Thank you and good morning, everyone, and welcome to this earnings call for our Q3 23/24 results. My name is Britt Meelby Jensen.

I'm the CEO and of Ambu, and I have Henrik Skak Bender, our CFO, with me today. If we move to the next slide, and then the next one again, I'll start with a review of our business and progress before I hand over to Henrik to go through our financials.

Starting on the next slide, please, with the highlights for Q3. Overall, we see a very strong shift towards single-use endoscopy.

We continue to lead this conversation conversion to single-use by bringing new, innovative solutions to the market that can address a wide range of procedures, also supported by key opinion leaders across the different areas that we are in. In the quarter, this was most evident in the reacceleration we have seen in respiratory, which, as is the first area we entered.

Here, we grew 17.1%, which was driven by our bronchoscopy portfolio, but supported by the strong synergistic effect from our new video laryngoscope solution, KingSight. For urology, we grew urology ENT and GI, we grew 15% in the quarter, resulting in a 16% growth growth overall of Endoscopy Solutions.

In aCPM, after two quarters of negative growth, we returned to positive growth with 1.6%, and we also announced recently a new solution, neurolink cup MRI CT, that is positioned to support further growth recovery. Our EBIT margin came in at 13.5%, both reflecting increased investments and partly offset both by tariff reclaims and scalability.

We expect the reported EBIT margin to land in the upper end of our 12% to 14% guidance. In line with the communication that we had in Q2, we are that we were trending towards 10% organic growth for the full fiscal year, we are confirming this as we are updating our revenue guidance to around 10% growth.

In total, we continue to be very well-positioned to deliver strong organic growth and increased profitability over our ZOOM AHEAD period. Let's turn to the next page, please.

Here you see a lot of numbers as usual, and overall, these reflect a very strong financial position, cash generation, and high revenue growth. Specifically, as I just mentioned, I want to highlight the 16% endoscopy growth and that this segment now represents 64% of our business.

While aCPM has turned to positive growth, the volume of uplift will take some time. The low single-digit growth is the driver of our updated revenue guidance for the full year.

Also, let me again here highlight the EBIT margin, which grew 13.5%, and again, highlighting that this represents a stronger growth acceleration in the second half of the year as we communicated in November when we started the year. I'll let Henrik cover this in more detail.

Overall, we believe it's a strong financial position, and we are continuing to invest a lot in both innovation, when it comes to commercial, and R&D. Let's look at the business in more detail on the next slide, please, starting with respiratory, where we posted really strong growth this quarter of 17.1%.

When we look at the rolling 12 months, this is this amounts to 11.5%. Single-use is in this segment becoming increasingly the standard of care as as there's a lot of room to continue to grow with reusable still making up the majority of the procedures in this segment.

Our growth was driven by our bronchoscope portfolio, the aScope 4 and aScope 5, where customers are also with the aScope 5 still willing to pay for premium solutions. KingSight, as I mentioned in the beginning, is still an important growth driver, and that has both created a new adjacency for our business and also a synergistic market opportunity with our bronchoscope portfolio.

It contributes there by both as an individual revenue stream and together with the full solutions of bronchoscopes. When we take a step back, we are very optimistic about the respiratory portfolio in general.

I want to highlight, when we look at these numbers, that this is a great example of how we are proving that the playbook that we have and that we have used in recent years, that works, and how we continue to drive new innovation that is differentiated in the market, and thereby accelerating growth also in this segment, which was the first we entered, as most of you know now, many years ago. If we move to the next slide, this is the other part of our Endoscopy Solutions, urology, ENT, and GI.

Here, we delivered 15% growth, and when we look at the rolling 12 months, this amounts to 16.9% growth. As we mentioned in Q2, we were impacted a bit by some of the deliberate U.S.

commercial adjustments that we did in April that position us well for long-term growth. We continue to see momentum coming from those adjustments that we made.

When we look at where the growth is coming from, most of this is really driven by our existing portfolio of cystoscopes and ENT. It's a continuation of the momentum that we have seen in the last quarters.

When we then to comment on the 16.9% rolling to growth, this is also the level that you should expect short term for the business. I believe it's quite solid growth, and we have good solutions in the pipeline on top of this that will we will bring to market over the next two years that should both support and also strengthen this growth momentum that we see in this group.

Let me move to the next page and to anaesthesia and and patient monitoring. Before doing that, I think I should clarify that overall, the growth that we see in endoscopy growth in in the endoscopy segment of 15%-plus this year is something something that we believe is very well on track to deliver over the strategy period 15% to 20% as we set out to do last year.

The 15%-plus growth represents also what we communicated back in November. Now moving to aCPM, which now represents 36% of our overall revenue of the company, and we returned, as I mentioned, to positive growth of 1.3%.

When we look at the rolling last 12 months, this is then now 1.3%. Patient Monitoring continues to show solid growth here, but Anaesthesia is where we are seeing the annualization effect from some of the volumes that we lost on selected accounts as we communicated in Q2.

It's important to say that we have not seen any further losses in customers in in the recent quarter. The changes that we saw came on the back of two years of price increases, where it takes some time to get that volume back that we that we lost.

We still expect once this is normalized that the business will follow the market growth of 3% to 5%. Overall, we believe that when you look at this segment, we the growth should going forward be supported by the new MRI and CT-compatible electrodes that we recently announced.

Let's move to the next slide and look at the progress that we've had on the strategy. There's a lot of this slide showing that we have, and we are continuing to see, a lot of momentum here, nine months into our ZOOM AHEAD strategy.

I'm very pleased with the execution and the speed that we see across the organization. I'm not going to go through all the details that you see on this this slide, but let me just highlight a couple of things here.

One is the KingSight, reiterating that we are very much on track and and very excited about the progress we see on the launch of this and also the very strong, positive customer feedback that we continue to get on on this solution. Then also the second thing I want to highlight here is our endo-intelligence, which we launched at our Capital Markets Day, and where we are continuing to expand our capabilities in this field, and we're continuing also to advance our solution.

One recent validation of this is the best-in-class cybersecurity validation that we've got on our monitors. This is really crucial for the endo-intelligence platform because, as some of you may recall, we're offering integration into the hospitals and into hospital systems as the only single-use player, something what where we are seeing increasing momentum, and where the cybersecurity validation is really crucial.

Let's now take a step back and just remind everyone on the strategic priorities that we made with the strategy on the next page. Because when we launched the strategy, we called out urology and respiratory as the key focus areas.

Why was that? That was basically because we see a very strong trend towards single-use solutions becoming the standard of care and that this is most profound in these two areas.

We lead the single-use conversion, and also our winning formula, as I alluded to earlier, is very much driven by innovation with the aim of differentiating and for us to provide the full solutions for our customers and continuing to deliver strong commercial execution. Let me just double-click on these two areas, starting with respiratory on the next page before I hand over to Henrik.

Respiratory is, as I said, a clear example of how we are winning with the broadest portfolio, with the 17.1% growth in Q3 and more to come. We saw competition a few years back, but came back with a full solution that addressed a lot of the different procedures in this segment.

You see different parts of our solution on the on the left-hand side of this page. I want to put specific attention to our KingSight solution that we just brought to market, because it is a very nice, adjacent new segment for us, but it's also where we see a lot of synergies with our bronchoscope portfolio.

It contributes there by both as an individual revenue stream and together with the full solutions of bronchoscopes. When we take a step back, we are very optimistic about the respiratory portfolio in general.

I want to highlight, when we look at these numbers, that this is a great example of how we are proving that the playbook that we have and that we have used in recent years, that works, and how we continue to drive new innovation that is differentiated in the market, and thereby accelerating growth also in this segment, which was the first we entered, as most of you know now, many years ago. If we move to the next slide, this is the other part of our Endoscopy Solutions, urology, ENT, and GI.

Here, we delivered 15% growth, and when we look at the rolling 12 months, this amounts to 16.9% growth. As we mentioned in Q2, we were impacted a bit by some of the deliberate U.S.

commercial adjustments that we did in April that position us well for long-term growth. We continue to see momentum coming from those adjustments that we made.

When we look at where the growth is coming from, most of this is really driven by our existing portfolio of cystoscopes and ENT. It's a continuation of the momentum that we have seen in the last quarters.

When we then to comment on the 16.9% rolling to growth, this is also the level that you should expect short term for the business. I believe it's quite solid growth, and we have good solutions in the pipeline on top of this that will we will bring to market over the next two years that should both support and also strengthen this growth momentum that we see in this group.

Let me move to the next page and to anaesthesia and and patient monitoring. Before doing that, I think I should clarify that overall, the growth that we see in endoscopy growth in in the endoscopy segment of 15%-plus this year is something something that we believe is very well on track to deliver over the strategy period 15% to 20% as we set out to do last year.

The 15%-plus growth represents also what we communicated back in November. Now moving to aCPM, which now represents 36% of our overall revenue of the company, and we returned, as I mentioned, to positive growth of 1.3%.

When we look at the rolling last 12 months, this is then now 1.3%. Patient Monitoring continues to show solid growth here, but Anaesthesia is where we are seeing the annualization effect from some of the volumes that we lost on selected accounts as we communicated in Q2.

It's important to say that we have not seen any further losses in customers in in the recent quarter. The changes that we saw came on the back of two years of price increases, where it takes some time to get that volume back that we that we lost.

We still expect once this is normalized that the business will follow the market growth of 3% to 5%. Overall, we believe that when you look at this segment, we the growth should going forward be supported by the new MRI and CT-compatible electrodes that we recently announced.

Let's move to the next slide and look at the progress that we've had on the strategy. There's a lot of this slide showing that we have, and we are continuing to see, a lot of momentum here, nine months into our ZOOM AHEAD strategy.

I'm very pleased with the execution and the speed that we see across the organization. I'm not going to go through all the details that you see on this this slide, but let me just highlight a couple of things here.

One is the KingSight, reiterating that we are very much on track and and very excited about the progress we see on the launch of this and also the very strong, positive customer feedback that we continue to get on on this solution. Then also the second thing I want to highlight here is our endo-intelligence, which we launched at our Capital Markets Day, and where we are continuing to expand our capabilities in this field, and we're continuing also to advance our solution.

One recent validation of this is the best-in-class cybersecurity validation that we've got on our monitors. This is really crucial for the endo-intelligence platform because, as some of you may recall, we're offering integration into the hospitals and into hospital systems as the only single-use player, something what where we are seeing increasing momentum, and where the cybersecurity validation is really crucial.

Let's now take a step back and just remind everyone on the strategic priorities that we made with the strategy on the next page. Because when we launched the strategy, we called out urology and respiratory as the key focus areas.

Why was that? That was basically because we see a very strong trend towards single-use solutions becoming the standard of care and that this is most profound in these two areas.

We lead the single-use conversion, and also our winning formula, as I alluded to earlier, is very much driven by innovation with the aim of differentiating and for us to provide the full solutions for our customers and continuing to deliver strong commercial execution. Let me just double-click on these two areas, starting with respiratory on the next page before I hand over to Henrik.

Respiratory is, as I said, a clear example of how we are winning with the broadest portfolio, with the 17.1% growth in Q3 and more to come. We saw competition a few years back, but came back with a full solution that addressed a lot of the different procedures in this segment.

You see different parts of our solution on the on the left-hand side of this page. I want to put specific attention to our KingSight solution that we just brought to market, because it is a very nice, adjacent new segment for us, but it's also where we see a lot of synergies with our bronchoscope portfolio.

It contributes there by both as an individual revenue stream and together with the full solutions of bronchoscopes. When we look at the middle and and where we have tried to illustrate, where is it really we see the growth coming from in this market.

The biggest growth driver, as you see on the top here, is really the conversion from reusable platforms. Despite the respiratory being a more mature market, we still continue to see this as a very strong and, by far, the strongest driver of growth.

Then we are also gaining some market share that we were losing previously. In particular, this is a very U.S.-focused point.

Then lastly, the new product launches, where KingSight can expand the relevance of our procedures and open up for new areas of growth. This is precisely the split in growth.

This is it's sorry, it's not so easy to have a precise split, but this is really how we see some of the key contributors to growth that we want to highlight. As we look ahead, and which is what we've tried to illustrate on the right side of this slide, the next generation of solutions that we have in development will continue to support that we both increase our revenue with existing customers, that we expand also the procedure relevance in the existing markets, and this is very much the ICU and OR, as we've talked a lot about before.

Then we are also being focused on driving new adoption in new markets, where the OR suite, in particular, is an area that where there's still a lot of untapped potential. The innovation roadmap we have, we don't talk a lot about this for competitive reasons, but we do see exciting solutions in development that can strengthen our position in in this area.

Let me finish off my section here with urology on the next page. Because urology is, as as a market that consists of two clinical areas, cystoscopy and ureteroscopy.

We stepped into cystoscopy in as first movers in 2020, and we've had time to build a broader portfolio here. We continue to be market leaders and to gain market share here, which is very much driven by the structural conversion from reusable solutions with a strong momentum also for our premium solution, aScope 5 Cysto.

For for ureteroscopy, we entered this segment more recent, and we launched our first solution into a very competitive market, where we were, for the first time, not first movers. Therefore, we are still developing our portfolio in in this segment.

Again, here, as you see in the middle here, we have tried to illustrate also in the how how we see growth and and where the growth is coming from. It is, again, also the exceptionally strong conversion from reusable endoscopes, both in ureteroscopy and cystoscopy, validated by the key opinion leading leaders, and also with an increasing entry of other players.

Then we see the single-use market share being more stable in cystoscopy and compared to ureteroscopy, where we are gaining share, but from a a low base, and not at the speed that we were originally planning. Then most of of our growth is coming here, as I mentioned before, from existing solutions.

That is very much our cystoscopes, that is the main driver in urology in a very fast-growing single-use market. While we have the strong offering in cystoscopy performing really well, we will have the same approach in this segment as we as I talked about for respiratory, and that is to continue to advance our solutions and our offering and the relevance for more procedures.

In ureteroscopy, our strong focus is really to gain share, and we'll do that with our existing solution, but we're also looking to win by bringing new innovation into this segment within the next two years that should strengthen our offering in this segment. Before handing over to Henrik, maybe I should finish by summing up to say that how we see the market is really that single-use is becoming the standard of care, and the trend towards single-use is moving fast.

We are continuing to lead this. What is really the most important growth driver is not so much the small market share shifts, but it's really the conversion from reusable, where we see our Endoscopy Solutions growth still at 15%-plus this year, and again, confirming that we're well on track for a CAGR of 15% to 20% over our ZOOM AHEAD strategy period.

With this, I'll move to the next slide and hand over to Henrik to go through the financials.

Thank you, Britt. Thank you for the update.

Good day, good morning to all. I'll now take you through the financial review for Q3.

As usual, I'll start with revenue development, then cover regional performance, talk a bit more on margin in particular, cash flow, and finally, the updated outlook as Britt already referred to. Let's first have a look, closer look at reported revenue and organic growth on the next page here.

Looking at our overall growth performance, we delivered 10.3% organic growth, resulting now in a 12 months rolling revenue of organic growth of 9%. As Britt said, this was really driven by strong growth in Endoscopy, with now a revenue share of 64% and continuing to increase as Endoscopy is outgrowing Anaesthesia & Patient Monitoring.

Respiratory within Endoscopy delivered a particular strong quarter, with 17.1% organic growth for the quarter and accelerating 12 months rolling organic growth. While aCPM returned to positive growth for Q3 after a more challenging first half, it's still a modest growth expected for the rest of the year.

The growth is still is still challenged with selected customers in US, where we're seeing volume declines, and that is still a full year effect that we expect to see across the year, while we're now also seeing positive momentum across the business in many other areas. That also means that aCPM, again, is back in positive volume growth.

This change, though, is still the main driver behind our updated organic revenue growth outlook of around 10%. I'll come back to that when I review the outlook in more detail.

Last but not least, FX continued to be a headwind in Q3 compared to Q2, where we continued to see a negative development in the US dollar-DKK currency, which continued to be both impacting us negatively on top line, on gross margin, and slightly on EBIT margin. Let's have a closer look at the regional performance on the next page.

Overall, we continue to see solid growth across all regions. The strong growth in all regions is within Endoscopy Solutions.

Growth in North America continued to be really solid, also Endoscopy Solutions, but still impacted by the lower growth in particular in Anaesthesia on the non-exclusive contracts and the lower volume that I addressed before, and we also mentioned in our Q2. Both EMEA and particularly Rest of World are on solid growth tracks, continuing to to be driven by the really solid underlying Endoscopy growth in all markets.

With that, let's have a closer look at margin, and start with gross margin. Looking at gross margin, we continue to see a steady Next page, please, operator.

Thank you. Starting with gross margin, we continue to see a solid developing trend overall, where we are compared to last year improving our gross margin by 60 basis points for the quarter, specifically moving or ending at 50.9% 59.5% compared to 58.9% for the same quarter the past the last year.

Though, for this quarter specifically, it is a lower level, and that is mainly driven by FX, by the continued FX development and the negative development I just referred to in the US dollar-DKK currency. The underlying trend of the continuous positive development in gross margin and the drivers of those are really still unchanged, being, one, better output efficiency in our manufacturing sites around the world, continuing the journey of being more effective and scaling our footprint, both in China and Malaysia, but in particular in Mexico.

Improved pricing governance across the board, but particular with higher focus on aCPM. Last but not least, a continuous positive driver being that the higher growth in Endoscopy with stronger underlying gross margin continues to drive a better mix, product mix, and therefore a better gross margin.

Let's move on to EBIT. For EBIT specifically, there's a number of things that are moving around, and therefore, I really want to make sure that we are clear in terms of how to look at the reported EBIT and also the many different adjustments that are moving back and forth.

Reported EBIT was 13.5%, an improvement of 2.2 percentage points versus the same quarter of the last year. In our reports, this was previously labeled as EBIT before special items, but as we don't really have any special items in this financial year nor in the comparison year, we're just calling it reported EBIT.

On the adjustments, to reach what we call in our presentation adjusted EBIT, this is really what you could say a like-for-like comparison from previous year. Unlike in Q1 and Q2, where we saw a positive effect from these adjustments, it's really a different adjustment here in Q3.

The underlying building blocks are as follows. We still pay tariffs in the quarter, but these were lower than in Q1 and Q2, following the trend as we said from the start, that the paid tariffs in the first half will be higher than the paid tariffs in the second half.

We still consider or expect this number to decrease further, ending basically at a run rate cost of around 1 percentage point negative effect for tariffs that we will carry over into the next financial year, something that we will also come back to. On refunds, we received slightly less than 40 million DKK back from the US government on the reclaimed IEEPA tariffs.

This is slightly less than 40 million because there is also an FX adjustment and smaller transfer pricing adjustments. As you can see in our interim report, Note 4, this is really the difference between the balance that we communicated in Q2 and the balance that we're now communicating as still outstanding in Q3.

In addition to that, after the closing of the quarter, we've received additional 85 million DKK, which were not recognized in Q3, but will be recognized instead in quarter four, one of the reasons why we're also now communicating a higher landing point of our EBIT margin for the full year in the upper range of our guidance of 12% to 14%. As the refunds were larger the than the expenses in Q3, net impact from tariffs for this quarter, unlike previous quarters, was slightly positive.

In addition to that, we also had a smaller impact from FX, as I also mentioned earlier, if you compare this quarter to the previous two quarters, particularly driven by the US dollar-DKK development. All together, this means that the adjusted EBIT, as referred to here on the slide, landed at 12.5%.

This is below quarter one and quarter two adjusted EBIT of 15.2% and 14.5%, respectively. We did indicate in our last quarter that we did expect quarter three to be a bit lower than quarter four, and that's also part of what you're seeing here.

We are comfortable today reiterating that quarter four will be higher, both on reported, partly driven by tariffs, but also on the underlying EBIT. Q3 specifically was impacted by a few small one-time costs, particular the commercial expansion that we mentioned in our Q2, where we did extra investments, particularly in the US to expand our sales force, and there's also always a couple of ramp-up costs on those.

This is part of the selling expense line. Secondly, we had a number of strategic projects that also were expensed in the admin line.

All together, this contributed from a to a slight step-down in the adjusted EBIT margin from what we saw in Q1 and Q2. We are comfortable that this will turn around for Q4.

Looking specifically at Q4, the step-up in the adjusted EBIT margin will mainly be driven by three factors. First, as implicit in our underlying updated guidance, we still expect higher growth in Q4, and that will drive an overall better operating leverage.

Secondly, we expect a better gross margin, partly because of the continued improvement of mix towards Endoscopy, and partly because of geographical mix, as we are expecting higher growth in US. Lastly, and the biggest driver of this will also be a lower OPEX ratio in the fourth quarter, particularly driven by operating leverage, as I mentioned, also with the higher growth, particularly in the lines of selling expenses expenses and admin, where we do expect to see higher leverage for quarter four.

Net-net, we are seeing what we see as a positive development. The quarter three is affected by a few one-time costs that are mainly impacting our admin and selling expenses.

Overall, we're well on track, and with what we see for quarter four and the guidance where we now expecting to land in the upper end of the 12% to 14%, we feel very comfortable about it. Last but not least, coming back to my point about tariffs, I also just want to reiterate that the tariff cost, the underlying tariff costs are still developing as expected, and we will, we believe, end at a point where in the end of the year, will be still be carrying around a negative 1 percentage point of impact before any tariff refunds as a negative impact we will also carry into next year.

Exactly how we will end up accounting for the remaining outstanding refund claims is still an open question. We have another 70 million that could either be paid as part of Q4, i.e., if they're paid to us before end of September, or could be paid later in the year.

We maintain the view that we are conservative on this, and we therefore not recognize any of the tariff outstanding tariff reclaims until they are ultimately paid to our accounts. With that, let me move on to cash flow.

We continue to see a really strong cash flow driven by both and mainly a stronger operating leverage from our improved underlying EBITDA, but also with a positive development in net working capital. The underlying EBITDA is obviously also here helped by the stronger or the additional reclaims of of tariffs.

Overall, the main driver of this is really our operating leverage. That also means that we're reporting a net free cash flow for the quarter of 154 million, and we continue therefore also to see a stronger and stronger cash conversion, now for the quarter specifically at 48%, and therefore, also reiterating that for the full year, we're still expecting a cash conversion above 40%.

With that, on the last page, let me turn to outlook. Ultimately, we're today, as Britt also mentioned in her opening, updating our outlook as extension of our updated view of the aCPM expectations for the full year.

We're therefore now guiding towards in around 10% organic growth, which really reflects that the Anaesthesia & Patient Monitoring is now expected to be very low single digit, positive, but very low. We continue to see positive volume uptake in aCPM, and with that momentum we're seeing both in quarter three and also what we've seen since we closed the quarter, we feel comfortable that we can deliver on this.

Very importantly, again, to highlight, as Britt also did in her closing, we're seeing really solid underlying growth in Endoscopy with a continuing strong momentum, and we're therefore still guiding for plus 15% organic growth in Endoscopy, which keeps us within the 15% to 20% organic growth CAGR throughout our ZOOM AHEAD period. On EBIT margin, we're maintaining our EBIT margin guidance of 12% to 14%.

We still expect the uptick in quarter four, as I just explained on the previous page. This will be supported by tariff reclaims, but also by a stronger underlying EBIT margin for the fourth quarter.

Last but not least, as I also just mentioned, our cash conversion remain on track to deliver a 40% cash conversion for the full year in alignment with previous guidance, in alignment with our long-term target. With that, I want to hand it back to the operator for Q&A.

morning, Britt and Henrik. Thank you for the questions.

My first question is just on margins. I really appreciate that color that you gave on the Q3-specific factors on the underlying margin or what you're calling adjusted EBIT now.

Could you just provide a little more color on why exactly the things we see in Q3 would be one-off and not persist into Q4? For instance, surely investments in commercial expansion within the urology, ENT, and GI segment doesn't just drop off.

That was just one part of the the bit that you highlighted there. Then my second question, please, is one of our top incoming is, what this all means for 2027.

There's a lot for us to consider right now. Would it be possible for you to just speak through the key moving parts on both the top line and margins for next year, especially in light of the current inflationary context?

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Tyra. Thank you for your attention and for good questions.

Perhaps I start with with margin and and and then we can talk a little bit more about the longer term. I just want to caution today, of course, we are still within the current financial year and and only as part of Q4 we will start really talk about the guidance for for next year.

The answers for the longer term will still a little bit wait await what we will come in our what we will comment on in our Q4. On the margin, I think the the point of of one-offs are really to I think spell out three main things.

First, you could say that for the quarter, the commercial investments, as you rightfully point, are investments mainly in people, as we also mentioned in our Q2. This is particularly US-focused on how we are more deliberate and and, you could say, focused in our ENT and urology sales forces, where we've added more people.

The one-off cost element of this is that there's always some ramp-up where people are onboarded, trained, and before they hit the ground running on the sales teams, you don't really see the full operating leverage. That will impact the first quarter in particular when you're starting up and and spending cost on recruiting and onboarding.

The second and equally big, if not bigger element is that we had a couple of strategic projects. We continuously invest in expanding our understanding of customer patterns, of strategic opportunities, and and also long-term opportunities for us, and we have had a couple of projects that we were running just before summer where expenses for those were included in admin costs.

These are not things that will reoccur. These are studies that are now over, and and therefore, I'm also again referring to those as one-off.

The last, which is, of course, a difficult one and not exactly a one-off, is this question of of FX, where again, if you compare quarter three to quarter two, that continuous decline of the US dollar-DKK is still impacting us negatively for the quarter alone, even though we are over time have that natural hedge that I've talked about before, where we will see also a reduction in COGS, but with some delay, and therefore, there's still some timing effect in in COGS for Q3 that is impacting us us negative. If you look at the longer term, I guess what we can say today is really what Britt already said.

I think, one, we feel on a good track on Endoscopy, plus 15% growth for this year and within the long-term CAGR of 15% to 20%. On on margin, I think the overall themes are the same, and and I just want to reiterate again because that's also been a question on tariffs.

We are seeing a run-rate cost still for next year being around that negative 1 percentage point before any tariff refunds going into next year. I think that's as far as we'll go.

There's still a lot of things we can see that we are executing on as planned on on the operating leverage. Today, I feel it's still a bit too early to talk about what would be potential inflationary topics for next year.

Most of these are things we can manage and navigate mid- to long-term. I will postpone that deep more detailed answer to our Q4.

Yeah.

Maybe just a few comments on on the revenue, and I've already said that, and again, we we cannot be too specific. If we look at what we see as the trend in respiratory, I think, the growing momentum that we have from a broader portfolio, I think that's, that's very much supporting our delivery in on on the strategic yeah, on our on our ZOOM AHEAD strategy, sorry, with a strong, continued momentum expected in respiratory.

Then as we talked about urology, ENT, and and GI, we are also here continuing to lead the conversion to single-use and and feel very confident also around the level that we have seen when we look at the the recent rolling 12 months, a continuation of that and and around that level. I think that's as specific as as we can be now.

We continue to be very focused on endoscopy, and and we are really on plan to continue to deliver strong growth across all segments here.

Thank you, Tyra.

Thank you. I'll jump back in the queue.

Hi, Britt and Henrik. Thank you for taking my questions.

I have two, if I may. Actually, I would maybe just like to understand also the margin a little bit better, I'll try to slice it and dice it a little bit differently.

Maybe if you can just talk about the the commercial investments that you have had in in in in this quarter. Based on my math, and you can correct me if if I'm wrong here, but it seems like a distribution ramp-up cost of around 30 million DKK from Q2 to Q3 when I when I take out all of the tariff FX impact quarter-over-quarter.

Can you maybe just elaborate a little bit on what what that actually is going to be sort of what is that investment targeting, and how should we view sort of the step-up in distribution costs from here on? Is this sort of a front-loading of investments into next year, or should we expect to see a gradual ramp-up of commercial investments during the next couple of quarters as well just to understand whether you front-loaded your investments a little bit here or whether this is something that is maybe more of a reaction to the to the increasing competition that you're seeing in the in the urology segment?

Thank you.

Yeah. Good question, Martin, and I can certainly go a little bit more deep into it.

Obviously, you could say from one perspective, with the tariff reclaims and more money in the bank, we are looking at are there certain things we would we would do differently. The first key answer is, we have not front-loaded a massive cost.

I think on the transfer of production, there are certain one-off costs and also some that land in in the distribution line when you're transferring production lines. They have not been accelerated massively, but we're continuing to invest in in the scale, and that's part of what you're seeing here.

Except for that, and without going to the specifics of the math that you're highlighting here, the around 30 million, I think the key point we want to make is we continue to invest in the commercial organization. We try to be quite clear when we do that.

In Q3, we specific or sorry, Q2, we specifically called out the fact that we were investing in US in that separation of the urology and ENT sales force because we see so much opportunity for both. Now here in in Q3, we we have that basically settled.

Therefore, we're not expecting a a further gradual step-up in in this cost line into Q4. That's more or less all run-rate into the Q3 number you already see here.

I know this has been a debate we've had before, when exactly are these materializing, but I think, therefore, the key statement is, for Q4 alone, there's not an expected big step-up in commercial costs. Longer term, a key point I want to reiterate is, we continuously look for growth investments, of course, and and some of those have longer payback than others, and and that's still something we're continuously evaluating when we look at the long-term picture.

For the short term, and more specifically for Q4, as I said also in my update on the underlying EBIT margin or the adjusted EBIT margin, we actually expect to see a higher level of leverage also on the commercial costs into Q4, given that we already made these investments and the costs were in Q3.

Thank you. Just my second question, please, would be on the urology, ENT, and GI.

Britt, this is maybe a bit more more to you in terms of the trajectory that we're seeing. This is a gradual slowdown that we've been seeing for many quarters now with with a few bumps, you could say, during during the last maybe two years or so.

What should we what should make the market and analysts and investors believe that we will see an inflection point in this slowing segment altogether? Is it product launches?

If if that is the case, which product launches should we look for, in which segment? Is it new new markets that you're entering, reimbursements, centers?

Anything that could can provide a little bit of comfort to to investors and analysts would be super helpful to get in that segment.

Thank you for that question, Martin. Let me maybe take a step back to say, last year at the Capital Markets Day, where we talked about the market potential, then you can say has anything changed since what we communicated there.

I would say, the only main thing that has really changed from there is when when we look at uretero, as I alluded to in my presentation, that we are not gaining market share as fast as we expected in in that. Then you can say, why is why is that?

I think there are two things to this. One is the fact that it is a much more crowded market with many more players, and we have also talked about this before, and then the combination of that and that these sales cycles are longer because we have these procedures are more complex.

Other than that, not nothing has changed. Then then if I answer your question of why is it you should believe that we will continue to grow here.

We are right now, as I alluded to in my presentation, seeing most of the growth coming from aScope 4 Cysto and aScope 4 RhinoLaryngo in this segment specifically. These are both solutions that have been in the market for six, seven years, and we do have improved solutions in development that we will actually bring to market that can also address a broader market and different procedures.

That is really back to, the playbook that I alluded to, that this is, when you look a couple of years out, what should make you comfortable that we will continue to have growth. At the same time, we are very focused on our solution and how we're differentiating on our solution, so that's also where, when we look at the full solution, the endo-intelligence comes in, where we have the opportunity with technology to to also improve how we're adding value to our customers.

This is where we are, by far, leading relative to all other players in the market. As I mentioned, we do have integration into hospital systems, which is significantly improving their workflow efficiency.

We're the only company that has that. We're very far ahead also because we we have very strong documentation on cybersecurity, and we are seeing the customers adopting that.

Then we have some more groundbreaking solutions when it comes to endo-intelligence in development that I'll not go too much into for competitive reasons. I think that whole thinking around the solutions that we bring, moving from providing a single scope with aScope 4 Cysto and aScope 4 RhinoLaryngo to a broader solution offering is really what should drive the growth.

We are seeing some of that momentum now, and that that's going to improve as we're bringing new solutions to market in the next couple of years in these segments. Then the last one in GI, from a lower base, we see continuously strong growth percentage-wise, and we are also seeing good momentum with the new approach we took in this segment with our aScope Gastro, that we're we're getting momentum.

We have been very clear about that we have not allocated a lot of commercial resources to this because we wanted to learn and see how is it that we can really, in this being the by far the biggest endoscopy segment, how we can also drive the conversion in this segment as we have done in other segments. I think we're getting much closer to, understanding what is our approach and what is it will take to also for the customers to gain the same efficiency improvements and quality in their work from our single-use solution.

That's also why we are very confident in this segment. Then maybe finally on uretero, I mentioned in my presentation that we are also working on improved solutions and a broader portfolio from what we from our aScope Uretero that we launched.

That's also where we believe that that should clearly differentiate us in the market.

That's very clear. Thank you for taking my questions.

I'll jump back in the line, please.

Hi. Good morning, Britt and Henrik.

Thanks for taking my questions. I have two, please.

One is just looking at your mid-term targets. If we look at the your EBIT margin target that you had released around a year ago, which was for around 20% margins by FY '28 and and over 20% by FY '30.

Looking at where we are right now, can you help us understand that bridge from, let's say, from around 12% this year, and that's calculated from an underlying ex-tariff refunds basis, how would that trajectory look? Are you still comfortable around those targets, and do you think there's any risk to those targets?

Then the second one again on the mid-term guidance was around Anaesthesia and Patient Monitoring. You had upgraded that guidance to 3% to 5% top line growth.

How are we thinking of that business longer term, and how do you believe volumes will develop? Again, are you comfortable with that range, and do you think there's any risk to the upper end of that guidance?

Thank you, Anchal, and great to have you back. Thank you for the for the questions.

Let me start on on margin. I think the first thing I want to remind us all is that when this 20% target was set actually originally back in ZOOM IN, in the ZOOM IN strategy, and reiterated in our Capital Markets Day last year around this time, we also caveated with we will evaluate potential growth investments, growth investments along the way, and and growth remain remains our first priority.

That doesn't mean that I'm today changing the target, but I just want to remind us all that that's been the balancing act all along. The key components of how we get from today to reaching that level in '27/'28 are the same.

It is still a combination of gross margin and OPEX ratio, of which OPEX ratio will be the vast majority of that. That's also why we keep talking about this operating leverage point and and how we see this leveraging across our organization.

Besides that, for today, Anchal, I I I don't want to go further in detail on exactly how this will pan out. I think with with also where the focus has been in questions so far, we will focus more on how we land today and how we show that gradual improvement in the EBIT margin with a continuous higher growth in EBIT than we see on the top line, what we are also expecting for this year, if you adjust for both tariffs in and out and FX, we will see a gradual improvement this year, and we expect to continue to be able to to deliver on that.

On the aCPM side, if I turn to that, I think also a good question. I think obviously, this year, the growth trajectory looks very different.

I want to remind you, if you go back and look across last year and this year, we're still actually solidly within our growth guidance of 3% to 5%, clearly a little bit lower than we have been on Anaesthesia, but solidly still within the guidance if you consider the price increases we've done, and therefore, with what we know today and what we see, and and back to Britt's point, the new product also, particularly for the neurology segment, we don't see any reason to change our view on the long-term growth trajectory for the aCPM segment or business area with a 3% to 5% CAGR growth across the period.

Thanks, Henrik. That's very clear.

Just a quick follow-up on margins and input cost inflation. I appreciate you won't be able to share much thoughts into next year, but just trying to understand, do any of your contracts include pass-through pricing or inflation clauses?

Today, I cannot comment sort of on on the specifics of all contracts. Typically, there's not a direct one-to-one pass-through, and and I also just want to remind us all that some of the cost inflation that I know a number of other companies are talking about is still not really that impactful for us, neither on plastic resin or silver prices or or the like.

Net-net of the external factors, it's still FX that's, by far, the single biggest impact here. With that, I'm also really saying, Anchal, that we have time sort of in our commercial model if we see a structural change in the underlying cost of a component or a raw material that we can go out and and and change our contracts commercially, because in many of our contracts, we we have annual reviews of pricing where we have a chance to do that.

In the ones that are longer, then we typically manage and and we can manage also with efficiencies in our operating setup. Net-net, cost inflation still is not a big theme internally in Ambu.

That's very clear. Thanks, Henrik.

Thank you, Anchal.

Hi, it's Yewei from SEB. Thank you for taking my question.

All two from my side, do one at a time. Firstly, I noticed that you highlighted the ASC potential for non-respiratory endoscopy portfolio.

To my knowledge, this is also a segment where the customers are more price-sensitive. Is it fair to understand that you would be more willing to compromise your gross margin to pursue the growth?

What are the what are the strategic priority here?

Yeah. No, thank you for for for that that question, Yewei.

It is true that, we are looking at expansion into different segments, and very much also are close to how the market is converting where we are where we are seeing that the market is converting with more and more procedures being done in in the ASCs, the ambulatory centers. Therefore, that's a place that we are also playing.

We are we are playing a bit with our pricing in in terms of some of these segments, but also with a very clear price floor. This is also where I I want to highlight that this is this is necessary to play in this segment, as you say, but when we look at our total pricing and how our how we look, we are still priced as a as a at a significant premium to our other single-use players, and also that some of these selected customers, we evaluate carefully how we use the price then to get volume.

This is worth noticing that when we look to the ASCs, we are very focused on where we see the high volumes and and but but we do see, back to the trend that I mentioned, that they are given more procedures are moving there, they are also looking for a more comprehensive portfolio, where our aScope 5 Cysto in some cases becomes attractive for them, and and you know that's a different price point. It's very important to highlight that on on the pricing, we are very focused on on avoiding dilution, but more looking at at keeping the price at a at a competitive level where we are, again, at a significant premium to to the other players in the market.

That was clear. Thanks.

Then my next question on cystoscope specifically. I know you have given some price concession due to the competition.

Is it possible to quantify the gross margin impact here in Q3?

Thank you, Yewei. It is correct that we, as Britt just said, in selected markets, selected accounts, now we've talked about ASCs, are are doing sort of strategic pricing, i.e., slightly lower prices at a premium to competition, but still lower versus where we came from.

We're not going to quantify exactly what that means on gross margin. I think again, balancing back versus FX, FX is a bigger impact on this than than these underlying trends.

I think if you look at the overall picture, this is certainly something we are very focused on, and extremely focused on in terms of the investments we're making in innovation and commercial execution to continue to differentiate ourselves. We're not at a stage where we're seeing a a wider price erosion at a at a bigger scale.

We we are more now focused on how do we continue to drive that in that differentiation also forward also for this segment. Then then mindful that the the segment split, which we also discussed in a previous session, I think in Q2, you asked the question, Yewei, where what is the split between hospital and ASC or in Europe, outpatient, where, of course, when you go more in the in the outpatient or ASC segment, it is at a lower gross margin level than than what you see in hospital, but not something that has a big effect at the group level.

Okay. Thank you.

If I may follow up on the on the gross margin, if I understand correctly, you are expecting a improvement here in Q4. Could you name what will be the main drivers here?

Yes, of course. It is correct.

We we are expecting a an improvement. As I said in my in my update on the EBIT margin, it is it is really a combination of the factors that we've talked about before.

I think first one is that that we are expecting higher growth overall, and and growth here also is a scale factor for the indirect production costs, so the the fixed cost under gross margin for our factories. Higher growth in Endoscopy, which again is a net better gross margin, and that will also explicitly be the case for for Q4.

Then, of course, I'm not referring to to FX, but but but because we don't know where that will land exactly, that is the one open caveat which could push us one way or the other. Really those two factors, being the same as we've talked about before, are really what we expect to also see materializing in Q4 and therefore, with a higher gross margin as a net.

Okay. Thank you.

I will jump back to the queue.

Thank you.

Hello. Good morning, everybody.

Very happy to see you, Lisa here. Welcome at Ambu.

Two questions of my side, please. One, dealing with the commercial and and and the commercial approach, I was willing to know what is new and specifically into the U.S.

in your commercial approach that you've been putting in place over the past six months that will start to be visible in the next semester? The second question, because there is a lot of question mark here regarding this let's say, bucket of investment cycle or the just slash CapEx.

Just willing to know, how should we read the break up of that envelope coming up in between the manufacturing and the commercial next year?

Okay. I'll I'll I'll maybe start with your first question, Delphine.

Thank you for for that, and let Henrik comment on on the CapEx and breakup. When it comes to the commercial approach that we've taken, what we communicated also last quarter and and what we did starting from April was that we, we did a an adjustment of the commercial setup in in US basically as a result of how, the customers have been changing, and also where the decision-making is taken.

We have made a much more structure that is centered around the customers itself and and the hospitals so we we can leverage much more our portfolio across the different parts of the hospital. Then we have also doubled down on the potential that we have to see how is it then that we we have a setup where we can leverage that at the same time as going much deeper and being more specific on on the different specialties that we are in where we see momentum.

That has really been the driver of of setting that up. I will say, when when we spoke in when we spoke in in the in early May in connection with our Q2, this was relatively new.

I I will say now, a couple of months later, this has actually gone very well, and we we see we have settled in adjusting to this very fast, and we're continuing, of course, to to practice on how we do that. It's it's very much that, focusing on the decision-makers where we are strengthening our approach and not just the clinicians as a result of how the market is moving.

Then we talked about also other outpatient settings where patients are increasingly being treated to make sure that we have a setup that addresses that.

Yeah. Building on that, I just want to and thank you for the good questions as always, Delphine.

I I just want to reiterate what I said also before in a in a positive sense. We're able to attract really good commercial talent also in US, and therefore, we have actually had a lot of people good people coming on board.

That's also some of the one-off onboarding costs that I referred to earlier in terms of commercial investments. That obviously gives us the puts us in a position to then also accelerate our efforts into the market, as as Britt explained.

In terms of the investments rest of the year and into next year, I just want to make sure I I split it in two. Obviously, we're doing investments that are impacting our OPEX and investments that are impacting our CapEx.

On the OPEX side, this is mainly investing in in the commercial field force, where there, of course, we are the run-rate level we are seeing now here in Q3 and and which will be carried into Q4, if you exclude these one-offs that I've talked about, is really also a run-rate level we we are expecting to carry into next year. A lot of these commercial field force investments have been a high focus of ours over the last 18 months, and and in in most countries, we're really now more doing smaller adjustments, not major adjustments, and and therefore, we will continue to do those those investments, but but we are in to to a large now at a place where we also more focus on making sure we scale the investments we've done at the right level in the right pace.

Except for that, if we then turn on the on the CapEx side, which I also heard you ask about, I think we are still investing obviously, significant in innovation. You will also see that our capitalization rate had gone up a little bit for the quarter to be to be very detailed.

This is more a matter of the maturity of our portfolio and the total level of spend we are continuing to put into innovation, and that's still increasing at a solid, but also high pace because we see significant opportunity, and as Britt said, with several product launches coming up, that's an area we're investing in. An area where we also are already investing and will continue to invest in the production ramp-up needed for those new production lines.

That does not mean new factories. It means products maturing the production lines and being ready for the commercial launches that will come at the scale that they are required, and those investments are are also still being made and something that will carry into next year.

We have the overall capacity in terms of physical space to to to to manage these investments, but it still requires equipment, training, and and and obviously, we're looking also at automation as we scale our manufacturing sites to a larger extent, and with that, also looking for better output efficiency.

Just a quick follow-up on this one. Where are we in terms of the margin difference, gross margin difference between Mexico and Malaysia?

We're still at a place where you can say, if you look at the landed cost of a product, excluding all tariffs, today, there's 10% tariffs on on products being imported from Malaysia to US, but even excluding that, on a landing margin, i.e., if you include production cost and the distribution cost to the customer, it's the same level for Mexico and Malaysia.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you for that, operator, and thank you to everyone for listening in on today's call, and and thanks in particular also for the very good questions.