Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and a very warm welcome to Ottobock's conference call on the preliminary financial results 2025. Today's speakers are Oliver Jakobi, CEO, and Dr.

Arne Kreitz, CFO of Ottobock. Before we start the presentation, please note that this webcast 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, we ask you to raise your hand in the raise hand functions 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 welcome also from my side to our results 2025 and the outlook. We're looking back to a very successful fiscal year in 2025.

The results are fully in line with our financial guidance, which we gave after the nine-months report in November. We grew double-digit on the top line.

We outperformed the market. That means we were again able to gain more market share.

With 11.7% or 10.6% organically, we were growing double as fast as the market. The reasons for this are manifold.

Our innovation, our reimbursement coverage, our customer focus and orientation are one reason for this. What is even more important for us, we grew also very profitable.

We could realize significant scale effects and, yeah, saw an increase in our EBITDA by 30%, a margin step-up by 3.6% to 26%. This is a reason of our successful implemented growth strategy, where we do see a lot of margin uplifts through favorable product mix, but keeping costs under control through our, yeah, production and operation initiatives, but also shared service initiatives.

Besides this, we also extended our innovation leadership. Besides new products, very, yeah, advanced and high-margin products, we also managed to add more technology on through additional M&A.

Our outlook, the projection, is deliberately prudent. We are looking for 2026 to a organic growth of 5% to 8%, and we are looking to increase the EBITDA margin above 20.5% 26.5%.

For the mid-term guidance, we do see all the market-relevant trends and also our strategy well in place, nothing has changed. That's why we're confirming our mid-term guidance of an average sales growth of 7% to 9% per year and an EBITDA margin of 29% to 30% in 2029.

Here the financial KPIs at a glance. We grew 11.7% on the top line to €1.6 million, so that reflects a 10.6% organic growth.

Our underlying EBITDA went from €320 to €415 million, a 95% 95 million increase of our EBITDA, which means 3.6% from 22.4% to 26% margin. Our cash flow, we managed to increase by 23%, 24% to €228 million despite one-off costs which were IPO-related.

Coming to the top line, we're very proud to say that in all regions, we managed to outgrow the market. In EMEA, we grew 12.7% or 9.5% organically, ending with a sales of €1.15 billion, mainly driven by new product innovation, by reimbursement coverage, but also emerging markets stepped up and spike events happened.

In the Americas, we managed to grow by 9.5% or 14% organically to €346 million. Also here, innovation products, but also specially in the US, we had a reimbursement expansion for a lot of high-end products.

APAC, as mentioned, saw 4.7% or 11.7% organically. Despite the unfavorable FX headwind, we grew to €104 million.

Here in APAC, we had besides also the, yeah, requests towards high-end products, we saw that Australia, Japan were moving forward, but also the emerging markets, especially India, contributed to the growth. In our categories, the B2B business, where we report our components, and our B2C business, where we have the patient care located, we see that in both areas we grew, especially strong in the B2B area.

Here also innovation, reimbursement coverage, our evidence-based approach that we can show that with our high-end solutions, we are able to reduce healthcare costs is paying off more and more. On the patient care side, we have seen very good performance in the US with double-digit growth there.

Also here, we finished now our integration efforts, we're now focusing on growth and efficiency gains. With this, I would hand over to Arne.

He will talk about the profitability.

Thank you, Oliver. On the profitability side, we are seeing a step-up in 2025.

If you're looking into the absolute numbers, we've been growing from €320 million to €415 million. That's an increase of €95 million and in relative terms almost 30% of an increase, which is significant and is also reflected in the very significant increase on the profitability side with 3.6 percentage points increase to 26%.

The reasons behind are, as described in our previous calls, we're seeing very nice mix effects from the scale-up of the high-end components that riding at a higher gross margin in relative and absolute terms, and that is falling through down to the EBITDA. We're seeing very nice scale-up effects, specifically on the B2B side.

We are making use of the very high organic growth in comparison to our established infrastructure. This is the scale-up effects that we're seeing.

We're seeing also progress on the efficiency initiatives that we've been driving. Bulgaria, low-cost manufacturing, and the shared service are some examples of it, but we have a full program that we're executing with discipline, and that's why very positive momentum on the underlying core EBITDA side.

This is reflecting through into our free cash flow. On the free cash flow side, we are also seeing a steep increase from €184 to €228 million.

Oliver said it already, we need to be aware of that the 2025 number still includes the IPO cost, which are at around €30 million cash-effective last year. If we would normalize for that, then we would be looking at an even almost 40% increase in the course of 2025.

That's very important to understand that the general logic of our P&L: strong growth on the top-line side translating in an overproportionate growth on the EBITDA side and an overproportionate growth on the free cash flow side. This is what we're exactly seeing in 2025.

Very, very positive development. That reflects also into our net debt and the related leverage.

We're seeing that the net debt level has been coming down in absolute terms. We're now looking at a net debt level of €960 million at the end of 2025.

We can very nicely see how the leverage is coming down. You see the trend over the last quarters.

You see the performance throughout 2025, which is really the combination of the lower net debt level, but also the significantly improved EBITDA level. All in all, very positive trend.

We had been guiding for below 2.5 turns. We now reached 2.3 turns, and from that sense, very positive development.

Before we're now moving over into the outlook and a bit what we're expecting on the innovation pipeline for next year, let's really recap on the strong performance of 2025: very strong on the top-line side, 10.6% organic growth; reflected into the EBITDA, 26% reached, that's at the upper end of the guidance that we've been given; very strong cash flow performance; and that all reflected also in this net leverage and net leverage improvement that we're seeing on this slide. Now, before we are specifically looking into the guidance for 2026, we would like to give you a bit of a outlook on the innovations that we're expecting for next year because that's a very important context then also for the guidance that we're giving.

Before we're now talking about the individual innovations, let me highlight that a lot of those innovations will be launching mid-year because we have OTWorld Messe Leipzig, that's the most important fair in our industry, happening every two years towards the mid of the year. What we are typically doing is that we're really launching the key innovations on that event.

A lot of the topics that you'll be seeing here will be coming more towards the second half of the year, and then we'll be developing full impact, yeah, basically 2027-plus. Starting on the prosthetics side, we see the MPK portfolio continuing to be an important growth driver.

We had been launching the X4 in Q4 2024 and have been seeing a very nice run-up in 2025. The first year of the run-up is through, but we will be seeing continuous growth on the X4 side, as this is the general logic of our business.

Kenevo, the reimbursement on the US side, we've been seeing good momentum in 2025. We think we're standing at around 1/3 of the penetration of the opportunity.

There's more opportunity to come also in 2026. We'll be newly launching product updates on the mechanical knee side portfolio, where we haven't been bringing updates for a longer period, from that end, that will also be a good new speaking point.

We'll be launching a completely new liner family. Special thing about those liners is that they are custom-made.

We're using a new silicon printing technology, where we're really hopeful that this will be a strong push for the liner segment, and we'll be starting to launch, as said, in the second half of the year. Then on the right side of the slide, we're looking into our upper limb portfolio.

As you recall, maybe from our Q3 call, we had been launching next generation of an upper limb platform, which is a real game changer because with that platform, you can combine different terminal devices to the same connection to the human body, so that the user is much more empowered how to use his hand and also to switch to different devices. We had been launching Speedhand as a first terminal device, and we'll be seeing as a more functional device the Michelangelo solution.

Also this will be a very good speaking point to come into the market. On the field of neuro-orthotics, we have two key categories where we're putting the emphasis on.

The first one is the C-Brace family and an expansion of the C-Brace family. We are launching a product called C-Brace Interim, so that the first fitting of a C-Brace can already be happening during the rehab phase.

Very important: at the moment, we're losing some patients because they're getting trained on how to use a wheelchair instead of getting trained how to get back on their feet, and we think that with the C-Brace Interim, we'll be catching much more patients in comparison to what we've been seeing before. Secondly, on that family, we'll be launching a completely new mechatronic system.

How that is positioned from a functionality point and price point of view, we'll be elaborating during the launch. Importantly to note, the way how we've been developing the mechatronic knee portfolio, starting with the C-Leg and then moving into Genium and Kenevo, that's what we're seeing now on the C-Brace side.

We started with the C-Brace, we're expanding the C-Brace with the C-Brace Interim, and we're opening up a completely new platform to get even broader into the patient base. Another good speaking point will be the Exopulse 9.5.

Might recall we had been doing an acquisition, this is not a self-developed product. It has been acquisition of a smaller Swedish product company.

We now put a lot of effort into developing the next generation, the 9.5 generation, and are also using it for running our clinical studies. Also that will be launching now in the private pay market for 2026, will be a good speaking point.

First reimbursements, as communicated before, we're expecting towards 2027 and 2028. On the digital O&P front, also a lot of innovation happening, not that tangible as on the product side, but a real step forward on the working processes happening in a patient care facility.

It's a full workflow management tool, where new functionalities are built in. We have a completely new software around custom fabrication and cut kits, the morphing of the device to the human body.

It's much more AI-enabled, so that the labor time of the CPO is further reduced. We've also been including now Smart Documentation, which is AI-supported documentation of the applications towards the reimbursement system.

At the moment, a lot of helping hands are needed to write all those applications. Now we have a software tool which will do this in a much more automated manner.

Also a very good lever that we're pulling into the day-to-day routines within the patient care facility. Last but not least, on the bionic exoskeleton side, we have just launched the active version of the exoskeletons.

We are coming from passive versions, are now arriving at much more functional, motorized versions. That will also be a new speaking point that we are trying to penetrate into the market.

Why are we saying all that? Because we feel we have a very rich pipeline of innovations to come.

As said at the beginning, we're expecting that they will be gaining ground starting in the second half, as the launch date is basically more towards the second half of the year. That is also important to understand a bit the guidance that we've been given.

What we would like to convey is that we're very satisfied with the performance that we've been seeing in 2025. We don't see any reasons to change our mid-term guidance.

The 7% to 9% growth and the 29% to 30% are fully consistent to what we've been communicating during the IPO and also during our Q3 update. Now, in relation to 2026, we have decided to be deliberately a bit more prudent.

We're guiding for 5% to 8% of a organic growth rate and a further expansion of the profitability to more than 26.5%. Now let me emphasize a little bit the thoughts behind the 5% to 8%.

We had a very strong year 2025 with the first full-year ramp-up of some key technologies like the X4 and the Kenevo for the K2 population in the US. We will be seeing continuous growth on that basis, but the first year is always a strong year that we're seeing post-launch.

We're also expecting that new growth impulses from the innovations that we have in our pipeline will only becoming more towards the second half of the year and then have positive impact on the next years to come. We have not been putting in extraordinary effects in relation to spike events.

On spike events, we've been assuming that there will be a continuous development as a normal growth rate within the markets, but we have not been considering exceptional impacts because, and this is also very consistent in what we've been communicating up until now, we don't want to give a guidance on events which are just difficult to predict. That's why, all in all, from our point of view, it's a conservative way to look into the guidance for 2026, but we also want to convince by being reliable and by being able to meet our guidance, and in that light, the guidance for 2026 is to be seen.

With that, we're opening the round for questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our Q&A session. If you have a question, we ask that you please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen, or press *9 if dialed in by phone.

Once your name has been announced, please unmute or press *6 and ask your question. If you want to withdraw your question, please lower your hand using the raise hand function.

Thank you, and a moment for the first question, please. Our first question comes from Richard Felton at Goldman Sachs.

Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Good afternoon. I hope you can hear me.

First one, thank you very much for providing a bit more context around the 2026 guidance, especially on the timing of innovation. I thought that was very helpful.

To maybe sort of push you a little bit more on that, could you quantify how much benefit you expect to see from those innovation launches into the second half of the year? Then any color on the phasing of growth through 2026?

Then I suppose following on from that, is it that innovation piece that gives you the confidence to reiterate the 7% to 9% medium-term growth outlook? That's the first question.

Then second one, just a hopefully quite quick one, obviously your guidance has been provided in terms of organic growth rates. Could you also let us know what you were expecting in terms of FX impacts for 2026?

Thank you.

On the impact of the innovations to the second half, you need to understand that we're typically introducing those innovations and technologies on the fair, and then the launch is happening throughout the second half of the year. That doesn't mean that on that day, everything is launching up, but it's coming within the next two, three, four months in the second half of the year.

Regionally staggered, yeah?

Regionally staggered.

It's not that we immediately can launch globally

because

we have to prepare the markets, we have to train, to certify the specialists. Therefore, there's always a kind of delay, yeah.

That's also the reason why there will be first impacts on the second half, but the main impacts are to come then in the next years, and that's why also if you compare to our internal strategic plan, it has always been that phasing that we had in mind. That's why we're also confident that the mid-term guidance with 7% to 9% is fully intact because nothing structural has changed.

It's basically following the innovation pipeline that we have in front of us. Now, regarding your second questions on FX assumptions, we've been assuming the dollar is the key exposure that we have.

We've been assuming a 1.18 exchange rate, and are overall seeing comparably low impacts due to the hedging that we have. The comparison to 2024 to 2025 is that we have negative impact of around €3 million on the EBITDA side if we're assuming those 1 1.18 FX rates.

Great, very clear. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Angela Bozinovic at BNP Paribas. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Hi, I hope you can hear me well and thank you for taking my questions. The first one, also on guidance, can you give us a little bit more details on what we can expect in B2B versus B2C throughout the year?

Maybe the second one on the spike events, can you quantify what was the impact of spike events in Q4 and just roughly what is currently embedded in your guidance especially for the Russia-Ukraine conflict? Thank you.

On the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as said, we don't want to give guidance actually on individual spike events. We're looking at it in total, yeah, also for the next calls to come.

You're right, Russia-Ukraine is the main impacting factor. As we're looking into the last year, we have had an impact of around 2.5 to 3 percentage points on the growth rate.

It's not always one-on-one to be captured because there's always underlying growth also in those markets, and then there's also the adjacent markets a bit around where some of the treatments are happening. We're assuming 2.5% to 3 percentage points for the 2025 number.

As said, for 2026, we have not taken into consideration larger upsides in terms of spike events. What was the second question?

Could you repeat, please? That would be helpful.

Yes, sorry. The second question is just on your guidance, if you can provide some details on what we can expect from B2B and B2C growth.

We're not breaking down the guidance into B2B and B2C, but the general logic that we provided is is fully intact. We think that on the B2C side, the market is growing by 5%.

We are expecting to grow with the market or above. Then on the B2B side, as said, a bit more conservative now due to the factors that I elaborated, but still stronger growth than in relation to the B2B B2C side.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Graham Doyle at UBS. Please press *6 and ask your question.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.

Just two from me. Firstly, just on the guidance for 2026, you've got the 5% to 8%, which obviously seems quite low relative to what you've been delivering and probably what I think the business should sustain.

What are you assuming in order to get to 5%? It seems pretty unrealistic, but maybe you could just let us know how conservative the 5% is as a starting point.

Then, I know it's a bit tricky to comment on phasing, but maybe just a little bit of color as to what sort of level you think you can kind of exit or deliver towards the second half of the year, because, again, it feels like maybe you're exiting towards the upper end or better than your 7% to 9% mid-term rate, just to understand, are we just in a little funky air pocket in H1 just to get a better sense of that, and to what level of conservative is baked in? Thank you.

So 5% to 8%, so, as said, we wanted to be conservative on the guidance, and that also means we don't want to miss the guidance in our first year, first full year being on the on the public market. That's why I think I elaborated on our on our thinking process, that the last year has been a strong year.

A lot of the innovations will be more towards the second part half of the year, and then getting full impact really in the years to come. That's why it's probably on the conservative side, but we just wanted to be a reliable partner to the capital market, put it put it that way.

Then the phasing will still be following basically our normal phasing, because, as said, the launches of all those new products will be happening in the course of the second half of the year, and it will be staggered throughout the geographies. That's why I would be assuming much more of an impact to come in the year 2027 and ahead, than I would say there's a real structural shift in the patterns that we'll be seeing in 2026.

Graham, yeah, we want to earn your trust, yeah? That's why we will narrow our guidance later.

Maybe, after Q1, we will talk again. For us, it was important really, the first reports, we want to deliver to our promises.

Very important for us. Therefore, yeah, we widened a little bit the guidance and started with 5%.

Maybe just a quick follow-up then on that, it all makes complete sense. The bottom end of the range, the 5%, for me, when I look at what you've described in the past and my model and even your exit rate, it kind of implies basically a bit of price growth and a tiny bit of volume growth and no real mix growth.

Am I being sensible when I think of that's how conservative the bottom end is?

I think that's a fair assumption. On the volume side, as said, it was a strong year 2025.

That's why a bit more conservative. What we're not really seeing is on the pricing side any structural changes or shifts which would make us worry.

From that end, I agree to your description.

Brilliant. No, completely appreciate it.

Based on what you've delivered, sort of what you've said, it does sound like you're taking a very, very, very prudent approach to guidance, and as you say, we'll have another look at Q1. Thank you so much for the questions.

Welcome.

Our next question comes from Falko Friedrichs at Deutsche Bank. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Thank you. Hi, everyone.

We appreciate the way you're setting guidance. We think that is the absolutely right way to do it.

My first question is on the first quarter. Is there anything we should keep in mind in terms of the moving parts, either positive or negative, when we model the first quarter of your fiscal year?

Then second question is, is there anything in terms of M&A that could be on the agenda for this year over and above acquiring more clinics? Thank you.

On the timing, I would say, in general, we have pretty stable patterns, and with everything that I said on the impact on innovations this year, I would say you can assume a normal Q1 in relation to our full-year guidance. The second questions on the M&A side, we always have a well-filled pipeline of M&A opportunities.

I think what we're going to see this year is again a good mix of product and technology acquisitions and investments and also patient care expansions of our network. I would say, all in all, it's in line with what you've been seeing over the last years, where we've also been having pretty stable patterns.

It will be having an M&A opportunity also this year with a good mix between B2B and B2C.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Anna Ratcliffe at Bank of America. Please press *6 and ask your question.

Hi, thank you for taking the question. Hope you can hear me okay.

I just wanted to pick apart maybe a little bit more the EBITDA margin guidance. I appreciate the color you gave us on the areas of conservatism on the top line, but maybe we could also get that same color on the profitability guidance.

Where have you been conservative, and how much of the 50 bps margin expansion is drop-through from increasing price, and how much of that is savings from moving out of Salt Lake City? Thanks for taking the question.

Very good point to specifically look also on the EBITDA side, because what you can see is that we're guiding for another improvement on the profitability side of more than 26.5% and are confirming the 29% to 30% for 2029. The EBITDA margin is to be seen as always as a combination of how mix and scale-up effects are developing and the efficiencies that we're gaining.

Now, as we've been a bit more conservative on the top-line side, that of course then also has implications on the EBITDA side. On the EBITDA side, we're very confident on the efficiency that we're gaining through all the initiatives of low-cost manufacturing in Bulgaria, shared services in Bulgaria, and so on.

From that end, I would say that there's a correspondence of the top-line guidance in the bottom-line guidance. What's basically included in the bottom line is those tangible efficiencies that we're expecting to gain in the course of 2026.

Great, thank you.

Welcome.

This concludes the Q&A session. I will now hand back to Oliver Jakobi for closing remarks.

Then from my side, thank you for your interest. Thank you for the questions.

Looking forward seeing you again at the Q1 presentations, and maybe also during the year on one of our roadshows. Thanks a lot.

Bye.