AtriCure, Inc. ($ATRC)

Yes. I was like somebody else want to tie down here. Well, good morning, everybody. I'm very pleased to welcome everyone to the last day here at the Goldman Sachs Healthcare Conference. Very pleased to have the management team here from AtriCure, Mike Carrel, our Chief Executive Officer; and Angie Wirick, Chief Financial Officer. I have obviously a series of questions, and I know it's the last day of the conference and been along a few days, but clearly, I'll open it up if anyone does want to chime in and ask a question. We'll just get because this is being webcast.

So I'll just start maybe higher level on the strategy, and then I want to jump into some of the product and then kind of the financials. But you've been CEO a cure for a decade. I mean you took over the company kind of sleepy cardiac surgery company. You brought it to a much higher growth place. Maybe just sort of talk to us about the broader evolution of the story and how you want to kind of frame the AtriCure message from here?

Sure. Yes, I've been with the company now almost 14 years. And we're now about -- this year, we'll do over $600 million in revenue. The position right now, though, is that we've got a Vision 2030 to do $1 billion in revenue by the end of this decade. That implies from here to the decade. So it kind of the kind of growth, the double-digit growth that we've always kind of achieved. The way we do that is that we are #1 in the markets that we serve, in particular around arrhythmia management for cardiac surgery. That is absolutely our core business. And we are not only winners in that space with over 90% market share in the areas that we're in. But on top of that, we are expanding that market. So we're not just treating preoperative Afib, but also postoperative Afib. And we've got a major trial that I know you're going to ask some questions about called Box A and triples the size of the overall market. Our vision there is that there's 2 million patients that undergo cardiac surgery. And every 1 of those patients can benefit from an ablation and a natural -- and that market alone is almost a $10 billion market when you look at that on a global basis. You combine that with our pain management business, which was a business we got into about 6, 7 years ago, which is reducing pain after surgery for invasive surgeries, really ablating those nerves. Our vision there is that any kind of complex surgery that interrogates or affect the nervous system in any way that we're going to be involved in that in a big way rate. We started with thoracotomies. We're now getting into amputations. We believe that is also a multibillion-dollar market as well, and we're playing on the fact that we have capital in place. So we look at it, we like massive market opportunities, underpenetrated markets and a lot of growth over the next several years. On top of that, we are profitable. And so we are making money, driving cash now. I couldn't have said that 3 years ago if we're sitting up here, Dave, but now we're profitable. And so you combine that, we don't have to go to the markets to raise money. We don't need -- we're not in that kind of position on that front. And what's exciting, I know you'll ask about competition, which is that now that we've done this, everybody saying, "Oh, we want to get into that space." To me, that is a reflection of that we found a space, we found a niche, we identified it. We built it. and now people want to come and follow us. And fortunately, for us, I think we've got the clinical evidence, the innovation in our products and the pipeline to really not only be ahead of that competition that's going to be coming in the space for the next year, but really for the next decade or so.

And I do want to touch on competition just in the context of kind of the broader performance of the business. So I think the past several years, it's sort of been like, there's always like a thing like a wall of worry that seems like throw itself up.

I like that word. I don't really like it. It's a good way to describe it.

[indiscernible] can come up with because -- and then you sort of -- you seem to just prove it because the business stands on its own merits. But I kind of -- so I think it was first it was like, well, okay, now we have and PFA is going to solve all the world's problems that we're not going to need converge. And then it was like, okay, now Edwards is coming with a competitive product on the left atrial tenge conclusion side, like, now this is going to hurt your business. So maybe just help us think through your own strategic planning, how you think about getting ahead of seeing around corners and being ahead of some of these threats. And I know this is a very long question, but why do you think people get so wrapped around the axle on these things.

Well, first, maybe to look at us a little bit differently, we're not a single product company that comes to market. A lot of companies come to market, they're single product. They have these massive incredible growth rates and they're looking to be sold. And they don't build up the infrastructure for scalability and diversification. We actually have done that. in the sense that we've been able to try things, put shots on goal in various in, not all of it's worked. But you can see like whether it can management, and we're able to withstand some of that because of the the way that we've kind of built that business and the diversification of that puts us in a much different math than what an investor would normally look at. Now what you haven't seen with us is we haven't had the 50% type of growth. We've had super solid, consistent double-digit revenue growth hitting our numbers every quarter. That's what you get from AtriCure today, and we've got opportunity sitting in front of us for some of those catalysts in a couple of different areas. The way that we view competition and we prepare for it is, number 1 is we've never stopped investing in things that we think are going to accelerate and grow the market overall. For example, as you first look at our innovation pipeline, we didn't just come out with a clip we're now on our seventh generation clip. So by the time competition is coming in, they're chasing our older technology, and we're already flipping people to the next technology. In this case, it was they chased the V clip, which was our second generation of the product, which is a great product. And the products they've come out with aren't as good as that product, let alone the new products that we came out to market with our Flex Mini, which now represents over 40% of the revenue that we generate. And that number is continuing to grow because it's profile is 60% smaller, which is what the customers have talked to us and wanted to see. You combine that with a really robust belief that clinical evidence makes a difference. So if you have great technology and then you combine that with robust randomized controlled data, it's painful in the short term because it costs you money and it takes time. But in the long term, it creates an incredible moat because you're the only company in the world that's going to have that data. So how do we prepare for it is we're already preparing for it relative to that. And then third is that we built a team that is more knowledgeable than anybody else in the space in the areas that we're in. So our team that's in the field is incredibly knowledgeable about atrial fibrillation, arrhythmias and pain management. That's what we do. That's what we do every single day. That's all we do. And we've got a very large antenna to in having that team for scalability. We also view competition as a recognition of the markets that we're developing. So what I tell our team internally is I say, "Hey, this is good." If you've got Medtronic and Edwards saying, was the largest, most well-respected great companies. They are fantastic companies coming into our space. That means they're recognizing it's a lot bigger than old little AtriCure and that this is a multi, multibillion dollar space. that requires to have that. And we've got examples of 1 that's happened in other spaces. You look at TAVR back 20 years ago, Edwards was first. Medtronic came in second. When Medtronic came in, it expanded the market. Same thing happened when Amulet came into the WATCHMAN space. WATCHMAN was there. Amil came in. They both continue to grow really fast because there was a recognition, and there were more companies that kind of validated that space. That's how we view competition is that it validates our space, and then we got to make sure that we've got the pieces in place to win in the market.

And maybe sort of you mentioned you're in your kind of intro, you're probable, you've kind of crossed that chasm. But as you think about competition entering, the product is 1 piece of that you talk about kind of the knowledge of your teams that there's also other things you can do strategically and commercially to build a further moat around your products, whether that's investigator-initiated studies, whether that's additional clinical trials? Like how do you think about balancing the profitability that you've achieved with fending off competition, but like why not plow even more into the business to -- because you're self-sustaining, right? You're not one of these early-stage companies that has a cash burn problem. So how do you think about the -- just the trade-off between the profitability kind of tagline, but also things you can do to further strengthen your position ahead of new entrants.

Some of that -- the way you described it is an I don't mean to be offensive in anyway, is reactionary versus what do you do to build a great company that is ready for competition at any point in time. we're trying to build it that we're ready for competition in point in time. So when I describe, if you look at our P&L, we've invested 18% to 20% in R&D for a reason. Part of it is to expand and grow new markets. part of it is to be ready for competition and build that moat in. R&D includes not only new products coming to market, but the major investments in those trials. So LEAP had 138 centers in the United States involved in that trial. Our Box and OAF trial has already well over 20 is going to be up to 75 sites. These get people really involved in this area. They want to be involved in things that are practice building and game changing for the overall market. You can just talk to surgeons that are part of this, they get really excited about it. So -- but we're not doing it because competition is coming in. We're doing this because of the right thing to establish this evidence to grow the market and to treat more patients. And then, by the way, because we're the only ones that will have that evidence and it will only be on our products, it gives us a defensive measure. The ISRs or the independent -- sure, everybody does those because you're trying to solve some scientific piece, but I wouldn't say that's how we're funding off the competition per se. On top of that, we're building out like we believe hospital basis. They need to be and whether that's with competition or not. We've been doing that for 10 years, which is what -- if I just did it now, and I also hired a bunch of new people, it takes 2 to 3 years to really train them really well. Well, the people -- the tenure of our team is most of them have been with us for well over 5 years. So they've got established deep relationships and trusted relationships that are already there. That was before competition came there because the best thing to do to serve them is to do that. And I think that that's the way that you went against competition. is that you invest early on even before you know the competition is entering into the space.

Yes. Maybe to put a finer point on it. I say our philosophy is invest growth. I think everything that Mike is describing, we're in a great position. As you said, we are cash flow positive. We are ahead of our LRP relative to the bottom line expectations. And I think we feel comfortable that we can continue to improve profitability, improve margins, continue to generate cash flow, but our investments are geared with an eye towards growth, where can we lean in and really drive top line. That's the policy fee that underlines all of our investment decisions.

That's a very helpful perspective. And I think, hopefully, frames for people you describe as proactive, I think that's a great summary. And maybe we kind of have a case study, right, with Medtronic a few years ago, there was a tremendous amount of concern about your business, and you've continued to grow to grow through it. Maybe -- I want to move on to the rest of the business. But just from an analog perspective, maybe just frame for us how that played out and how we should -- maybe is that a...

Medtronic came out with that repeating clip in the space. called pedicure the was almost 3 years ago now that they came into the space. What I told people at the time was that -- and it wasn't a shock that they came to market, but the data has happened. They don't call me up and say, Mike, I'm coming in to put out a press release tomorrow. . So that, obviously, if I had to stop really quickly there, and people were concerned as you mentioned. What plot there in that space? Medtronic's going to get some share. So they got some share out of the space. But I think what we do is that the innovation in our products were just innovation be bar none, it is superior. I am products kind of bring to the table on that. We've surrounded it by the evidence. And then what you've seen out there is that they gained a little bit upfront and now their market share has actually declined. So I think they peaked about a year ago where they were in that kind of 8%, 9% market share. They're now down to about 5% market share in the U.S. And they'll have their fair share. They'll have a small show there from that standpoint. Why better products, better evidence, better team than this space. And I firmly believe that. And so I think that's what we've seen played out with Medtronic. I don't know what the Edwards clip is going to look like, what -- how we're going to compete against that yet, but our team is prepared, and I'm really confident that we will innovate evidence them and out support the team out in the field.

You made the reference to 18% to 20% of revenue being invested in R&D. You have a lot at play right now, both from a product and clinical development standpoint. You mentioned Box OIF, which is actually on a pretty long list of ongoing programs. Maybe just -- I know you have the LRP out there, but help us think about what are the next clinical and regulatory milestones that you want investors include into?

Yes. I think the exciting 1 we mentioned on our first quarter call was improving the BOXX OAS trial enrollment, pulling that in by over a year. When we launched the trial initially, we thought it was around a 2-year time line for enrollment. The pace of enrollment is exceptional, very similar to what we saw in our LEAPS clinical trial. This is a trial that has 2 endpoints. So you'll get a view of data, first and foremost, 30 days post enrollment. So we're looking at are you reducing postoperative AFib, 30 days post procedure. So fairly quickly after we rial, there should be data out there. We'll follow the same patients for a 3-year time line. So there's another chunk of data that we'll look at further out. Following somewhere in that time line, you'll also see LEAP data we expect in that time line as well. I think those are 2 of the major kind of data-driven areas that are coming from our RE initiatives. Next year, we are also looking at launching another AtriCure device for open chest procedures. So I think that that's another data point to be on the watch out in terms of R&D activities, and continue to look at each one of our franchises. We're looking at product performance. We're looking at what we're hearing from customers, how we can optimize devices where there might be an unmet need. What you're seeing in our pain management business is optimizing the devices for thoracic sternotomy used, introducing the amputation-related device, but we're also looking at other procedures, surgical procedures and saying, where could there be a benefit to patients and we've got something that we could offer. So I think when you're talking about the next couple of years out, I would expect there to be more in that area as well.

And maybe just pull the thread for us a little bit further on leaf and Box AF. You see the data or you see a 30 look at Fox you see the LEAP data and what's next?

What's next? I mean we were bullish that we'll have very positive trial data, which ultimately will expand our market. You're talking about multiplying the market activity for us in cardiac surgery. These are existing customers. doing existing procedures with existing devices. It gives us an automatic start to go and attack these markets in full. I think Mike said it really well at the beginning. When you think about a cardiac surgery patient, you're not asking a surgeon to just look at whether or not they have Afib you're saying regardless of whether or not they have Afib, if you ablate them, if you manage their appendage, there is a benefit to this patient at some point in their lifetime.

Okay. Maybe just sort of take a step back for a second and just touch on the market for a second. -- leaving over presented here on Monday, they talked about seeing very strong growth in overall cardiac surgery procedures. We continue to see growth in surgical valve procedures mean open heart procedures continue to grow at a pretty healthy rate. It seems despite sort of the continued growth in TAVR and other mineral invasive therapies. What are you seeing in just the broader market for cardiac surgery?

So we're seeing the same thing that you mentioned LivaNova saying. I think there's very strong presence in cardiac surgery. Why? Because the demographics, we've talked about this many years ago. I remember report came out in 2015 when TAVR was coming. The next thing was going to be transcatheter mitral valve. And by 2020, there was going to be no cardiac surgery, and we said that's just not going to happen. We believe that just the way that I mean, yes, they're dealing with sicker and sicker patients. So there's no question about that. But at the same time, there's a ton of patients. People are getting older, they're living longer. And so we're definitely seeing a robust area in this growth overall. Now even with -- even if that didn't grow, if that was just flat, and it was just 2 million patients annually every year for the next 10 years, and we only did 100,000 or 130,000 patients last year. our opportunity for growth is just within that market right there. So we've got a ton of room for growth just within that. That's what leaps and box enable us to do. That's why we think that once those read out, you will see an acceleration in the growth relative to our cardiac surgery franchise for a decade or so.

And maybe it's a good segue to talk about the $600 million revenue to the $1 billion. You talked about the kind of implied CAGR to get there. But maybe just operationally unpack what are the drivers to achieve the next $4 million or so of sales to reach the $1 billion? How much of that should we think about as coming from underlying market growth, price penetration, new products? Like how do you kind of break that down for people?

I think this is a penetration game. In each one of the markets that we're in. I think you're looking at continued strong growth in open heart procedures, both ablation and clip I think you're talking about continued very strong growth with our pain management devices. . If you look at the implied in the LRP that we gave, the implied CAGR between now and 2028, we gave kind of a $750 million number and then $1 billion by the end of the decade. It implied a very slight acceleration in growth in the back half, and we said that's really attributed to Box X and LEAPs, expect both of those to be accretive to our growth rate. Think you're talking about existing markets being underpenetrated, continuing to penetrate with the best devices, continuing to innovate to make sure that we can drive penetration and then the upside of tie trial data that ultimately gives you access to an even broader group of patients.

And in terms of broader market trends besides the impact of the Box OAS and LEAPs, is there anything as the change in your business to get from the $600 million to $1 billion? Or is it a continuation of what you've been executing and then this plus that.

Continuation of what we've been executing.

Okay. Very helpful. Maybe I'll see if there are any questions in the audience, otherwise, happy to keep going. This is what always happens. And they'll come up to you and ask questions after. But yes...

We love.

We can keep rolling here. Maybe on the ablation side. I mean this is another area where you've obviously seen this extraordinary adoption of PFA, but probably reaching peak-ish penetration in the start in the U.S. How do we think about just your ablation business is kind of a PFA dominated market.

Well, there's 2 part of the business. So we touched upon earlier the open chest or the concomitant treatment, PFA has 0 impact on that business today. And I don't -- and not for a long time will PFA have that we'll have our own device in that area, but that's not really growing the market. The things that are going to grow that market our Box X and leads that expands it that gets us in every account. I think what you're referring to is really our hybrid business, which is when you've got a patient that all they have is Afib, they walk in. And for that patient that's been in AFB for a long time, that patient should benefit or can benefit from our technology, combined with PFA or cryo. The way that we view that market is, yes, it's been under a tremendous amount of pressure. There's no question about it. And you can see it in our business. I mean, sure we shrunk almost 30% in that part of our business. Despite that, we still grew the business. in the double digits. So I mean we were able to withstand that kind of pressure. We anticipate that pressure continuing this year. Eventually though, what's going to happen with those patients is they're going to fail enough on the PSA side because there's no PF catheter that has proven that they've got durability long term. And so for those easy patients, PFA is fantastic. Longer-standing persistent patients. They've been in at for a long time. It's worthwhile to try the PFA. Like we're not trying to -- we're not -- we don't view ourselves as trying to take that away from the EP. But eventually, they're not going to be able to do everything possible in with it, and we're that next resort. Now that happens to be a lot of patients. when that funnel starts to build, is the bigger question for us. Like how does that -- when do they start giving up on those patients? Some sites, you see it, like we have some light at uncertain center, but we're just not at the bottom end. So we view it as, hey, there's going to be pressure for a good period of time. But eventually, we know our technology works. We know we're helping patients out and we think that it's going to come back eventually.

And maybe just to run something by you to get your perspective on this. Do you think about the sort of the patient care continuum, like pre-PFA,your drugs, drugs failed that maybe is cryo or RF ablation, you tried that a couple of times, maybe 2 or 3 and maybe the long-standing persistent patients end up in in the converged procedure. Then you have guidelines change, drugs go away, don't really go away, but drugs may are in frontline therapy. RF, you get rid of this like sort of long-ish procedure enter PFA, superconvenient procedure. I agree with you. We don't really know that it has long-term data. We'll see if -- how that plays out. I'm going to take the under on that, just kind of knowing the disease that's epidemiology and being in the space. But is there -- are we in sort of this like transition period where the EPs are figuring out in a PSA world how to treat this patient population and kind of as that gets established, wouldn't your business return to a more normalized growth rate? I mean...

I absolutely believe that. That's why we've continued to obviously be in that space. because we do know that even if it's not a -- even -- let's say, in the long term the long-standing persistent patients, let's go through that patient population. I mean, the early-stage paroxysmal patient or even general persistent, let's say they're getting 80%, 90% success and you're probably not going to see that patient until they become long-standing persistent. And long stand persistent their success rates are still in that 50% range. And -- but let's say that number becomes 80% -- that means 20% of those patients are that would -- if we could capture 10% of the 20%, that would be a growth for our business. And so yes, I do think eventually, those patients are going to come through. They're going to be looking for a solution, and there are no other solutions that are in the market other than CONVERGE, it's approved, it works with PFA. So I do think that we're in that kind of interim period as they're trying to figure that out. Unfortunately, it's a painful interim period as they're trying to figure it out. But we're still here, we're persistent. We believe in it, and we believe patients will eventually benefit from it. We're still treating patients. I mean like we still support a lot of surgeons and EPs that have that belief. We just don't know when that path is going to clear for us a little bit.

And what's reflected in your LRP on maybe this dynamic specifically?

Yes. I mean our belief was that hybrid would return to growth that you would not continuously shrink the kind of long-range plan period. I think what's great about our business, again, to wrap around to what Mike said earlier is that you've got multiple drivers here, even though the expectation for hybrid may be changing. We've got other areas that are accelerating past kind of our expectations within the LRP. So I think you're really well insulated as we're in this kind of down trough period with our hybrid business.

And maybe we could just -- before we get to the financials, just talk about the pain management business is doing very well. Doesn't -- you seem to get -- you get categorized as a cardiovascular device company, but the business probably doesn't get the airtime that it merits. So maybe talk to us a little about how that business is -- it strengthened quite in terms of its performance and its contribution to your growth or maybe just update us on just the progression there and how you're seeing it unfold.

Yes. So it started as a business that was focused on thoracotomies because we were cardio Vat in that space, that with channel. We could leverage it. We could leverage systems that were already in the field. and that's where we saw the initial growth come out -- the reason that we're gaining traction is because unlike AFib where you treat it, you don't really know if you have success for a year or 2 years. In this one, you have success within 12 hours. Like you see the patient in the IC who has a step-down unit and you're like wholly cow, this person is able to get to be to recover more quickly and so you see it right away. That's why you see that benefit because a surgeon, a PA an RN, anybody's there -- so what we've seen is explosive growth, where we're now in about 25% of all thoracic procedures on that front, which is typically, I'd say the largest portion of that is lung cancer patients. And we know the prevalence of lung cancer. There's so thoracotomies every year in the United States, and we've made a great dent in that space, but we still have a long way to go, so 75% to go in that area. What we've also found though is that that's not the only invasive surgery that affects the nerves. So what I love about the space is each 1 of the rotation not by itself a business that you'd be public on, call it. But the fact is, is that it works on almost every 1 of these -- and it's easy to extend and mechanism of action and how it works is actually very similar. So now we're getting into amputations. That's another 150,000 patients in the United States. You can triple when you look at it on a global basis, and we're now rolling that out. So we're looking at all those different areas like that. So we think that this has got a long runway for growth in each of those areas as we continue to expand in the markets. But it's a great business. You've seen it grow at almost 30% consistently, and we will continue to expand it. One of the areas we're really excited about is, obviously, the amputation is kind of exciting because you get the micro effect of it. But in addition to them, getting better recovery, we're now starting to see data that it actually might affect Phantom Lim pain. And that would be a rig market for us. We've got to study it. We're not there yet. But longer term, I think that could be also expand the market even more. Kind of like what Fox is doing cardiac surgery, we think that could do that for amputations at some point.

That's -- maybe we'll turn it over to the financials for a second. I think in January, you introduced the outlook for the year. You talked about it being kind of a back end year. You started the year at the high end of your guidance at 14% versus the 12% to 14%. Help us just think about how things are unfolding relative to those initial expectations? And why you retained guidance despite the upside in the quarter?

Yes, I'll hit the last question first. I may think first quarter out of the gate, while we're pleased with the performance in Q1. You're early in the year. our guidance philosophy, I think, is well known. We're putting out numbers that we want to make sure there's a pathway to beat. So I feel really confident and felt like the first quarter trajectory by and large, came in as we expected within the franchises -- of course, some areas where there was a strength in a couple of areas a little bit more pressure, but overall, I felt good about the performance of the business. Just early in the year, not ready to update the guidance there. I want to make sure we can continue to perform. The 12% to 14%, we did talk about it being more back half loaded. Some of that is maturation of our product launches. When you think about the flex mini clip yes, making good progress, but our expectation is that we exit the year in a very different place than where we started the year. CryosphereMAX, we exited 2025 with a really high level effetration, but our expectation is that, that will continue to grow the amputation device, the cryo XT, that is a newer product launch that we expect as we operate throughout 2026 to drive even more revenue there and then seeing some of our areas within Europe that we've had some weakness. The U.K. in particular, comps got easier. You start to think about kind of the back half being a better comparison for us. That was kind of what went into the guide relative to the expectations for back half of the year.

And maybe can you give us any sense as you kind of think about the back half of the year some sort of explicit contribution from some of those new products? What portion of the growth they represent first half or second effort? And any framing would be helpful.

Yes. Minimum, Croxall start their minimal contribution to revenue in the first quarter. I think you're going to see that the quarterly contribution, the numbers start to multiply. The longer that we're out there, the more accounts that we start to activate, you're going to see fulsome revenue contribution as we exit 2026. That's our expectation. The Flex mini device, I think this is an area where we've had really strong growth within our clip franchise. So appendage management has been a very strong double-digit grower for the company for a long time. FlexMine is what helps us maintain. We have very good penetration within AFib patients, treatment of Afib patients, their appendage. You're starting to see much more prophylactic use even before LEAPs data comes out. I think FlexMoni is a very compelling option where surgeons look at every patient and say, this device is incredible. It's tiny. I think you're starting to see adoption continue, even though the law of large numbers really should come into play for this franchise. Cryosphere Max being 70-plus percent of the revenue. I think what you're finding is when you can reduce the freeze times in these procedures, that is incredibly compelling to a surgeon. They wanted -- they can see the immediate impact on the patient but taking time out, making it better and with the same kind of reliability on the freeze, I think we found that CryoSermax is a complete home run. So that drives, I think, the conversion, you get a slight ASP uplift but you're also seeing good volume growth fundamentally within those markets.

And maybe sort of at a high level, as you think about the evolution of the business exiting '26 and then through the rest of the LRP period, you'll be exiting the year with a higher -- with ramping new product contribution that should then presumably higher next year versus this year and higher in '28 versus '27. Hopefully, we'll be lapping some of the dynamics on the converged side. We'll see kind of how things play out there. Why couldn't you do better than 12% to 14% as you look forward?

We believe that we will. I mean, I think that, that is the LRP guidance philosophy is no different the annual guidance that we give. I think if you look at the performance in 2025, outperformed our initial year guidance outperformed what the LRP implied relative to contribution of 2025. Our goal is to put out financial numbers and expectations that investors can see, look, this is a company that can not just meet, but there's a pathway to beat, and we feel really good that we've got the right kind of catalysts within the business to do that.

And when we looked at it, I think it's important when we rolled our LRP back in March of last year, One, we wanted to set something that we could kind of beat as Angie would refer to. But on top of that, what was it by itself compelling? Like did that actually make sense? And if you look at those numbers, if we can do that from now until the end of the decade, plus improve the bottom line to that level. That's a compelling story that one can look to just on that independently look at nothing else and say, okay, if you looked at that financial profile, our value should be much greater than what we're looking at today. And we're saying -- and we know competition is coming in. So all that's built into those numbers. relative to that. That was also part of it we said, okay, is that a compelling story to tell is 1 of the shed in the Investor Day, we said, hey, this is super compelling, like, to be able to drive this to get towards that $1 billion at that kind of growth rate and getting leverage every year to the bottom line. that's a compelling story. And you can do your analysis on the 3 or 4 companies that have done that over the course of the last several years or last half a decade. And all of them have exponentially better multiples on both top and bottom line that we've got today.

And maybe I'll just wrap up then a question kind of on capital allocation. I mean you talked about the -- 1 of the values of the business clearly is the diversified revenue stream that is able to sustain growth despite headwinds in 1 business, tailwinds in another. I mean a lot of companies face that end up at a much lower growth rate than 12% to 14%. So as you think about your ramping cash generation and continued strengthening of the balance sheet, how are you thinking about internal versus external investments? And does M&A play a more important role as you go forward.

Internal is our focus at this point in time. We absolutely stay in tune with what's going on in the market, where there's new and emerging technology things that might be interesting to us. But I'd say our main focus is we've got too many good catalysts and growth drivers within our organic R&D pipeline for us to focus on.

And what Angie always like to remind us of is that when we're looking at M&A or things like that is how is that going to drive revenue growth for us over what period of time? And so we're constantly thinking going back to the original conversation, it's about, is it going to be driving meaningful revenue growth, both short, medium and long term for us?

Excellent. Well, I think with that, we're out of time. But Mike and Angie, thank you for making the trip.

Thank you.

I always appreciate having the opportunity to get the update. We look forward to getting, I guess, the next update in August.

Excellent. We appreciate it.

Thank you.