Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Ottobock investor conference call on the financial results January to March 2026. Today's speakers are Oliver Jakobi, CEO, and Dr.

Arne Kreitz, CFO of Ottobock. Before we start the presentation, please note that this conference call will be recorded.

During the call, webcast participants will be in a listen-only mode while we conducting the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen, and if you dialed in via phone, please press *9 on your telephone keypad to ask a question.

Further instructions regarding Q&A session will be later provided by the moderator. With that, I want to hand over to you, Oliver.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Julia, and good morning also from my side, and thanks for joining our Q1 2026 results call. We are reporting today on the first quarter of our first full financial year as a listed company.

Overall, we had a good start into 2026. Our performance in Q1 was fully in line with our expectations, and we have a positive outlook on the reminder of the year, and we are confirming our guidance for the full year 2026.

Our organic core revenue growth in quarter one was 5.1% in relation to very strong comparative quarter in 2025. With some movements in and out of Q1 with a total net effect about 1%.

Despite the strong comps, we believe that we are with this performance at least on market growth level. We successfully continued our margin expansion, improving the underlying core EBITDA margin by 1.5% to 22.3%.

As we explained with our full-year 2025 results, the year 2026 we will continue to focus on reliable execution, the rollout of our innovation pipeline, further reimbursement penetration, and disciplined margin expansion. Nothing in the first quarter changes our view on the outlook for 2026 and beyond.

Coming to innovation and products, last year our growth story was driven by new product launches and reimbursement tailwinds in B2B. This year the picture has shifted in healthy way.

We are seeing strong global momentum in B2C and, importantly, with an improved profitability. Geographically, our growth markets are performing strongly.

Australia, India, and China, for example, grew nearly 22% this year, and our broader emerging markets were up to over 18%. This is exactly the diversification we are building towards.

On the product side, our B2B portfolio continues to broaden. Feet segment grew by 14%, the upper limb prosthetics field by 15%, and our top three products, X4, C-Leg, Kenevo together contributed double-digit growth of 11%.

Outstanding performance of our C-Brace, our mechatronic orthotic system, with 34% growth is underscoring the demand of this advanced technology. We also expecting here for the coming years an over-proportional growth.

A quick note on the Americas: B2B had a strong prior-year comparator. Key customer orders shifted into Q2, but B2C in the region continues to deliver double-digit growth, the underlying trajectory is intact.

Our digital platform is rolled out and penetrated in more markets. We see custom fabrication as a connective tissue linking components, services, and individual patient needs into one seamless experience.

This is where Ottobock hardware leadership meets the future of personalized care. In short, broader geographies, deeper portfolio, and stronger digital backbone are driving our business.

Coming to the innovations, we have our biggest industry fair in May in Leipzig ahead of us, and I just would like to highlight four of our innovations which we will show in Leipzig. This will give you maybe also a good sense of breadth what we are bringing to the market.

Starting on the left, the iconic liner system. Silicon liner are the element between the human stump and prosthetics.

A liner is very integral part of a prosthetic fitting which is replaced every 6 months. For a lifetime relationship with the patient, this liner plays a very important role.

With our new iconic family, we will set new standards. It's an customized liner with a complete new fitting results, better skin health, and improved comfort.

We are sure that with this product, we will sustainably improve the quality of fittings for our patients. In the field of upper limb prosthetics, we are launching the new Michelangelo hand.

The Michelangelo hand by itself is a flagship bionic hand, widely regarded as one of the most advanced in the world. The new version is another addition to our new upper limb platform, meaning user can switch different devices with the same control system.

Then we're coming to our strategic growth field, neuro-orthotics. We have already the C-Brace orthotic system as our flagship product in neuro-orthotics, which normally is used at a later stage of the patient journey.

With the C-Brace interim solution, we have the opportunity to fit patients directly in the rehabilitation hospital within some hours. It means patients are learning already during the rehabilitation phase walking, which is very important for the recovery process.

The rehabilitation potential is much higher when you start directly after the surgery with walking. Not learning how to use wheelchair, but really to learn how to move.

This will definitely increase the user pool for C-Brace users because we have a much better rehabilitation level we're talking about. Alongside of this, we are also expanding our mechatronic orthotic portfolio with Revonic, a mechatronic orthotic system which is addressing a different patient group, specifically users with lower activity levels and less impairment.

This app-free and directly adjustable by the clinician, which broadens our orthotic offerings to a wider patient population. You can see four different products for very different patient needs.

Together we show what our 2026 pipeline is about: deepening leadership in core categories, expanding in growth areas, and removing barriers to access. With this, I would hand over to Arne Kreitz for the financials.

Thank you, Oliver. I will now guide you through the financials in a bit more detail.

At a glance, our Q1 results show a core revenue of 330 378 million, representing an organic growth rate of 5.1%. In light of the strong comparator year last year, we think we had a start to the year as expected and as planned and have been growing above market with those 5.1%.

Underlying core EBITDA has arrived at 84 million, corresponding to a margin of 22.3%. That means a 1.5 percentage point margin increase, which is really strong and a good start to the year.

We see that the good EBITDA is also translating into the free cash flow. Free cash flow has been increasing by 32%, arriving at 42 million.

In our B2B business, revenue grew organically by 5.5%. Growth was positively supported by the continued penetration of our high-end products, specifically Kenevo, and Oliver already mentioned it, C-Brace.

We also saw first positive momentum from our newly launched prosthetics upper limb platform where we will also now complement Michelangelo during OTWorld. We think continued good momentum from innovation growth that we've been seeing on the B2B side in the first quarter.

In Q1, we saw no relevant net impact from spike events. In our B2C business, revenue grew organically by 4.7%.

The development reflects continued strong growth in the US and APAC while organic growth in EMEA was at a lower single-digit level, which partly also has timing effects. We saw a bit the weather impact in Europe.

We had a strong winter again this year, from that end, it had been a little bit of an impact in Europe, but expecting that there will also be a catch-up happening in Q2. Looking into our regions, EMEA delivered a solid growth of 6% with revenues arriving at 283 million.

The performance was driven by innovation and first impact of reimbursement coverage of C-Brace in France. That pipeline has been developing very well and will have a good momentum for the rest of the year.

In the Americas, organic growth was at -1.1%, reaching 69 million. This follows an exceptionally strong Q1 2025.

As previously mentioned, we also saw a bit softer intake of one of our large US customers. That we consider this to be a bit of a temporary effect and all in all are looking positive into the growth in Americas of the next quarters to come.

In APAC, we achieved impressive organic growth of 13.9% and the revenue of 27 million, with a pretty good growth across both businesses on the B2B and on the B2C side. To summarize, growth was very solid in EMEA, temporarily slower in Americas, and particularly strong in the APAC region.

Underlying core EBITDA reached 84 million in Q1, so that means a relative growth of 11.8% year on year. Here you can again nicely see that the growth that we're seeing on the top line typically translates into an over-proportional growth on the profitability side.

So 11.8% is a double-digit growth on the EBITDA side for the first quarter, and translating into a margin of 22.3%. You can also see this continued positive development and momentum that we're seeing on the profitability side.

So 1.5 percentage point increase in the first quarter is a strong result from our point of view. Main drivers were consistent with the framework, we saw a positive development on the product mix side, also saw some good impacts on under-proportional growth on the material cost side, plus we're seeing continued benefits coming in from our efficiency initiatives.

Low-cost manufacturing in Bulgaria continues to have a positive impact. Very good to see is that also on the shared service side, on the administrative cost side, really starting to see benefits coming in from our shared service center that we started to establish also in Bulgaria.

Underlying net income, also over-proportional increase of 13.1%. In absolute terms, still smaller increase, we're only in the first quarter, but it underlines that again the good momentum that we're seeing on the EBITDA side is typically translating then also into the underlying net income.

Drivers behind: the D&A have been pretty much in line with the growth of the business. Interest results, we saw some benefits as the net debt has been reduced and we also see better conditions on the interest side.

We had a bit of a temporary impact on the income tax side, there have been some non-deductible items on a local level which led to a bit of a higher tax rate for Q1, but we're assuming that this will normalize in the course of the year. On the free cash flow side, said it already, very healthy free cash flow with an increase of 32%, and that is also our expectation looking forward.

See that the EBITDA is translating very well into the EBITDA side. We're also seeing that we're continuing to make progress on the working capital side.

CapEx is fully in line with the planning, from that end, we think that also on the free cash flow side we will continue to see a positive momentum. This is all translating to a continued deleveraging.

On the slide, you can nicely see the path of deleveraging that we've been running through across the previous quarters. If we're specifically looking into Q1, then you can see that we have reduced the net debt while we have continued to increase the EBITDA, and that's why we are also seeing the continued deleveraging now to 2.2 turns by the end of the first quarter of 2026.

That brings me to the outlook for 2026. Let me put this again a little bit into context.

In 2025, we delivered a very strong year with 10.6% organic core constant-currency revenue growth and an underlying core EBITDA margin of 26%. Based on our Q1 performance, we are confirming our full-year 2026 guidance.

We continue to guide for 5% to 8% organic core revenue growth and a further increase in profitability to above 26.5% underlying core EBITDA margin. Our guidance reflects key themes we discussed earlier: continued penetration of our high-end components, first impacts of newly launched innovations on OTWorld, and further positive margin from scalability and the continued implementation of our efficiency measures.

We're also reconfirming our mid-term targets of an average organic sales growth of 7% to 9% and an underlying EBITDA margin of 29% to 30% by 2029. Overall, we enter 2026 with confidence.

The growth drivers are intact, the innovation pipeline is strong, and we remain focused on a disciplined execution and continued margin expansion. With this, I hand over to you, Oliver.

Thanks. I think, yeah, we are now ready for Q&A session.

Please feel free to send your questions.

Hi, thank you for taking the question. I wanted to better understand the weakness in the Americas in the quarter.

I think you mentioned that B2C increased double digits, but that implies quite a big decline on the B2B side. Was that all one large customer delay?

What are you seeing in the underlying B2B business in Americas? Can you also give us any comment on the MPK K2 reimbursement expansion tailwind?

Are you still seeing that intact? Then lastly, just can you confirm that you were able to recapture that in Q2?

Thanks again for taking the questions.

It's not only the US. Americas, if we're talking about North America, we are also talking about Canada.

In Canada, we had the last 3 years the so-called War Amps program. Veterans got an additional funding which ran out end of last year and we don't have a renewal yet.

Therefore, we do have an impact in Canada. In the US, if you take a view over 2 years, yeah, we had last year the first quarter a year-over-year growth of 13.5%, and that was an extremely good growth year last year.

Therefore, we take it a little bit so that there was a backlog last year, and we have seen now a bit of a normalization. The first 2 months we have seen that there was a slowdown of one key customer.

This has changed already in March a little bit, and we can see continuous catching-up effect in April. We do believe that this is a timing impact.

Great, thank you.

I'm sorry. Sorry, K2.

No, the K2 impact, yeah, this is continuing. We we mentioned already on on the roadshow, to to get penetration fully of the K2 population, it will take 3, 4, 5 years.

We we do see roughly 20% growth of the K2 devices, yeah, so that's that's continuing. Besides this, also we we do see the new mechatronic orthotic system was was still after year four high growth, of more than 30%.

This is a continuing process and we we do not see that this will end this or next year, we will definitely have the same growth rate over the next 2, 3 years.

Hi, good morning. Can you hear me?

Yeah. Yes.

Oh, sorry. Wasn't sure whether it's my time to ask the question now.

Oliver Reinberg from Kepler Cheuvreux. Three questions if I may.

Firstly, on spike events, can you just provide some kind of color to what extent these have contributed to the Q1 performance in EMEA? Also with regard to your full-year guidance, I think you called out last year that the assumption is no contribution from spike events.

Wonder if you just can clarify that does it mean no sales at all or simply no growth year on year? That would be question number one.

Secondly, on this kind of two impacts that may have impacted the organic sales growth, one, the delayed deliveries that you talk about in your quarterly report, as well as the softer demand from one big US client, can you just provide some kind of flavor what headwind to organic sales growth this will have and whether this will fully flip back in the second quarter? Then the third question, which would probably arguably not be for you, but I just wonder if you can provide some kind of color.

When the lock-up expired, there was a lot of questions on what that may potentially imply. Apparently there has been a kind of loan being taken on by the owner where according to rumors that may have had a kind of higher interest.

Can you provide any color whether this was refinanced at all? Thank you.

Let's start with the first question, spike events and the impact. In the first quarter, we haven't seen a huge impact of spike events.

That doesn't mean that there's no sales, but there's no extraordinary growth. We are growing with a normal growth rate on last year level, but there was no specific impact in Q1.

As we provided already before the information, I think we do see an improved demand or increased demand in Ukraine. Here we always have to take into account seasonality.

It doesn't go linear, we do have a certain pattern, and so there will be a higher demand for sure, but in Q1 it was relatively stable. That was one thing.

Then the second part and you ask so when we say that it's not included, spike events are not included in our guidance, as I said, we didn't include any extraordinary growth. We took last year's level and added a normal growth rate of 3% to 5%.

That's included in the guidance, but nothing extraordinary. Then the deliveries we mentioned, we had deliveries stuck at the beginning of the Iran war, and this was solved in the meanwhile.

Therefore, this catch-up has taken place already. That's all fine.

In the moment, we do not have any bigger issues with logistics into Middle East. The third question— Sorry, but

just I think you asked for the impact all in all. For those delays, we estimate that it was round about 1 percentage point of impact, yeah, if you take our total first-quarter revenues.

Consequently, it was around 1 percentage point related to impact, which then probably will be coming in Q2. Yeah.

I think the US customer, we already mentioned. Also here we have seen since March catch-up, so that was a timing impact which is not sustainable.

Your last question, you're right, it's not up to us to answer, therefore difficult to make here any statements. Was very very difficult to comment.

Yeah. We're not expecting at the moment any sell-downs.

I think at the current price level of the stock is unattractive. For the owner, it's of course the owner's decision, but we're not expecting any sell-downs, and there's also no timely necessity to do so.

From that end, it's not a topic at the moment.

Super, thanks so much indeed.

morning, guys. Hopefully you can hear me.

New tech. Just a couple of questions.

Firstly, on the US, is it possible just to give us a bit of a sense in terms of the phasing and where you are with this key customer just as we go through the year? Would you expect some recovery or more normalized growth in the US as we go through the rest of the year starting from Q2?

Then I know it's a bit specific, but it would be quite helpful in terms of understanding the ramp after a reasonably good Q1, what sort of growth can we hope to get in Q2? We were at the bottom end of the range for the guide in Q1.

Can we expect to be a little bit higher up as we go into Q2 as well? That's it for me.

Thank you.

Your first question, yes, we are confirming our budget for the US, yeah, we do believe that the catch-up so it started already, and we do not see any other bigger implications. Therefore, we are confirming our budget for the US.

Second—

Regarding the ramp-up of the quarters, we confirming our guidance, 5% to 8%. I think you're right, first quarter has been now at the lower end of the guidance.

I think you're hearing that we're positively looking into the outlook of the year so that we have normalization of the timing effects and also normalization in the US. From that end, looking positively over the next quarters.

We don't want to give you a specific number now, but towards the middle of the year, I think when we see first half year behind us, I think then we can be a bit more specific on the full-year guidance and also how the quarters will play out, but we're positive for the year.

That's brilliant. It's really helpful.

Maybe just a quick follow-up on inflationary costs. I know you've not seen a huge amount of it yet or hopefully not at all, but could you just remind us what is the capability to raise or adjust prices in certain regions and certain products through the year?

Is that something that's feasible under sort of unusual circumstances like we saw in 2021, '22, for example?

Yes. At that time, we managed in some markets or key markets we adjusted under the year.

That was normally accepted. Also here now, what we're talking about, it's not really inflation, we're talking about the cost side of transportation, and so we do have already continued the communication with customers also.

If it continues and if we do see a larger impact, which we don't see yet on the transportation side, that we would impose surcharges for transport. That's a normal behavior, yeah.

That's really helpful to know. Thanks a lot, guys.

Thank

you.

Hi, good morning. I hope you can hear me well, and thank you for taking my questions.

Just a couple from my side. The first one is on the spike events.

Thank you for the clarity that you didn't see any extraordinary growth in Q1, and that is due to seasonality. If you could just explain a little bit more this seasonality in spike events overall.

Just before, I understood that there is no seasonality in this side of the business. Just how should we think about it for the rest of the year, given that you've now introduced the new products in Ukraine and you're building your presence there.

That would be the first question. The second one is just on APAC region.

Can you discuss what is driving the strong performance? Are you seeing any change in the reimbursement, and what countries are driving the performance?

Thank you.

The first, it's not a seasonality pattern in in in Ukraine, yeah, but it's not a linear growth, yeah, so that's why. For example, we we do have always some additional budgets, yeah, and they're they're coming, then they're running out, then they're coming again.

Therefore, it's it can be that there's one month stronger, one month a little bit less strong. Therefore, we do not have a decrease, but we don't have an extraordinary increase.

It's so far a very a very stable development on on a very high level. Overall, if we're talking year over year, then then Ukraine is also this year much stronger than than than last year.

It it is not that so if first quarter, I mean but if if we are not talking about the the full year, we are now on the level a little bit above Q4 2025 in Ukraine, yeah, so that that's what we what we were also budgeting for. Towards the APAC region, yes, there are reimbursement successes, the the growth is driven by Australia, Japan, India, China.

We have in Australia, we have a good reimbursement sys- situation, and they also added some some more products into the reimbursement. We had last year a high increase in Japan in the reimbursement.

We do see constantly improvement in India. With growing GDP, the ability to to pay for our products is growing, and we have a big network of patient care in India.

Over the last 3, 4 years, we have seen growth in the mid-teens always. That's something driving.

Also China, we have a little bit adjusted our our strategy for China. We also see quite a good improvement in in our Chinese business.

These are the main driver for for APAC.

Perfect, thank you so much. If I can just squeeze in just one follow-up on the US and the large customer.

You're expecting this timing issue to be resolved in Q2, but can you give us any indication of what is a normalized growth that we should have in mind for the Americas region?

I don't have it now. I don't have the budget number now available, so, but it was a little bit below last year.

Yeah. That would be the catch-up in Q2.

We're seeing it in April, and we think Oliver said it, Canada is a little bit of a balancing item, but we will see a good development starting to materialize, and then we will see a normalized growth throughout the US. We still have X4 as a very strong year last year, but we're seeing the good momentum on Kenevo and on C-Brace, all in all, we think that will balance out and then we'll see a good normal growth here in the US market.

Perfect, thank you.

Thank you, good morning. I have two questions, please.

Firstly, is it prudent to assume that the core adjusted EBITDA margin in the second quarter is likely still below your full-year guidance target? Then secondly, can you speak a little bit about the competitive environment in the C-Braces market now that you're launching upgrades this year?

Is there anything on the competitive horizon that could turn into a more credible competitor, or do you see yourself as continuing to be the super clear leader here? Thank you.

Falko, maybe I will take the second question,

and

Arne will then answer the first question. Regarding the C-Brace and the competitive environment, if you see the potential of this orthotic systems, it's 10 times bigger than for prosthetics, yeah.

In prosthetics, we have already competition. We have the biggest market share.

Therefore, even if there would be something coming up similar in that direction, it would only help to penetrate this technology. Being first mover, you always have the advantage if competition is coming up, you can release the next generation of products, which is then enhanced.

Therefore, we do not see any harm. It would only probably help that this kind of technology is penetrated faster.

Regarding the adjusted EBITDA margin development, I think you need to take always the quarterly comparison. If you also look into our margin development over the last years, then you can see, if you take the Q1 comparison that the margin improvement that we've been seeing in Q1, that typically has also been pretty stable throughout the year.

From that end, I think you always need to look into the quarterly comparison. You see that we had a good start into the year, which also gives us the confidence that we're going to see the margin increase throughout the year.

You always need to keep the seasonality in mind.

Thank you.

I think that's me. It's Richard Felton from Goldman Sachs.

Thank you for taking my questions. Just two for me, please.

First one, on your previous results call, you several times described the guidance as conservative. I just wanted to sort of see if you would still describe this year's guidance as conservative given the slightly slower start to the year.

That's the first question. The second one is on the C-Brace and specifically the new C-Brace interim product.

I'd be interested to hear what your expectation is for how much that product can expand the addressable patient population within the neuro-orthotics business and to what extent you think that can drive incremental growth to the C-Brace franchise. Thank you very much.

Starting with the guidance, our perspective is unchanged. We expected due to the comparator year last year that we have a bit of a slower start into the year, which we've been seeing now with the 5.1%, but all in all, nothing has changed in our assessment for the year.

We're acting according to plan and that's why we're also positively looking for the year to come.

Regarding C-Brace and the C-Brace interim solution, in the moment, we do see C-Brace patients at a very late stage of their patient journey. Most of them have been already using a wheelchair for some years, yeah.

It means their whole physiological condition is not adapted for standing or walking. Therefore, when we are testing them, we have a high drop-out rate.

The potential is probably two, three times bigger than what we are seeing now, what we are seeing. Therefore, this with the C-Brace interim, I would say it has the opportunity really to enlarge the patient pool at least two, three times of what we are seeing now, translating this into either C-Brace fittings or what I introduced before, the Revonic, which is a solution which is functionality and price-wise located between simpler orthotic fitting and the C-Brace fitting.

Therefore, we are addressing really a huge patient population there.

Great, thank you very much.

Hi. Thank you for taking my questions.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes.

Perfect, great. I just had a couple if I may.

The first was on looking at kind of the margins and margin progression. You noted benefits in Q1 from low-cost manufacturing and the kind of the shared service center ramp-up and in Bulgaria.

Looking kind of more towards the full year, how much more do you think this can contribute towards margins? Then just as a housekeeping question, you noticed a higher tax impact in Q1.

Could you just be able to elaborate a little bit on what you expect for the full year beyond just expecting normalization? Thanks.

Regarding the margin progression, this is a very continuous development. We have the scale-up effects, which are always a bit driven on how the top line develops and the structure of the top-line growth.

Then we have the second factor, which is around the efficiencies that we're gaining. Specifically on the efficiency side, this is like a running program where step by step measures are implemented.

That's why we're not expecting an up and down on on the profitability side, but more like a continuous development as we've also been seeing over the last years. From that end, we're expecting also for this year that there will be a continuous positive development on the on the margin side.

On the tax topic, yeah, we consider this to be a timing topic. Said, we are in Q1.

Q1 is always a bit more I would say if we're looking into the full year, I think there will be a normalization of those effects. It's a bit of a non-deductible topic on a local level which also depends a little bit on the Q1 results.

As the results will normalize on the local level throughout the year, we will also see a normalization of the of the tax rate. From that end, I think it's a temporary topic now that we're seeing on Q1.

Otherwise, we remain with what we said in general about our tax rate, that from a nominal perspective, we are at around 30% of our tax rate. Plus, we still have reasonable tax assets which leads us more towards a cash-effective tax rate of 25%, and that is unchanged, yeah.

It's more like a Q1 impact that that we're now working on.

That's great, thanks.

Thank you very much for participating and for your questions. I hope we could show that we are sticking to our words, we want to be reliable, we want to execute what we promised, and so after the first quarter, I think we can say that we're doing it.

We will keep you informed and talk to you then after the next quarter. Thanks a lot.

Thank you.