innovation continues to set us apart from our competition. We remain laser-focused on growth in our core market of sleep apnea, as well as in our adjacent respiratory medical markets of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, as well as asthma.
Our expanded focus to now grow outside the hospital software solutions allows us to help customers create efficiencies, to take cost out of the healthcare system, and to improve the quality of care across home medical equipment, home health, hospice, skilled nursing facilities, life plan communities, and beyond. We believe the future of healthcare is outside the hospital. That's where ResMed competes today, that's where we are winning today, and that's where we will continue to win in the future as we provide market-leading value to customers. Let's now briefly review our top-level financial results for the quarter. We achieved another quarter of double-digit revenue growth, up 17% in constant currency across the portfolio. This growth was well-balanced across domestic U.S. and global product sales, as well as balanced across our software-as-a-service businesses.
We continued to deliver operating leverage in the quarter, leading to a non-GAAP operating profit growth of 22% year-over-year, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.93. Turning to a brief discussion of our sleep apnea and respiratory care businesses. In the devices category, we delivered a good quarter. We achieved year-over-year constant currency device growth of 6% globally, supported by very strong 8% device growth in the United States, Canada and Latin America geographies. We achieved 4% constant currency growth of devices in combined Europe, Asia and rest of world. We achieved excellent device growth in the U.K., Switzerland, and across our Nordics countries. As discussed over the last few quarters, we experienced a continued headwind during the quarter for device growth in France as a result of digital health-related fleet upgrades.
We expect that headwind to ease by the end of this fiscal year, and then return to market device growth in France. It is great to see a steady flow of our digital health solutions into different European countries, and to see positive constant currency device growth across the continent this quarter. The growth in the masks and accessories category of our business was incredibly strong during the quarter. We were up 19% in constant currency globally. This is well ahead of market growth rates, indicating we gained significant market share during the quarter. The reason that we continued to take share around the world is that we make the smallest, the quietest, and the most comfortable masks available in the market. Our flagship masks, the AirFit F20 and the AirFit N20, continue their growth across global markets.
The success of these flagship masks was augmented during the quarter by good uptake of our recent mask launches. To recap those launches, we have now launched four new masks during the last 12 months. The F30, the N30i, and the P30i. Just this week, actually on Monday, our newest innovation was launched, the N30. We have the right mask for every patient, every time. The N30 adds innovative dimensions to this portfolio. The N30 is a world first tube-down nasal cradle CPAP mask in a new product subcategory that we are calling the minimalist category. The N30 is our smallest, our lightest mask ever, and our quietest nasal mask ever. I personally think this new N30 is another winner from our amazing research and development engineers. Watch this space as it gets into the hands of our market-leading marketing and sales teams.
Our mask portfolio overall is positioned to offer world-leading options for physicians to prescribe, for home care providers to fit in a first-time setup, and most especially for the needs of the ultimate customer, the person who suffocates every night with sleep apnea. We remain focused on driving innovation to meet all underserved customer needs. The bottom line is that our new masks have a lot of runway ahead. Unfortunately, they don't let me talk about ResMed's future product pipeline, so I won't. Our success comes as healthcare providers, physicians, and patients around the world continue to vote with their wallets and choose ResMed products. Not just for the innovative design and high quality of our devices and masks, but also for the sustainable value proposition of the digital health solutions that we offer.
Our digital end-to-end solutions, combined with available 100% cloud connectivity, as well as information provided to patients on their own smartphones through apps like myAir and apps like Propeller, are all leading to significant improvements in lowering cost, in improving health outcomes, and improving quality of life for patients around the world. Through digital health technology, we are driving patient engagement so that people can enjoy the benefits of the best therapy available. In parallel, we are also ensuring that the cost of chronic disease can be better managed by physicians, healthcare providers, payers, and governments. There's still a long way to go. Our research that was just published by The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal in July shows that there are over 936 million sleep apnea sufferers worldwide, while only around 20 million or so are being treated today.
We keep forging ahead, investing in our own research and development to drive further innovation and advancement, as well as by working with partners. On the partnership front, our joint venture with Verily is working on software solutions to help identify and engage and better manage more people with sleep apnea. It is very early days on in this JV, but our philosophy is that the more a person knows about how much they suffocate every night, and the consequences of that suffocation on their own personal healthcare outcomes, the more likely they will seek solutions. Over time, we know this partnership will drive incremental growth in our core sleep apnea business, while allowing ResMed to participate in a broader chronic disease management ecosystem. Covering not just sleep apnea, but also cardiovascular disease, diabetes, COPD, and beyond.
These chronic disease management platforms will include clinical care as well as wellness improvements in nutrition, in cardiovascular exercise, and in mental health. Let's now turn to our second vector of growth here at ResMed, our business in respiratory care. There are nearly 400 million people worldwide suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. We don't believe they are well-served by healthcare systems today. We see the opportunity to better manage COPD through the use of technology with digital end-to-end solutions that can help patients as they progress with this chronic disease, including how patients are communicated to, how patients are encouraged in their medical care, and how patients are looked after as individual persons. We're advancing our respiratory care strategy in multiple ways. Earlier this summer, we introduced a number of enhancements to AirView, our cloud-based patient management platform.
We are making management of ventilation patients much simpler and much more useful for home medical equipment providers. Physicians and HMEs can now look deep into therapy data to see key performance indicators such as pulse rate, inspiratory time, maximum airflow, and even a patient's rapid shallow breathing index, or RSBI. All these data are now available within our digital healthcare ecosystem with the easy-to-use AirView platform. Our goal is to help create a frictionless experience when managing COPD patients with ResMed's solutions. Our team at Propeller also continues to grow their business as we move from pilot trials to commercial partnerships with leading respiratory pharmaceutical companies. The team was recently at the European Respiratory Society Annual Congress in Madrid. It was great to see Propeller represented at multiple pharma booths, including live demonstrations of Propeller solutions for physicians.
Propeller was also featured in several scientific presentations during ERS, including the public announcement of a new large COPD outcomes trial that's sponsored by Novartis. The trial will compare Propeller plus COPD standard of care to COPD standard of care alone. The trial has already begun enrolling patients during this quarter. As we outlined when we acquired Propeller in January, the digital health opportunity with respiratory medicine adherence will take time to build into critical mass. This quarter, we passed a significant milestone with more than 100,000 people enrolled into the Propeller ecosystem. Let's be clear, we are still in the early days of market development here. There's lots of terrain ahead.
The evolution that we have made in our respiratory care business has set ResMed up to become the global leader in digital health for COPD. From stage 1 and stage 2 COPD with Propeller's pharmaceutical adherence solutions to stage 3 and stage 4 COPD with portable oxygen concentrators as well as our cloud-connected non-invasive ventilation solutions. Let's now turn to our third vector of growth, our software as a service business. We continue to integrate and optimize the SaaS portfolio for long-term growth. Our competitive advantage derives from our leadership position in SaaS solutions for home medical equipment, for skilled nursing facilities, for home health, hospice, life plan communities, and home care services. ResMed is the best strategic player competing in these verticals, and we have the expertise running global digital health systems at scale to be able to succeed in the future.
Our SaaS portfolio continues its growth trajectory this quarter, with revenue up 83% year-on-year during the quarter. Clearly, growth in this first quarter was accelerated, leveraging our MatrixCare acquisition in November of 2018. We will lap that acquisition during this current second quarter. We estimate that the underlying market growth of the blended portfolio of 7 out-of-hospital SaaS verticals that we serve is in the high single digits. Leaving out the MatrixCare acquisition, we grew right in line with the market in Q1. We have set up an execution plan to continue to innovate and to continue to launch market-leading upgrades combined with new capabilities that will allow us to gain market share in our SaaS verticals and participate in the fastest-growing ones so that we can beat market growth. We plan to exit fiscal 2020 with solid double-digit growth in our SaaS business segment.
One example of the progress that we're making in our SaaS portfolio is the recent announcement of our collaboration with Cerner as their new preferred provider for home health and hospice software. This agreement validates ResMed as an industry-leading provider of digital health solutions for out-of-hospital healthcare. Our MatrixCare managed offering for home health and hospice customers includes the best of breed capabilities from both the MatrixCare technology and from the Brightree technology. This agreement ensures our home health and hospice solution is available to all of Cerner's large customer base. The net result is growth opportunities for both Cerner and MatrixCare sales teams.
In fact, at the recent Cerner Health Conference, a major healthcare system with a very large home health business was introduced to the ResMed solution, and they are quickly moving towards a contract with our MatrixCare team. It is clearly early days as the ink dries on the Cerner contract. The bottom line is we are excited to drive growth from this partnership and to leverage interoperability to provide value for all of our customers. In summary, for the SaaS business, we have the vision to transform and significantly improve out-of-hospital healthcare. We are helping people stay out of the hospital and in the care setting of their choice, with lower costs and a higher quality of life for the person. The best place that people often choose is almost always their own home.
Aging in place is a trend that is growing not just in the U.S. but globally, and we plan to enable and leverage that positive change. We think that's an important part of the future of healthcare. Before I turn the call over to Brett, let me close with this. We have had a great start to the new fiscal year, and we are well-positioned to grow throughout fiscal year 2020 and beyond. We've positioned ResMed for the long term as the global leader in digital health, driving both top-line and bottom-line growth, as well as executing on our strategy to improve 250 million lives in healthcare that's delivered outside the hospital in 2025.
We are focused on our triple aim: to slow chronic disease progression, to reduce overall healthcare system costs, and to improve outcomes and quality of life for the ultimate customer, the person who simply wants to sleep well, to breathe well, and to live a better life well away from that hospital. With that, I'll turn the call over to Brett in Sydney for his remarks, and then we'll open up for Q&A. Brett, over to you in Sydney.
Great. Thanks, Mick. In my remarks today, I'll provide an overview of our results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2020. As Mick noted, we had a strong quarter. Group revenue for the September quarter was $681 million, an increase of 16% over the prior year quarter. In constant currency terms, revenue increased by 17%. Excluding revenue from acquisitions, group revenue increased by 11% on a constant currency basis. Taking a closer look at our geographic distribution and excluding revenue from our software as a service business, our sales in U.S., Canada, and Latin American countries were $370 million, an increase of 13% over the prior year quarter. Sales in Europe, Asia, and other markets totaled $224 million, an increase of 4% over the prior year quarter. In constant currency terms, sales in combined Europe, Asia, and other markets increased by 8% over the prior year quarter.
Breaking out revenue between product segments. U.S., Canada, and Latin America device sales were $187 million, an increase of 8% over the prior year quarter. Masks and other sales were $183 million, an increase of 19% over the prior year quarter. For revenue in Europe, Asia, and other markets, device sales were $152 million, which is consistent with the prior year quarter, but in constant currency terms, a 4% increase. Masks and other sales in Europe, Asia, and other markets were $72 million, an increase of 15% over the prior year quarter, or in constant currency terms, a 19% increase. Globally, in constant currency terms, device sales increased by 6%, while masks and other sales increased by 19% over the prior year quarter. software as a service revenue for the first quarter was $87 million, an increase of 83% over the prior year quarter.
During the rest of my commentary today, I'll be referring to non-GAAP numbers. The non-GAAP measures adjust for the impact of amortization of acquired intangibles and a purchase accounting fair value adjustment to MatrixCare deferred revenue. The prior year comparable excludes amortization of acquired intangibles. We have provided a full reconciliation of the non-GAAP to GAAP numbers in our first quarter earnings press release. Our gross margin for the September quarter was 59.5%, compared to 58.3% in the same quarter last year and 59.3% in Q4 FY 2019. Compared to the prior year, our gross margin increased by 120 basis points. This was predominantly attributable to manufacturing and procurement efficiencies, the MatrixCare acquisition, and favorable product mix. Moving on to operating expenses. Our SG&A expenses for the first quarter were $167 million, an increase of 14% over the prior year quarter. In constant currency terms, SG&A expenses increased by 16%.
Excluding acquisitions, SG&A expenses increased by 6% on a constant currency basis. SG&A expenses as a percentage of revenue improved to 24.6% compared to 25% that we reported in the prior year quarter. Looking forward, subject to currency movements and taking into account recent acquisitions, we expect SG&A as a percentage of revenue to be in the range of 23%-24% for the remaining three quarters of fiscal year 2020. R&D expenses for the quarter were $48 million, an increase of 24% over the prior year quarter, or on a constant currency basis, an increase of 27%. Excluding acquisitions, R&D expenses increased by 2% on a constant currency basis. R&D expenses as a percentage of revenue were 7.1% compared to 6.6% in the prior year.
Looking forward, subject to currency movements, we expect R&D expenses as a percentage of revenue to be in the range of 7% to 8% for the balance of fiscal year 2020. Amortization of acquired intangibles was $18.5 million for the quarter, an increase of 44% over the prior year quarter, reflecting the impact from our recent acquisitions. Stock-based compensation expense for the quarter was $13.3 million. Non-GAAP operating profit for the quarter was $191 million, an increase of 22% over the prior year quarter, while non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $135 million, an increase of 16% over the prior year quarter. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.93, an increase of 15% over the prior year quarter, while GAAP diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $0.83.
On a GAAP basis, our effective tax rate for the September quarter was 20.2%, while on a non-GAAP basis, our effective tax rate for the quarter was 20.6%. Looking forward, we estimate our effective tax rate for the full fiscal year 2020 will be in the range of 19%-21%. Cash flow from operations for the first quarter was $162 million, reflecting robust underlying earnings. Capital expenditure for the quarter was $22.7 million. Depreciation and amortization for the September quarter totaled $38 million. During the quarter, we paid dividends of $56.1 million. We recorded equity losses of $6.8 million in our income statement in the September quarter associated with our Verily joint venture. We expect to record approximately $7 million of equity losses each quarter in fiscal year 2020 associated with the joint venture operations.
Our board of directors today declared a quarterly dividend of $0.39 per share. During the quarter, we repaid $49 million of our outstanding debt. At September 30, we have $1.2 billion in gross debt and $1 billion in net debt. Our balance sheet remains strong with modest debt levels. Finally, to recap, our top-line revenue was strong this quarter with growth across all major categories. Gross margin expanded and our operating costs remain well controlled. As a result, we're continuing to drive operating leverage with Q1 non-GAAP operating profit up 22% year-on-year. We are focused on driving operating results, integrating our SaaS acquisitions, and ensuring we continue to invest in our strategic long-term opportunities. With that, I'll hand the call back to Amy.
Great. Thanks, Brett. We'll now gonna turn the call over to the Q&A portion. I'd like to remind everyone to please limit yourself to one question. If you have additional questions, please do feel free to return to the call queue. Chris, we're now ready for the Q&A portion of the call.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press star and then one on your touchtone phone. If you wish to be removed from the queue, please press the pound sign or the hash key. If you're using a speakerphone, you may need to pick up the headset first before pressing the numbers. We do ask that you please limit yourself to one question. Once again, if you have a question, that is star and then one on your touchtone phone. Our first question comes from Gretel Janu with Credit Suisse. Your line is open.
Thanks. Good morning. Firstly, just on the U.S. device growth continues to be very strong. Just wondering, what would be the growth in kind of new patient setups in the quarter? If you could give us some more detail on that.
Thanks for the question, Gretel. We don't actually have full visibility even to the number. We sell in the U.S. to home medical equipment companies that then sell to patients that are renewing in their five-year renewal or to new patients. We don't have full visibility into that. It is interesting with a reasonably sized patient pool in the United States. It would be a good double-digit percentage or so of those that will be replenishment devices. The 8% growth, I think is really ahead of market. We think the market growth is in the sort of mid-single digits, to be at 8% growth in the U.S. shows that we are taking some share due to the value of Air Solutions, AirView and myAir and all the sort of digital health solutions that are there.
Thank you.
Thanks, Gretel.
Your next question is from Steve Wheen with Evans. Your line is open.
Yeah. Hi, guys. Just a question also on the devices. There seems to be, certainly amongst the DME land, a bit of a rush on COPD codes and the setting up of patients with ventilators. Just wondering if you're seeing any benefit from that, particularly amongst your Astral or your ventilator range, in particular, the Astral.
Steve, thanks for the question. We actually saw really solid growth in the core sleep business as a sizable chunk of that 8% growth in the U.S. Astral tends to be more of a player. Ventilation in general tends to be more of a player in Europe. Some of that sort of 4% constant currency growth in Europe, Asia, and rest of world will have been driven by the Astral and some sort of much smaller element of the 8% U.S. growth. One thing that we've been really strong with our DME customers is to make sure that the right device goes on the right patient at the right time.
When you look at COPD, there are lots of solutions from our AirCurve S, our AirCurve ST, so non-invasive ventilation, as well as even our Stellar product in non-invasive ventilation all the way through to our Astral product, which is really a life support ventilator and should be used in very severe COPD and in life support needs. Yeah, it really wasn't a huge contributor in the U.S. this quarter. Probably slightly more significant in Europe. It's really good, solid, balanced growth, if you like, from our sleep apnea side, with some additions from respiratory care is how I'd position it.
Thanks very much.
Thanks, Dave.
Your next question comes from Margaret Kaczor with William Blair. Your line is open.
Hey, good afternoon, good afternoon to most people. Good morning for others, thanks for taking the question. Just kind of big picture, I know some people are going to focus on the device sleep apnea growth, in all, you guys ended up delivering 11% top-line growth excluding acquisitions, that's above market in almost every category, even as you're seeing a headwind in France. I guess looking out, whether it's this year or the next couple of years, what prohibits you guys from continuing that double-digit top-line growth rate? What could drive it higher or lower from today's levels? Thanks.
Thanks for the question, Margaret. Certainly, we did have a very good quarter here in Q1. As you said, we grew sort of 11% constant currency globally in our sleep and respiratory care combined businesses. If you think about the global growth, we have enough data now to know that the growth really is in that mid to high single digits. Devices growing in the mid-single digits and masks growing in the high single digits. Clearly, we did take share in Q1. A lot of that is driven by the digital health technology on the flow generator side to have some of the share taking on the device side. Then the new product introductions that I detailed in the prepared remarks, four new masks in addition to two strong flagship masks there. NPI has been an incredible contributor to us.
If you think through the year ahead, even during this quarter that we're currently in, the second quarter, we're going to lap one of those 4 product launches on the mask side, and we'll continue to lap those during the quarter. Look, I'm always very excited about our innovation, the smallest, the quietest, the most comfortable, the most connected, and I think that innovation drives. You can't outgrow market forever, right? You've got to focus on getting more patients into the funnel, which is our whole identify, engage, and enroll people in. I think fantastic Q1, as we look through the fiscal year, we think we can meet or beat market growth. You're not going to beat it every single time.
Great. Thank you, guys.
Thanks, Margaret.
Your next question is from David Low with JP Morgan. Your line is open.
Thanks very much. Mick, during the period, we saw from your competitor, Philips, that they had issues with their connected care business. They talked about tariffs, et cetera. I am just wondering sort of market landscape in the U.S., whether you saw any disruption from that. Do you think that ResMed may have been a beneficiary of the issues that they were working through?
Yeah, good question, David. I'll hand that to Rob Douglas, our COO.
Sure, David. Just generally on the tariff issue, just to reiterate, as we said before, the way our whole supply chain's configured we're not really affected by the specific tariffs. We export very little into China from the U.S. and very little from China to the U.S. Our supply chain is more Southeast Asian-focused. We've got a great team in China doing local products for China. That's pretty solid. Our AirView solutions, on the other hand, mostly by the way, developed by teams all around the world, but really a strong product offering continues to deliver superior value to our customers. We think, day in and day out, we'll fight competition with those products and believe that we've got a better proposition to offer. From our perspective, we didn't see any particular competitive issues that were sort of changing the normal competitive dynamics.
We do have to sell and execute well, and our teams have been doing that.
Great. All right. Thanks very much.
Thanks, David.
Our next question is from Andrew Goodsall with MST Marquee. Your line is open.
Thanks very much, guys. Perhaps just thinking forward into competitive bidding, I guess, the bids are in, I guess by next summer, we've got a sense of where the clearing prices land. I'm just wondering whether there's any preliminary comments you've got in your thoughts there or any preliminary actions you're taking, I guess, to prepare for competitive bidding and whether that involves new product launches or anything, just any preliminaries you're sort of doing or preparatory actions.
Yeah, thanks for the question, Andrew. I'll hand that to David Pendarvis.
Thanks, Andrew. Obviously, we spent a lot of time along with others in the industry, trying to educate the market participants so they would be able to bid effectively and bid smartly given the new rules. We remain encouraged with the changes that were put in place, principally that clearing price is what's going to drive reimbursement as opposed to the median price under the old regime. Some of the other changes that were made, including requiring bonds to bid in particular areas. We're hoping that that, together with the education that the industry did, will lead to smart bids, and that'll lead to a fairer, more realistic reimbursement. We obviously didn't participate in the bidding process and haven't had direct conversations with customers about what they bid. It's all conjecture at this point as to where the ultimate reimbursement will land.
No matter where it is, whether it's a private pay reimbursement change or a Medicare U.S. change or something elsewhere in the world, we're continually working with our customers to help them be more efficient, to help them take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves, and to enable them to better serve patients under whatever the reimbursement schemes are. We'll definitely continue to do that and watch where the U.S. Medicare landscape evolves. At the moment, that's still a year and a bit away. We'll just keep doing what we're doing and obviously focus on it when the time comes.
Thank you.
Your next question is from Lyanne Harrison with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open.
Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my question. Solid mask growth outside of the U.S. I just wanted to understand, you've had one of your competitors launch a new full face mask outside of the U.S. Have you seen any difference in your full face mask sales outside of the U.S. versus within the U.S.? How are you positioning yourself, now that they've got FDA approval, to launch within the U.S.?
Thanks for the question, Lyanne. Look, we have multiple competitors in the 120 countries we sell into, and we expect new product introduction from our competitors on a regular basis. As you noted, during the quarter, we had 19% constant currency growth in U.S., Canada, Latin America. We also had 19% constant currency growth of masks in Europe, Asia, and rest of world, where some of those masks and new launches have already been in play during the quarter. I know we've got the most robust sleep apnea mask portfolio on the planet, versus our competitors in all 120 countries that we participate in. There's no arrogance or hubris here.
Our team of R&D engineers are furiously working not only on technology to address underserved needs, but to think differently about how to really achieve that ultimate goal, which is sort of the silent CPAP and the invisible mask. If you look at the N30 that we just launched, this minimalist category mask, it's about as close to an invisible mask as you can get. It is small, it is quiet, it is comfortable. Look, I love innovation coming to the market, from our competitors and from us, because it keeps us all honest. During the quarter, we performed very well versus all the NPI from our competitors with our own NPI, and I expect us to be able to do that into the future. Competition is just a healthy part of making sure that tens of millions of people get the breathing they need.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from John Deakin-Bell with Citi. Your line is open.
Good morning. Can I ask a question for Brett, just to deconstruct that gross margin expansion a little bit. I think previously you've given us the feel for what was from the MatrixCare. Can you just maybe elaborate a bit more in terms of strong mask growth, higher margin that will have impacted, and also whether there's a more benign pricing environment in the U.S. which is helping as well?
Yeah. Hi, John, it's Brett. I think it's all of those things. Probably the pricing environment is relatively benign at the moment, so impacts there are pretty modest. In terms of acquisitions, that contributed around 50 basis points. If you think about that, still a really strong, let's call it organic expansion of the margin, which is really good. That's really around the manufacturing and procurement efficiencies. Clearly some product mix benefit there as you saw the outperformance in the mask growth. A combination of all those factors, I think led to that expansion.
Okay. Thanks, Brett.
Your next question comes from David Bailey with Macquarie. Your line is open.
Yeah. Morning, guys. Just in relation to U.S. masks and accessories. You've talked to adherence and resupply as key drivers of growth. I was just wondering if you can comment on your views as to those factors being drivers of growth over the next 2 to 3 years.
Yeah, it's a good question, David. I'll hand that to Rob.
Yep. Thanks, David. Yep. The resupply program has definitely supported the mask portfolio, and we've talked many times. You've got to understand the sort of the feedback of this. If you can get patients onto a good mask, they're more likely to stay on treatment, they'll do better, and then they'll need a mask. We continue to see that dynamic happening. Our software solutions that support the resupply programs and enable our HME customers to manage resupply programs more efficiently and ensure that the patients have the treatment that they need when they need it, are also supporting it. These are long-term programs. We've been running resupply programs for many years now, and our teams will continue to refine and focus it. As Mick said earlier, though, these markets are competitive. We do have competitors playing it.
We have competition in resupply programs as well as in mask. It really gets down to, we've got a really strong team executing broadly across all parts of the portfolio on this that will continue to make sure that we're providing the best solutions for patients and providers, delivering the best outcomes. I think it's really a steady as she goes progress. We really like these resupply programs. They're providing us a very solid, steady business.
Thanks very much.
Thanks, David.
Next question is from Sean Laaman with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Good morning, everybody. Mick, I wonder if we could get a little bit more granularity on the Novartis study you mentioned in your preliminary comments and perhaps some timelines. That would be really useful.
Yeah. Thanks for the question, Sean. I wasn't at ERS, but I'll hand over to David Fentel, so he can give us some more detail on the Novartis clinical trial.
Yeah. Terrific. Sean, we mentioned in the opening remarks, it goes by the name of MAGNIFY. Of course, with trials these days, you have to have a good acronym, and that stands for Maximizing Adherence and Gaining New Information for your COPD. The trial is obviously sponsored by Novartis.
What it's doing is taking patients within clinics, then within those clinics, randomizing the patients to either standard clinical practice or using Propeller. Then there'll be a comparison, and the endpoint is the time to failure of treatment. Then failure of treatment is defined in various ways, such as needing additional medication, having some particularly acute exacerbations, winding up in hospital, those kinds of things. It'll look and see whether or not adding the adherence benefits of Propeller lengthens the time that patients stay in that good, controlled state. It's beginning recruiting now. I believe it's supposed to run through the end of 2021. It will take quite a while before it meets the end of that time period. The important thing is a lot of the data that's been out now has been done in the asthma setting.
That's an important area, and we want to take care of those patients. The COPD strategy is very important to us because of the way it connects with our overall respiratory care strategy. Having someone like Novartis sponsor a study looking at Propeller benefits to a COPD patient population, we think is a real important milestone, and we'll look for good benefits to come out of that study in the future. It will be a few years.
Fantastic. Thanks, Dave. Thanks, Mick.
Thanks, Sean.
Your next question comes from Anthony Petrone with Jefferies. Your line is open.
Thank you. Great. I'm just going to have a follow-up to the Novartis question somewhat. Mick, you mentioned a couple of weeks ago indications of interest from AstraZeneca, GSK, and Novartis on Propeller Health. Just wondering if you have an update there, and anything you can share potentially on how that would be priced on a per-user, per-month basis. Thanks.
Yeah, thanks for the question, Anthony. There are many respiratory pharmaceutical pharma players in the field. The names you mentioned all have drugs in the market. One thing about pharma companies is they're very competitive with each other. They don't want information shared too much publicly. Certainly, on our investor deck, we put the names of those where we have published clinical data with and we're working with. The reason we're bringing Novartis in our prep remarks here is that's a public clinical trial. One of the interesting things that's happening here is there's a lot of trials that aren't public that are happening out there that obviously we cannot talk about.
As we look forward, the important thing, if you think about milestones, Anthony, to look at on this sort of digital health option play, if you like, that we have in our strategy with the Propeller solution is when somebody goes from these pilot trials to a commercial trial, and when they would allow us to talk about that publicly. If and when that happens, that's the milestone I think that's most important in a material element to our shareholders. As I said in the prep remarks, we got in early with Propeller, and this is a long road. I think I used the analogy that it's an ultramarathon. This is beyond just 26.2 miles. This is a huge journey. COPD, number 2 cause for hospitalization and rehospitalization, the number 3 cause of death. This has such good runway for us in the future.
There's nothing material in the quarter, and so we're just giving the update. We hit 100,000 patients. We think that's fantastic. It's great validation to have Novartis start this public study. It's going to take a couple of years, as Dave said. I would expect that before those couple of years, we'll have some other milestones of going to some commercial trials that we can talk about in upcoming conference calls. Right at the moment, this quarter, Anthony, there's nothing to report other than really good early data.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Saul Hadassin with UBS. Your line is open.
Thanks. Good morning. Mick, good morning. Well, good afternoon, Mick and Brett. Can I talk about the SaaS business, Mick, and the tie-up with Cerner? It suggests that Cerner effectively leaving that post-acute space to providers like yourself. I'm interested to know how much work needs to be done to allow the two architectures to talk to each other. If you have an electronic medical record, for example, in the acute space offered by Cerner, what work has to be done in terms of your SaaS business to allow those two systems to talk to each other? When do you expect to see the ability of the benefits of that type to come through? Thanks.
Yeah, thanks for the question, Saul. It allows us to talk to the area of interoperability, which is incredibly important for us here at ResMed. We have 100 API calls per second from integrators into our Air Solutions ecosystem. Every second, 100 interactions with another EHR, EMR, whether it's an individual person on their myAir app checking their therapy or a physician at Massachusetts Eye and Ear looking over 20,000 patients to do some management-by-exception protocol. The Cerner contract or deal is that Cerner are looking for ResMed, and it's really truly through our MatrixCare managed team to take care of home health and hospice customers for them. They have customers that have hospital systems, but for the out-of-hospital part where it goes to home health and hospice, they want ResMed to be their partner to take care of those.
We think it's a really exciting opportunity for the MatrixCare sales team and for the Cerner sales team to partner up and have that move forward. It was really interesting at the Cerner Health Conference to have our MatrixCare and Brightree teams there, and all the technology available from the iPad app, and all the capabilities that we have for home health and hospice, and to get some really good leads. It's not going to be material in the next 90 days for us, this Cerner contract. The reason we're talking about it is that idea of interoperability with Cerner, with Epic, with Allscripts, with all the players in in-hospital healthcare.
We think it's going to be really important that ResMed is the best person that can provide that handshake, that API from someone in acute care to what they call post-acute care, but what we call out-of-hospital healthcare. We think that partnership is going to be really strong. We'll give you updates as the quarters progress, not just to the Cerner home health and hospice partnership, but to other partnerships with hospital systems, hospital providers, and EHR providers. We think it's a good milestone to show that one of the top three leaders, along with Epic and Allscripts there in hospital EHR, has chosen ResMed as their home health and hospice care provider with our MatrixCare Managed solution. We're really excited about that.
Thanks.
Your next question is from Thomas Healey with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Hi there, sir. Chris Cooper, onto Tom. Apologies if I missed it, but I didn't hear much commentary on Mobi, your portable oxygen concentrator this morning in your prepared remarks. Could you just give us an update there, please?
Thanks for the question, Chris. I'll hand that to Rob.
Thanks, Mick. Yeah, Chris. As you recall, we launched Mobi very early this year, and we've sort of been really still in a learning mode. It's a great product. We're actually learning a lot about the performance of the product, and we've talked about and continue to validate the issue of the balance of the performance specifications, and how the product works. We're in good shape there. What we're also learning is that it is challenging, particularly through the U.S. reimbursement model, is how to get the right patients on the right treatment, and how to get that properly funded. We have been trialing experiments, in looking at ways to optimize and develop that. Really, we're learning a lot about what our future pathways to market would be and how can we make it best suitable for our HME customers to support patients.
Also, what are the future needs of products further down the track and feeding learnings into our future roadmap. With that all going on, the learning process is quite successful. We're still not a major market share player with the product. That's unlikely to change into the short-term future, with the Mobi product, as we're currently investing in it and the way we're heading at the moment.
Your next question is from Mike Matson with Needham & Company. Your line is open.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I guess I just wanted to ask about, there's, I guess, a bill in Congress, H.R.2771, to kind of extend the rural relief from the bidding program that I think is set to expire at the end of 2020. Just curious to get your thoughts on that and what that would mean if that were not to be successful. Thanks.
I'll hand that question to Dave Pendarvis.
Yep. Thanks, Mike. There's a lot of efforts underway in the U.S. Congress right now to try to provide relief, particularly the one you mentioned, which is to try to extend the relief that was given. That was that sort of 50/50 blend between prior reimbursement and the new system reimbursement into those rural areas. We certainly support that legislation. We think it's important that our customers who are operating, particularly in extended areas where they've got to drive many miles to a patient's homes, need to have reimbursement that reflects the operating costs that they've got. We would certainly hope that the champions that are there in Congress will carry the day. As your question implies, there's a lot going on in the U.S. Congress these days.
It's very difficult to predict whether something like that will ultimately pass, or whether CMS could respond on their own, and provide that kind of relief. If it doesn't, I think as I said before, when talking about competitive bidding, we'll obviously work with our customers to do what we can to support them. We think the remote capabilities of our devices are ideal for providing care in a remote setting. You could do things like change some of the settings on a CPAP. You can certainly interrogate the CPAP for information about the quality of the therapy that's been provided, all without having to drive to someone's home. We think that those systems and helping customers, whether they're in rural areas or not, to deploy them, is probably the best thing we can do to help in that kind of a setting.
We'll continue to support that legislation and other efforts with CMS to try to make sure that the Medicare policies and reimbursement is as favorable as it can be for the ultimate benefit of Medicare beneficiaries.
Great. Thank you.
Your next question is from Shane Storey with Wilsons. Your line is open.
Yeah, morning. Thanks for taking my question. It's maybe a bit tangential, but it relates to the CMS reimbursement changes that hit skilled nursing providers this month. Sort of weighing up that as an incremental opportunity for Matrix. Do you have an estimate of the proportion of providers that are yet to adopt good solutions there? I'm just interested to know just how much growth there is, scope towards available for Matrix there in the SaaS market.
Yes, Shane, thanks for the question. It's a good one. There are changes in reimbursement, not just in HME, as we just talked about, but also in skilled nursing facilities and within home health and hospice. These provide excellent opportunities for software as a service providers to, if you're ahead of the game, as MatrixCare was for the skilled nursing facilities changes, and as we are for the home health and hospice changes, to be able to support customers through that change and even grow share, because you've got the best solution that deals with those changes well. One thing I can say is that the new CEO there at MatrixCare, Steve Pacheco, has formed great relationships with the customers, and he has a great sales team that know the skilled nursing facility teams really well.
We've not only helped them through these changes in this quarter, but also set them up for success, that our systems are operating well under the new reimbursement approach within those verticals. When you roll that all together, it's part of that 2020 Execution Plan I talked about earlier, that we see a good path, even if the blended rate of growth across these seven out-of-hospital healthcare verticals is in those high single digits. We think there are areas where we can get better growth than that, and we plan to exit 2020 with a double-digit growth trajectory in the segment of SaaS.
Part of that is going to be doing just what your question asked about, which is every part of the vertical, whether it's skilled nursing facilities, whether it's our new play in home health and hospice, the hunting license with Cerner, in addition to our ability to grow share through having solutions that are ahead of the curve on reimbursement changes. They're all opportunities to be able to grow faster and form longer partnerships with our customers.
Thanks, Mick. Appreciate it.
Your next question is from Steve Wheen with Evans. Your line is open.
Oh, hi, sorry. Just wanted to come back to Brett on the gross margin. You typically give a bit of a range for that in terms of guidance. You able to do that again this quarter?
Yeah, sure, Steve. There's a lot of moving parts, but I would think it'd be broadly consistent with where we were for Q1.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thanks, Steve.
Your next question is from Anthony Petrone with Jefferies. Your line is open.
Hey, just a quick follow-up on masks. I know you mentioned, Mick, a couple of launches. I'm just wondering how much stocking potentially there was in the quarter. Just on lead item, Dave, we spoke a couple of days ago, but is there any indication on how this is kind of coming in post the notification period? Thanks again.
Anthony, I'll take the first party question on masks, and Dave will take the second part. Clearly, we had excellent new product introduction over the last 12 months. Your question is around do people do stocking orders? Our U.S. distribution, and frankly, our global distribution partners are getting very intelligent about inventory management. Not just those who use Brightree and have ResMed's Brightree inventory management system, which will actually manage it for them. Many of them are getting really appropriate on that, knowing when a new mask comes, watching how their RTs are setting it up, and seeing the patient flow and making sure they don't get too ahead of the curve or behind the curve. You don't want a patient in the fitting room that wants the N30 and it's not there.
On the other hand, you don't want excess inventory because they have inventory carrying costs, as everyone knows, and our U.S. distributors are actually quite sophisticated on this. Obviously, when you launch a brand-new mask, people do need to make sure they've got that mask on the shelf. Given the proportion of existing resupply patients, which is a very large portion, particularly of U.S. distributors' patient flow, we don't think there was material impact from stocking. We don't have full insight into our customers that aren't using Brightree or other inventory management solutions. We think it's a pretty steady approach, and we've done new product introductions over the 20, 30 years we've been in business. We haven't seen that at a significant rate before, and I don't think we saw any significant rate of that during the last quarter.
Dave, the second part of the question for you.
Sure. Yeah, thanks, Anthony. I mentioned a little bit earlier that ResMed, along with other industry participants, put a lot of energy and resources behind trying to educate the market participants who are going to be bidding about various factors, including lead item pricing. We developed a calculator that was put out. There were some stats that were just discussed in the MedTrade meeting just earlier this week in Atlanta, that there were over 17,000 downloads of that calculator. That's just simply the one that was available to the participants here. CMS had their own calculator that folks no doubt downloaded.
From the conversations that I've had, my understanding is that most DMEs have a pretty good understanding of lead item pricing and how it works, and hopefully they've availed themselves of the tools to be able to model out scenarios based on their own business and their own volume of products in different categories, so that they can bid intelligently and in a way that's going to ultimately derive a fair and reasonable reimbursement. I'm confident that we got that message out, that it was received. Obviously, we don't know how people bid, and we'll work with customers as best we can to try to implement things when the day comes. We're confident that we did what we could to try to educate.
Thanks again.
We are now at the one-hour mark. I will turn the call back over to Mick Farrell.
Thanks, Chris, and thanks again to all our shareholders for joining us on the call this quarter. I'd also like to thank the 7,500 ResMedians, many of whom are also shareholders, for their dedication and hard work, helping people breathe better, sleep better, and live better lives outside the hospital in 120 countries worldwide. Thanks for all that you do today and every day. We'll talk again with all of our shareholders in approximately 90 days. Talk to you all then.
Great. Thank you all again for joining us today. If you do have any additional questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to investor relations or to me directly. As previously mentioned, all documents, including the transcript and a replay of today's call will be available on our website later today. Chris, you may now close the call.
Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.