DENTSPLY SIRONA Inc. (XRAY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to our investment community meeting at DS World 2021. This meeting is being live webcast, and a copy of the presentation and video replay of the meeting will be available afterwards on the Investors section of our website at www.dentsplysirona.com. Before we begin, please take a moment to read the forward-looking statements in our investment community meeting presentation. During today's meeting, we may make certain predictive statements that reflect our current views about future performance and financial results. We base these statements and certain assumptions and expectations on future events that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Our most recent Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly reports list some of our most important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from our predictions. And with that, I would like to now turn it over to Mr. Jorge Gomez, our Chief Financial Officer.

Thanks, Andrea. Thank you, guys. Welcome, everybody here in person, everybody that is participating in the broadcast. We have over 50 people on the line, plus all the attendees here. So this is really exciting. It's been a long time since we have interacted in person. And there's a lot of good things happening this week, and we are really pleased and grateful for your presence, your attendance. So a lot of exciting things. First, having all of our customers, all the customers that we have here in person, really excited about what is happening with the company, with the new products. I think that is a major milestone in this long and difficult process over the last several months, about 18, 20 months. We have a lot of exciting news in terms of products and solutions, and we'll begin to share some of those with you today. We will do that with the presence of the entire management team. And on behalf of all of them, I welcome all of you again in person or virtually, and you'll get the opportunity to hear directly from a number of our -- of the people in the executive team, which I think is a great opportunity for you to understand the breadth of this company. We have people from multiple geographies present here, and this is a great team that we are very proud of. So the agenda, very simple. We're going to start with our CEO, Don Casey. He's going to offer a few opening comments about strategy, our mission, vision, values and a lot of important things that are really core to our culture and things that we really want to share with you. Then we'll go deep into a few of our new offerings, new products. And I think that's going to be a great opportunity for you guys that you have first glance at all of these exciting things. We will have then a Q&A session at the end of the presentation. And we'll have the management team here sitting here on this stage or somewhere in the audience. So you'll have the opportunity to ask questions from all of them. We'll have questions that will come in from the virtual audience, and then we'll have questions here in the room. And then after that, we'll give you some talk, some ideas about what we're doing this afternoon in terms of tours around the showroom and things like that. So with that, again, welcome and thank you for being here. And Don, please go ahead.

All right. Yes, like we're getting used to like in-person meetings, again, do you actually clap at an investor meeting? I don't know. I'm willing to go whichever. Jeff is voting no. John, where are you? You're a no. No applauding. All right. All right. We'll roll with that. Anyway, thank you, guys. Really, really happy. One of the common questions we get, when are we doing an Investor Day? And we know we owe you guys an Investor Day and we can break down some SBUs and some other stuff, but we thought this would be a great opportunity to kind of take you through some of the new products. We've started mentioning them a lot more in our presentations, and we're excited about that. One of the other questions we get a lot is your management team, management depth. I've now been here 3.5 years. It feels like about 1.5 days. But in that time, we've now turned 100% of our management committee since here. And we -- I think we've assembled a fabulous team. I mean Jorge who has come out of General Motors and Cardinal and we're super lucky to have him. If you guys have met Walter Petersohn, Walter is one of the original Sirona team, and he's been absolutely a rock-solid, rock star running our commercial team. He's our Chief Commercial Officer. He works out of Bensheim, but he has global responsibility. Cord Staehler, who is going to be here in the weird COVID passport times, we couldn't quite get them here, so he's going to come to us live in a recorded video. And I think I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night, so I would be able to answer most of his questions. Lisa Yankie, she's our Chief Human Resources Officer. Matt Coggin, Chief Strategy Officer. Neeraj Gunsagar. Neeraj runs our Byte business. Prior to that, he came out of TrueCar. And before that, he was a dishonest banker or could have been an honest banker. Chidam Chidambaram, who's worked at some of the great companies in the world, including Procter & Gamble and Coke, among others, is actually our Chief Digital Officer, who manages SureSmile comes to us with an incredible digital background and has over 30 years of marketing experience. Dan Key. Dan, sometimes smiles, not often, but he's our Chief Supply Chain Officer. When Dan got here, we had over 40-plus facilities. And despite us adding and subtracting, he's done a wonderful job actually creating a global supply chain. Our newest member, our Chief Marketing Officer, Erania Brackett, coming to us from another just great, great realm of companies, Medtronic; and prior to that, Procter & Gamble. And then Eric Bruno, who is in charge of the show. DS World is a North America thing, so Eric Bruno comes to us from Alcon and J&J. So it's just a fabulous team, very excited, great depth. One of the comments we get -- I've been getting a lot from the dentists, it's all been like we are so glad you guys did this. And you know what, it's easy, because the team that we've assembled here was all committed to, hey, this is what we're trying to do at Dentsply Sirona. We're trying to change dentistry. And the best way to do that is actually have events like this. So I'm super excited to be part of this team. Anyway, Andrea, if we go next. What have we been up to? Probably the same thing you guys have been in, just trying to get by in the pandemic. We -- at this point, we feel things are pretty much back. There's isolated chunks around the world, if you look at China, Australia and some other places. But if you look at this event, at this point, we're close to what we did in 2019 when we were in Orlando. So that's -- we think that's kind of emblematic of where we are. We've been saying the same thing. It's growth. I know last week, Jorge did a couple of events, and we were talking about 4% to 5% growth margin. Again, we're on target at '22, 22 in 2022. We're going to have to change that because we're rapidly approaching '22. Not going to get so bold as to say 23 in '23, but it would work out really well because that way we can remember it. I'm going to take you guys through our culture of pandemic management. The reason Dan actually has no hair anymore is, in fact, because the supply chain is a challenge. There are pieces and chunks that remain to be -- we're working through it, chips, among other things. And we're very comfortable that we're going to be able to deliver what our customers need, but it's certainly taking a lot more effort. Jeff, I remember, one of the first times I had the pleasure of working with you. You guys were chiding Nick on there's a $100 million savings goal, but you can never quite see it. But since then, we put out a sequence of numbers that we've hit. I mean we basically said we're going to deliver $250 million in savings. We're going to get headcount below 15,000, which was about 6% to 8%. Despite the fact of buying something like Byte that comes with about 500 or 600 people, we've actually attained and been operating in that headcount level for close to a year. We're well on track on the margins, and we're well on track to the savings, even though we had upped the savings in the middle of last year. So we feel very good about that. I mentioned I want to give our supply chain guys a tremendous amount of credit. We were a sequences of strategic business units with no unified processes. Basically, every SBU ran their manufacturing. And today, we're fully integrated. We brought in a ton of people who are good at operating supply chains at scale. We've been able to really manage the number of facilities we have down. We've been able to manage our inventory down. And one of the things Jorge has been really preaching is cash conversion. And the fact that we have a supply chain leadership team that's really focused on that is terrific. So that's something we've been kind of up to. I will tell you this is something new. And I came out of J&J, and it was always fun if you ever walked into a J&J building, there would be this gigantic monolith with a credo attached. And one of the things that I think Dentsply and Sirona and now Dentsply Sirona struggled with was there was no kind of true north, if you will. So during the pandemic, we really took the opportunity to take a big step back and really focus on vision, purpose, mission, values and operating principles, and we're actually putting this out on our website. And I think if you were on the main stage today, you saw our ESG presentation. So one of the things, I think, is as we've kind of gotten out of the restructuring and really focused on the future is what do we want to do? And in our mind is how do we transform dentistry in a big, big way, because we think we got to improve oral health. A couple of statistics. Right now, there's 200 million Americans that don't have all the teeth. And that was a root canal that didn't get done because it wasn't diagnosed properly and whatnot. We're doing under 10 million implant procedures as a country. And then if you put that on a global basis, you can see that we've got to transform how we operate, because dentists -- we're not manufacturing more dentists and dentists aren't working more hours. So how do we get more productive there? Our purpose and mission is every day, we empower millions of customers because we now have a direct-to-patient business with Byte. How do we provide innovative solutions? And we are pretty happy with what we rolled out today, and judging by the reaction of the dentists. I always have fun because I just literally, I'll do my stick and then I'll sit off in the wings and there are a lot of old Dentsply Sirona aficionados, if you will. The company is like, usually, you guys only do one, and we were talking 5.2, SureSmile, we're talking Endo, we're talking implants. So we're excited about that. Values -- I mean -- and one of the interesting things, we're truly a global company. We operate in over 100 countries around the world. So when we do values and agile, accountable, respectful, collaborative and trustworthy, you actually have to translate this into, at this point, what, Walter, 22 languages, something like that?

24.

24. And it's great. We found out in Hebrew, there is no word for agile. So what do you do? So -- but realistically, the process we use to do this, we actually went out and interviewed close to 1,000 people for our focus groups, because we didn't want to put a culture and a mission down. We wanted to boil up, and this is a function of 15,000 people today. Operating principles. I mean we approach the customers as one company. That's a big change. I remember back in 2018, every SBUs to approach every dentist. And that's just not how we operate. We're down to one mailing list. I can point out Eric Bruno in North America, but I could say the same about what's going on in China. Right now, Germany, France, U.K., we're getting there in Japan, but we approach the customer as one company, everything we do. Innovative solutions. And we are really, I think, about halfway, 3/4 of the way through change where we're not a feature- and benefit-oriented company anymore, it's about workflows and it's about solutions. We think and we act with positive intent. As much fun as it is to sit there and say, "Matt, why didn't you do it?" It's like we have to assume our customers, we have to assume our partners are all operating in good intent. By the way, one of the questions you guys always ask us is how you're doing with the dealers. I mean you clearly saw the dealers there today and the support we get from them and the relationship we have. Operate sustainably. I could not be prouder of Jorge, who's really taken the lead on our ESG strategy and Smile Train if you didn't see it today. I know people who are there virtually will send checks in to help us with Smile Train, but we're very, very excited about that. And then use our size and global breadth to our advantage. So we -- this is -- I don't know if we're going to chisel this in marble in front of every building, but this is how we want to operate as a company. And it's really helped us with engagement. And if you think about it, most organizations, you'll see 10% attrition a year. So if you really think about like our company, since we put Dentsply and Sirona together, and that's, at this point, 4 years ago, and if there's 10% attrition and then we had some attrition that we forced, it's a new company. So more than half the people don't have tenure. So when you are able to put out stuff like this, we feel it establishes a true north and gets people pretty fired up about them. So innovations over the last 18 months, including what we did today. CEREC 5.2, you guys are going to do the tour. I'll let 5.2 speak for itself. I am willing to let any of you guys take on scanning. I can't program my iPhone, and I'll tell you what, you can 100% -- if you can't scan an upper or lower arch in under 20 seconds, I'd be surprised. ProTaper Ultimate. This is the first broad-based platform we've introduced in the endo space in close to 10 years. Super excited about what this is. Basically, think about a typical endo procedure, 7 files, this takes it down to 3. And it's really, really easy to use, but it's not just a file system. We have a disinfectant as well as a bioceramic sealer that when we put all together, it's really transformative. Very excited about that. If you didn't see John West, you'll see him today complete with we have a microscope that you guys can actually see what some of the stuff does. Axeos. We keep challenging Dan because we do a good job here selling all that Dan can make. And look, if you look at right now, 3D Cone Beam penetration even in the U.S. is still under 20%. And you can see from main stage today, what a profound practice builder that product is. SureSmile. I'm going to let Chidam talk about it. We're announcing VPro, which is -- we've seen that from HyperByte, but this is a vibration technology which improves comfort and speed. Will be the only one who has it, very excited about that. I'll cover off the digital implant company. We have Ankylos, Xive, Astra, Astra EV, MIS. Then there was Atlantis and then there was OSSIX. And so I guess now, we're changing all that, that's why you bring in smart people like CMOs to say, "Hey, how about we aggregate all this under Dentsply Sirona and start using that brand name?" And then the thing I'm most intrigued about is the reaction we're getting from the dentists because it's all digital. It's all digital now, digital workflows. And it's not, "Oh, I'm trying to sell you a button and a screw. I'm trying to sell you a process." And more to come. I was excited that I am about the last 18 months and consider there was a pandemic and at one point a year plus ago, we were -- 85% of the company was on either short work week or furlough. This is a pretty robust set of introductions, and we feel very good that the pace over the next 18 months will actually accelerate. So we feel like that's been pretty productive. All right. In my mind, this is what DS World is all about. The chart for -- if you look at the Healthy Practices, it's a fully connected practice. Basically, we have a fair amount of data that shows if you can buy a piece of digital equipment, whether it's a Schick, Orthophos, Axeos or a Primescan, the consumable consumption is 4 to 10x higher. And when you put stuff in like One DS and that program and if you look at how we're really going to market, it's pretty important. So in our mind, we want to get that anchor out, get a piece of technology in, use One DS to bring the rest of the program with. And then in our mind, you'll hear us talk less and less about products, but more and more about workflows, so digital orthodontists, that's SureSmile and Byte. If you look at digital lab dentures, I mean I don't know if anyone sat through the presentation from just a minute ago, but digital dentures, everyone is always like, when are we going to get into 3D printing? Just for the record, you print the pallet, you don't print the teeth yet. We haven't been able to do that. But digital dentures, if you really look at this population, unfortunately, Medicare and Medicaid will pay for 1 denture every 5 years and give a specific reimbursement. What digital is doing is like, Jeff, you would get a file on systems. So if you lost your dentures, it can be reproduced dramatically and your -- and the out-of-pocket for a denture where it goes down. So we really feel that digital dentures is going to move a ton. And then if you actually look at like kind of the [ supposed to 4 concept ], an implant with a permanent digital denture, it's -- we think it's really powerful. Implants. You'll hear enough about that today. Restorations. Again, if you saw Shivi and her presentation today, I mean, if you look at a restoration that is done on just basic tooth decay with a CEREC program, it's unbelievable. But if you think about like a custom abutment and actually dropping something on there, we get very excited about it. And then endodontics. Actually, when John West got up and talked today, it starts with diagnosis. If you think about 200 million people without all their teeth, almost every single case that was a root canal that should have been done to save the tooth. So if we can do a better job creating digital diagnosis in this year's products, we should be in pretty good shape. All right. So with that, I'm going to -- we're going to go live almost -- Memorex. Prerecorded. I want to introduce Cord Staehler. Cord is our Chief Technology Officer, comes to us from Siemens; and before that, Merck. He's got close to 100 patents that he has filed on and other things. He's actually worked in California, so he's a very -- worked in big companies, really entrepreneurial. He has really, in my mind, propelled our digital strategy in a very aggressive way. So without further ado, I'll turn it over to Cord.

Hello to Las Vegas. This is Cord speaking from Bensheim, it's near Frankfurt, sitting in my home office. Sorry, I cannot be with you over there in Las Vegas with all our great products, meeting our customers. But I had a travel hiccup and needed to stay home. Today, I have the pleasure to talk to you about leading the dentistry revolution. And this is a story about friction. There's so much friction in the system between patients and dentists, dentists and specialists and the underlap. And removing friction is always a huge opportunity for digitalization. Let me start that from a position where we, as Dentsply Sirona, have deployed digitalization in individual products for a very long period of time and used analytics to optimize the offerings. Now we take that to the next level and really apply artificial intelligence across all our products, our entire solutions, starting with the patient to the generalists, to the specialists and the lab, at a scale never seen, removing friction. From the starting point that today already touched around 650 million cases a year. That's massive, and that's industry leading. We have a competitive, if not leading, offering in all major treatments, procedure endodontics and pathology, aesthetics and restorative, which we clearly lead and clear aligners, a big growth opportunity as we speak. And then the large installed fleet of equipment out there, which provides all kinds of insights, data and helps execute on these treatments. To bring that, as I said, to the next level and not only have great products, which do a procedure or part of a procedure, we will really deploy AI at scale. We have great track record in doing so already in the confines of a single product, if you see here, which is, for example, the chairside space, which we invented and still lead. We are only ones who are able to [ pass and precise ] through intraoral scan in the micrometer area, and then produce chairside fully automatically each individual crown. That's based on AI in our systems, which today already has more than 80% acceptance rate by our customers. That's an engine that allows our customers to grow their practice, become more efficiently provide better care, and all of that very conveniently. This is such simple-to-use software. Now we bring that to the next level and combine all our products into 1 context. And that is this program you're seeing here, where we bring all that great algorithms, functionality and AI into 1 common cloud-based platform. The compute power is unlimited, where storage bases and principal unlimited and where all the information from a DI scan, from an x-ray extreme machine, and all other sources of information from the Internet, you have it come together on 1 common platform. And all the functionality of our today, discrete software packages, become 1 seamless clinical software package. And in the same process and the same approach, we overhauled our devices. And certain devices become dumber, but they are connected to the intelligence in the cloud and the massive AI we provide in there, which makes the machine far more intelligent than ever. So we call it smarter devices. It's the first but nothing else than autonomous driving. The car's are getting more intelligent, but it's connected via the cloud, and there it gets its kind of -- its insights, its intelligence. And after these devices by then speak to the cloud and tell about their stages, tell about their usage that gives huge advantages to better service them, evolve to preventive maintenance but also great insights about how we can help our customers to perform their work even better. And that is complemented with our great consumables and customized offerings like abutments, which we have across all major procedures. This together will be brought on to all new level. Then the algorithms now perform their work across all procedures, across all equipment in the cloud. We think this is going to be a major boost to it. And these services for our customers will start as early as next year and then roll out and accelerate quickly quarter-by-quarter. So we really bring all the pieces together we have under our roof and elevate that to a next level, removing friction step by step. Thinking of the patient and engagement we have now under our roof here with, despite thinking about the generalists and how they collaborate with the specialist, thinking about how that seamlessly and without friction goes to the lab and how the lab can be far more efficient and believe serving the dentists spot on with the right insights in the right moment in time with the right offering. Last but not least, you described that, that at the heart of the transformation of dentistry to broader oral health is that digital twin of the patient's mouth we create. We solve all the technical hurdles. There's only a question of deploying it as quickly as possible and make it available in an agile fashion, step-by-step, quarter-by-quarter to our customers. This way it can capture and diagnose more, seeing more with the help of AI in the background here, fusion of our new software of xray and intraoral scanning optical data that's seen more and that confidence that you see that more, and this is better against the know-how of all the data in the system. And all the insights you can get from the Internet, will really help our customers, together with the patients, to take the right treatment decision in the right order and understand in the moment of decision making, of diagnosing, the likely outcome, the time line, the related costs. And [ immediately ] it gives the opportunity for the lab to bring the customized parts to teeth, to purchase veneers, to that treatment. This way, the entirety becomes so much more effective. So dentist can do more, grow his practice, treat more. But the patient also gains, because the likelihood of a good outcome significantly increases. The friction gets out of the system. Things become more efficient. And more and more patients can really have a single tooth replacement sitting on an implant, because most of the missing tooth, not even North America replaced. There's a huge opportunity, bringing also industry, dentistry and labs together into 1 digital ecosystem across all the key procedures. This is the unique opportunity at hand. This is how we're going to really change dentistry or we got to transform dentistry empowered by AI, as you would call it, artificial intelligence at scale. Thank you very much for listening, following through here these 5 slides. Handing back to my colleagues on site and hope to see you sometime soon in person. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Cord. That's the -- ultimately, what we're talking about there is how do you take in oral scanning data and take 3D scanning data, and then basically, you'll create a single image that you can begin to literally look at multiple dimensions. And then once you begin a shift machine learning and machine instructions off to the cloud, you get a much simpler device. And the reason we're talking about that right now, it's really -- it's starting to show up in our launch schedule. So it's -- 1 of the things you heard us talk a lot about today was software releases, because a lot of cases, the machines aren't going to change. It's going to be the software that sits underneath it. We're going to -- I'm going to introduce Chidam Chidambaram. We're going to move into our clear liners. We get a ton of questions on that. Just let me set up the fact that we're going to show you the 2 different marketing approaches. Obviously, SureSmile is the dentist program and Byte is the direct-to-consumer program. Sitting in back of that is a common R&D. So what exists for 1 can move to the other back and forth. So we're really leveraging R&D. It's -- we've now moved to a single manufacturing facility down in Mexicali, and we have a lot of capacity. So we will be able to expand, which is really important because both of them are growing very, very rapidly. We are going to talk the separate marketing, but I can't emphasize enough, it's all done off a common strategy platform, if you will. So with that, Chidam, we'll bring you up first. Chidam?

Thanks, Don. So hey, everyone. I run SureSmile. And basically, we've kind of pushed SureSmile to a pretty fast growth phase beginning this -- beginning last year, and SureSmile is really growing. It's one of the key growth drivers for the company, and we have been performing well and growing fast. As Don mentioned, unlike Byte, SureSmile is primarily doctor driven. Doctor is the face to the patient, and we -- professional. The range of treatment options for SureSmile is from easy all the way up to moderate, a pretty broad range. Our solution is premium, and our treatment planning protocol and our treatment plans are very, very good, okay? That gives us an edge, I think. We've talked about it -- Don talked about it earlier this morning as well. Our systems are open. We work with any of the AI systems. We have seamless integration with Primescan, but we do work with any system. And that shouldn't be a blocking factor for any doctor to take on SureSmile. Today, SureSmile is primarily North America. But beginning this year, we started expanding beyond North America, and we'll continue to -- that we keep part of our growth as well as growing in North America. So let me -- let's just talk about what new products are coming up. So with that, we -- [ Dr. Shark ] talked about the new software release coming up. This software release is predominantly focused on making it easier for the doctor to be able to prescribe and get a treatment plan into our system, approve the treatment plan, and order the aligners. As you think about GPs, they don't want to become specialists. What they want to do is be able to offer the treatment. And we have made it much more easier for them to do that with the upcoming software release. And we've got some great feedback from our GP KOLs as well. We've talked about Propel and VPro. We will have it ready for purchase by end of the year. My expectation is a major launch and push will begin next year as was communicated earlier in the Q2 earnings. And we also expect to have whitening available in the U.S. in December, again, with a major push as we get into Q1 next year. Okay. That's the key highlights for SureSmile, predominantly North America, expanding geographically, growing fast and a key part of our growth aspirations for the U.S. With that, Neeraj, go ahead.

All right. Hi, everybody. I'm Neeraj Gunsagar. I'm the CEO and President of Byte. First off, I'd like to clarify, I was an honest banker. So I got to make sure that, that is clear. Who is Byte, right? So we were acquired by Dentsply Sirona at the beginning of the year. And like Chidam had mentioned, we are consumer-focused today, right? Doctor directed, every treatment plan is overseen by a doctor in our network. And we provide clear aligners across the entire country. We've got a growing suite of oral care products as well. We've got whitening. We've got a night time aligner product, too. And as Chidam and Don had mentioned, we have HyperByte. And so HyperByte is just a consumer version of VPro. We're the only person -- we're the only company in the market that has VPro. And it's been a really, really powerful differentiator when we think about competing with players in the space today. It's really important for everybody to understand that we are just in the beginning of a major transformation on the clear aligner space. As you've noticed with other players out there that are on the doctor-directed, doctor-led side, the consumer side is just beginning. We think there's about 70 million patients with mild-to-moderate malocclusion in the U.S. today that are focused on what we call the underserved side of the market. So these are people that are predominantly focused on pricing sensitivities. They want to do something convenient that's at home. We do a lot of real-time surveying of our traffic, either at the UV level or at the quiz level, to understand what's the dominant consumer experience that these folks are looking at today. And the reason we do that is because you eventually want to combine these businesses with dental practices. We've talked about BytePro before. But you don't want to just go into BytePro with just a lead gen experience. You want to make sure that you've developed something with the consumers that's really powerful and easier to use as you go into the professional side of the network. I always tell Don and folks at DS is we want to be able to create something end-to-end right at the beginning of launching with this. Otherwise, the professional side of the industry won't take us that seriously. They'll just think of us as driving patients or doing something like that. I always look at other verticals like I look at an Airbnb or I look at other folks that are doing stuff in travel and auto. I came from TrueCar, Carvana, which has gone complete end-to-end. They only do something that's powerful when they create the entire experience. And that's what we're spending a lot of time trying to understand. Like I mentioned earlier, the at-home piece of it is very important, but the doctor direction piece is important as well, so making sure that all the treatment plans are really well diagnosed from our treatment planners all the way to our doctors. And then speed and comfort. We mentioned earlier, HyperByte is a very comfortable way of getting your aligners. I used to make these jokes that we call it the Theragun of your mouth. But the reality is it is a more comfortable experience for consumers as they're going through the Byte experience. One thing that's also important, from a narrative perspective, is that the D2C side or the awareness that we're building is a huge positive for the entire industry. As I spend more and more time talking with either DSOs or dental providers in local markets, they're all looking for incrementality, right? So incrementality is super important to their practices, right? How do I go and acquire a new customer today, tomorrow, in the future. And what we're doing and what we're seeing is, is that they haven't made a dent in this number of how many consumers go into dental offices every year. It's like between 40% to 45% of U.S. people that need to go into dental offices, go to dental offices every year. They actually want that number to come up. And the only way you can really make that number come up is if you attract a whole new set of consumers. And we're seeing that many of our consumers today are a little hesitant to come into dental offices. They've always have been, but now with aligners and them spending a little bit of money through the Byte pay financing or through whatever strategy they use on purchasing the aligners, the first question they ask after they're done with aligners is, "Hey, can I get a dental reference for teeth cleaning or to I make sure that my teeth when they're straight, they continue to be straight." So that's a really big thing because the served market, if you think about it, is a fraction of the underserved market today. And if we can start making a dent and educating and build more awareness on oral care with that group of humans, they are just going to drive into dental offices at a record pace. And so that's something that we're spending a lot of time educating the industry on and making sure that when we create these experiences that we have a proper hand off. That's something in the future. But it's something we hold really, really near and dear to us as we work with the industry. From a momentum perspective, we have doubled this year. We're growing like crazy. We're seeing more and more consumer demand. Obviously, you had the pandemic drive a lot of stuff last year. This year, it swings a little bit the other way, but we're just seeing -- continuing to see growth in the category in aligners. And how are we winning, right? So one of the questions we always get is in the sea of sameness out there, how is Byte really winning? Well, the reality is, is that we have the top-rated experience. And when you think about a consumer journey in a higher-priced product like this, it's nonlinear. So when you see a Facebook ad or you see an Instagram ad, you don't purchase that aligner right away. When you buy socks or you like Tommy John underwear or something like that on Instagram, you buy that product right away. It's $20. It's $30. You don't have shopping card abandonment in those verticals. But when you do a big ticket purchase, and we learned a lot of this in auto, you don't linear path purchase. You go all over the place. You might check out a review site. You might talk to some friends. You might go and might even talk to a dentist. We are at the top of every single one of those, and it's not by chance. We spend a tremendous amount of time making sure that the consumers that are going through our experience are having the best possible experience. And that has been at record numbers this year, and we're continuing to invest to make sure that those experience go all the way through to retainers. And then as we hand off eventually to the oral care industry, the dental professionals that, that handoff and that integration is really seamless. And that's some of the stuff that Cord talked about earlier on the common platform. Next slide. So what's next, right? So what's next for us is on the revenue side, we're just continuing the momentum on top line growth. And the key is, is you're only going to win in this category by creating the best consumer experience. And so we're spending a tremendous amount of time and effort investing in product and technology. And when I mean product and technology, it's not the clear aligner side. So that's what Don mentioned earlier. We have a common framework on that in Mexicali. A lot of that innovation comes from the engineering and technology side that's not in Byte today. But what we do is focus on is making sure that if we roll out a new check-in experience, or roll in a new app experience, that, that experience is parallel or at least at the same level to some of the digital health concepts that are out there today. If you think about some of the stuff that people use today, I have a Whoop device on. There's other products and other verticals that are really interesting from a digital health perspective. So we want to do something like that in the oral care space as well. Like I talked about experience, so a deeper integration with HyperByte, right? Is there certain things we can do from a hardware, software perspective with HyperByte to keep people compliant, right? So compliance is a big issue, right? So when people wear an aligner, they don't wear it for a week. They go on vacation. We want to be able to help them transition through that, right? We have to have an engagement platform. We have to have maybe potentially some sort of integration with HyperByte to remind them, use your HyperByte for 5 minutes a day. Use your HyperByte for 10 minutes a day. Those things are super important to make sure consumers have the best possible outcome. Profitability, like I said, Don mentioned earlier, we're continuing to innovate and work on synergies across the COGS side of the business to drive up gross margins. We want to be -- have the highest gross margins in the business, and we should be able to get there with the power of Dentsply. And we want to be able to make sure we pump that money back in the marketing and continuing to build the business. Because like I mentioned earlier, it's still the early innings here, and we want to be the de facto brand when people think about consumer aligners or aligners in the end. Ecosystem, as I mentioned earlier, BytePro, is something that we're very much interested on. We're having some conversations today with unique DSOs. But I want to be very clear that we want to make sure this is not just a lead gen delivery product. We want to make sure that we're integrated. We've got such interesting hardware at dental offices today. Is there a way to build a unique seamless experience across the consumer front end all the way to the experience they have in the chair? That's the only way you're going to differentiate and be able to drive incremental value into dental offices, right? Incrementality is one thing that we spend a tremendous amount of time on to make sure that these are not patients you're acquiring or conquesting from dentists. You're not, really. You're bringing incremental patients into their offices. And then global, we're in U.S. and Australia today. Australia is actually booming. It's interesting to see when you're in a quarantine or a pandemic people start buying at-home aligners at record numbers. That's happening in Australia today as well, so we're super excited about that. And then we're planning a U.K. launch in 2022. And then from there, the sky is the limit. We believe we can be in India and China and many, many other countries over the coming years to drive long-term revenue expansion. So that's Byte. And I'll pass it back over to Don.

And when we bought Byte, I think people were kind of -- that seems a little bit like a curveball. But I want to emphasize common infrastructure, R&D, manufacturing, part 1, part 2 when we need to globalize these guys. They ride on the back of Dentsply Sirona's extensive global QARA and the ability to register the products. And I think people underestimate when we talk about BytePro, it's basically -- as we are looking at the marketplace, we're never going to spend at the same levels as a line. That's not our model. But if we can generate 1 million unique visitors out of Byte and not all of them are going to be eligible for Byte, we push those on into -- that can go into SureSmile doctors or if you see here the kind of the C-docs that we go through. All right. So implants and endo, just I'm really excited about what we're doing on implants, right? So right now, we're Astra, Astra EV, Ankylos, Xive, MIS. Hence forth, we're now going to be Dentsply Sirona implants. I mean everything we launch going forward will be done under the Dentsply Sirona name. We are very excited about PrimeTaper, which is the first. Soon to follow is a product called OmniTaper, which will go into the rest of the world. It is an immediate load new product that we think gives outstanding performance. It's actually very, very easy to use. And you're building off the Astra feel. So it's not like a new procedure to learn, common prosthetics across the entire line. We have 8 implant treatment planning programs today. We're now going to focus that down to 2, Simplant being our lead. And we've totally revamped that and integrated it with Primescan. Again, we're going to take you to the booth, so I'm not going to oversell this. We'll show you how you can actually do an dental scan. Why is that important? If you look at the pace that you're seeing post and full or full upper or lower arches and you can integrate that into Primescan. And actually, if you sat in the main stage today, you can 100% see the idea that the digital denture coming off in a dental scan is really going to give you a better fitting, better outcomes. Atlantis custom abutments, something we don't talk a whole heck of a lot about, but that's been our best-performing implant asset. Custom abutment, if you are not familiar with the term, it basically -- if you put an abutment in sideways or you don't get it right, you could actually have the abutment compensate for the screw being misplaced. If you do it perfectly right, a custom abutment will actually give you better aesthetics and particularly important on the anterior part of the mouth. And we have -- it's interesting. If you take somebody like a Straumann that's done an amazingly good job on education, we have just about the same amount of content. But because it's been aggregated -- has never been aggregated before under different brands, it doesn't feel that way. So one of the things that Chidam working in our digital transformation as well as arena, we have now aggregated all of our implant printing -- implant CE. We now have a complete curriculum that will take you from single tooth to multi-tooth to full arch replacement, 8 courses. If you go back to college, we have implant 101, 102, 201, 202 and such forth. And the reaction we're getting from dentists who've now -- we've let a few people in under the tent. Very excited about that. The other thing that we're doing that's very interesting, we're doing a post-market surveillance study that we're making available to dentists. If you want to enroll, and we're basically going to track the results from PrimeTaper, you can register a patient and we're actually compensating the dentists for that and as we go forward for each digital entry. So we are so confident in this product that we believe a post-marketing surveillance study will give us longitudinal data that we believe will generate some pretty significant claims. And then Lucitone, we might do a demo late tonight after John Mulaney. We will take a Lucitone denture, and we will throw it off the top of [ Harris.] So Lucitone is the first of our 3D printing ingredients, very durable, very lifelike, and we believe it will become the standard in 3D printing. And right now, we're partnered with Carbon. But we're actually going to be partnered with SprintRay as well. So again, implants, in my mind, is an area that we've lagged the market. I'm not telling you tomorrow morning we're going to better the market. But we'd like to think that within a year to 2 that we will be growing with the market and we look forward to being competitive beyond that. So just looking at the products, again, it's digital workflows, STR, MTR full arch. You can see it's one driver. If you guys are familiar with implants, John and Elizabeth, I know you guys are, I mean, it's one driver now. We -- basically, every Dentsply Sirona product will be done off a common driver. I did mention, by the way, we're introducing single-use drills under MIS as well as some other things. So MIS is getting a pretty good facelift. By the way, we will be marketing MIS as part of Dentsply Sirona implants. So we've historically been concerned that if you have a value line and a premium line, they -- that's not going to work well together when you bring them. We're now pretty convinced that dentists are going to make the decision as to how much support they want from a manufacturer, and they seem to be willing to pay for a premium implant or a value implant. But a great set of products. And just why don't we go one more, Andrea. And in our mind, if you think about an implant procedure and workflow from the beginning, it starts with diagnosis and planning, whether it's our Orthophos, or whether you look at our Axeos and now Primescan, we feel that our diagnostic capabilities are superior into the marketplace. Augmentation, we had purchased Datum. Now when did we buy Datum? In February. So that, we believe that's state-of-the-art in bone growth. And we believe we've got a really nice pipeline sitting behind that. So if you're going to put an immediate load screw and you want some good bone augmentation, prime taper, SIMPLANT Guide, if you're going to use a surgical guide, again, we feel ATLANTIS is a secret weapon here in terms of custom abutments, whether that's for temporization or full. And then look, every implant finishes with a restoration. Our restorative business is our largest and it's very important to us. We like to say that endo, every root canal finishes with a restoration. Well, if you look at what goes on in implants, obviously, tying our restorative products to what's going on there. Again, we're very happy with what's going on. And whether it's Cercon, whether it's a few other things, we believe that nobody has the complete offering that we do from beginning to end. And again, different companies have different pieces of it. None of them starts with a diagnostic sophistication of both X-ray and scanning. All right? So we're excited about the workflows. What does digital actually mean? And if you can pay attention to the slide. It basically -- if you do a digital workflow on a single tooth, it's basically you save a visit. It's a full visit. I mean if you're going to do a partial, consider that like a 2 screws, 3 implants, you're going to save 20% of the time. And then full arch. If you go full arch with -- starting with a Primescan, not only going to get a superior fit and finish, but it's -- a patient kind of reduce the number of visits by 66%. So if we go back one, just because I think the slide [indiscernible]. So if you look at it, historically, an analog procedure, if you're going to do full arch, that can be 8, 9 visits. And basically, what we're saying, if you do a digital soup to nuts, it's a big change. And the other thing it really does is it gives the clinician a lot more confidence because you can share the digital images simultaneously with a lab partner, back and forth, so there's some good conversation. All right. Why don't we go into endo? One more. ProTaper Ultimate. I hope none of you ever need this product. By and large, the only thing I want to use of any of the Dentsply Sirona is the hygiene stuff or cleaning your teeth. But ProTaper Ultimate, we've always done really well in files and we have come up with an incredibly simple file system, much better shaping. It basically takes the number of files from 7 to 3. More importantly, if you talk about that powered GP user as well as endodontic, most of them are using 3 to 4 systems in their office. It's the only system you need. And that's what they're telling us. I mean we've actually had this out in parts of Europe for a little while. And you just make life simple if you basically take ProTaper Ultimate. It works really, really well. Activator, it's an area of weakness for us. We now have something that will give you a really thorough cleaning in 90 seconds. So one of the concerns about, compared to say like a Sonendo, a physical file, you're going to have little roots and things coming off it. With an Activator here, used in 90 seconds, the cleaning power is remarkable. And then that product is coming out in the first quarter. Right now, we also are introducing a biosymmetric sealer for obturation, which we think is as good a fit as gutta-percha, but it sets in 60% faster. So when we go to the clinicians, we're saying, "Hey, guys, first, it's easier to use, it's faster." So in our world, we'd love to think ProTaper Ultimate is something that the general practitioner will get more comfortable using and we know the endos like it. And when you do something as easy to use as our biosymmetric sealer, it just gives the clinician a lot more confidence. And it's all based off this digital diagnosis. So I think that's it, right, Andrea? So we'd like to open that up to questions and answers. And are you going to moderate? Or how are we going to do that?

So we have a number of folks in the room. We're going to open it up. We've got about 30 minutes for questions, for Q&A. And what we can do here is we'll take some questions from the group we have in the room. [Operator Instructions] But we'll start with the folks that are here in the room. And if you can please wait for the mic just to make sure everyone can hear you. And wait for them to sit down.

We're expecting huge props for the uniform coordination here. And I will tell you, it's actually getting very hot. So this is a sacrifice one way or another. But we are really glad. Actually, we haven't seen our colleague physically since January pre COVID. So we're very happy Walter's here. Who's got the mic, Andrea? Jeff.

Thanks for having us all, and thanks for calling me out on the digital ventures. I don't know if it's the most gray here in the room or what's that call out there. But two things. One, just because it is timely and I've been getting a lot of questions, I'm sure everyone else in the room has, there is a little talk about some seasonality right now, things like that. I don't want to take away from the big event here that's focused on the longer term. But just what do you see in seasonality? How should we think about third quarter relative to maybe the last couple of quarters you saw? And then I do have 1 bigger-picture question.

Yes, I'll start. I think you're going directly to the aligners. I mean, dentistry doesn't seem to be all that seasonal, but aligners tends to be a little bit more seasonal. We're seeing good growth. But you've heard from a few of the other players in the market that there's going to be some seasonality associated. We're seeing a little bit of that. The thing, and I think Neeraj said it pretty well, Jeff, we're pretty early stage though. I mean -- so we're not working off -- in the case of Byte, we don't have 2 years of data. So we're going to see. But there's a little bit of seasonality there.

From that I assume you're saying you're not really seeing a whole lot of seasonality in the rest of your business, the core business?

I think we have talked about this before. Typically, if you look historically, go back 5 years, typically, the third quarter is somewhat lower than the second quarter. The majority of that is actually driven by Europe and the July, August shutdown. So I think there is an element of seasonality across all categories, not only aligners, mainly related to that. I don't think what we're seeing this year is that different from what we have seen before.

Fair enough. And Don, you kind of talked about SureSmile there. You wrapped up that you're early stage there, but you did put up a number of 160,000 SureSmile cases. I know when we, talk to some docs, the ASP is probably somewhere around 1,000, maybe a little less for some of your bigger users. I think last quarter it was pretty clear Byte is on a $200 million-plus run rate already, at least using last quarter's numbers. So you put that together, we're over $350 million. You've been talking about a $300 million run rate. So you're well above that. How should we think about the growth for just your clear aligner business over the next year or 2?

Can we go to the next. I'll let Chidam and Neeraj comment.

[indiscernible]

I will let you comment.

I'm sorry.

Just to set the table, Jeff, look, we gave you a $300 million number, we like the $300 million number. If we get -- if we're better than the $300 million number, great. I mean one of the challenges, and I think Jorge has mentioned that -- I think you mentioned this last week when you were doing some of the other work, there's still pandemic floating around. I mean, it doesn't look like it out there, but there's a pandemic. We're just trying to work our way through it. I mean, we're happy with how these things are both growing, and we'll stand by the $300 million. If we deliver upside, we're happy.

I don't have anything more to say what Don just said. The 150,000-plus cases number you saw there was the combination of the 2 brands, not just SureSmile.

Vik Chopra, Credit Suisse. I had a couple of questions on clear aligners first, on Byte. Help us understand how you're driving awareness for the product and what success would look like for you with your U.K. launch.

Well, building awareness is mainly digital today, right? So we use a combination of what most folks use, which is just Facebook, Instagram on the social side. We're doing stuff with TikTok as well. And then on the Google side, we're obviously just planning on the brand and nonbrand world. But we do spend a lot of time on the review sites as well. Because when you have an early category like this, unless you're going to go spend a tremendous amount of money on, let's say, upper funnel marketing, TV, radio, digital, you got to get the digital piece of the consumer experience right first. And so we've seen competitors run and spend a tremendous amount of money on upper funnel marketing. You know the same players that I do. What happens is, like I mentioned earlier, it's not linear. So we are going to spend more time focusing on quality of traffic. And as we build quality of traffic and have that -- we believe we have the highest conversions in the industry from UV all the way to kind of aligner purchase. But as we focus on that number more and more, we're very responsible on how to spend dollars and very much focused on what the LTV CAC of each incremental customer is. And when we see that start to broaden and broaden, we pump more money in the upper funnel. My goal is we're doing an internal branding exercise on what's the differentiation of Byte, how can we go attack that. And next year, I think we'll be making a much bigger push in regards to upper funnel marketing to drive awareness for Byte. But there's a lot of still awareness in the category of aligners, right? So this underserved market is not nearly as educated in the concept of being able to get your teeth straightened through an at-home product, or even like we mentioned earlier, with BytePro. We want to be able to funnel the right conversions to Class II, Class III once we have that integrated solution. So it's still early, right? I just want to make sure, we're not going to spend $100 million on a TV campaign because the math of that doesn't work. So that's kind of how we think about branding for the category.

In U.K., Jorge.

The U.K. So U.K.'s success is, I think, launching and then making sure the customer experience. Same thing we did in Australia, it's just making sure that we have the best customer experience out there. And at that point, by the end of the year, if we know from the review sites' perspective, and our conversion map is there, that we will figure out a success for 2022, and then we'll pump in dollars into that category. Once again, it's not spending a bunch of dollars in the country and then having horrible customer experiences. Because we've known some of our competitors that are in U.K. and Germany, their experiences have been subpar. And they might still generate revenue, but the reality is quality of revenue is just as important to us as revenue growth is. So we're very cognizant of like when we want to like really push the pedal to the metal in certain markets. Like Australia is doing extremely well, and we want to follow a similar path in the U.K.

Great. And just one more on SureSmile, if I could. You recently announced a partnership with 3Shape. Help us understand the rationale for that and when you expect to see some sort of benefit from that partnership.

Yes, the 3Shape partnership was a function of they -- obviously, Align isn't taking 3Shape anymore, so they need an aligner. Because if you're trying to sell an intraoral scanner right now and you're boxed out of having an aligner, that's some of the functionality. And we're committed to open. We're absolutely committed to open. So actually, SureSmile, we're validated with 3Shape. We're actually going to validate Primescan with other aligners as well. Because, again, one of the things we constantly hear from the dentist is you guys need to derisk our equipment assumptions, because if everything gets closed off, it will actually slow down digital equipment adoption.

I think I got the mic. Guys, just maybe, 2022, just at a high level, it seems like you guys have a lot of tailwinds. Byte would arguably circle into organic growth, that could be 100 or 150 bps. You've got a brand implant platform that you'll be catching up closer to growth which that might -- the industry mid-single digit. New endo. So I think when I speak to investors, they hear the 4% to 5% and they think the upper end or even north of that. Just talk to us about the tailwinds that I identified. But what are we missing from a headwind that might keep it in that mid-single-digit range or the variables that I mentioned? Should we think 2022 is possibly a little bit more robust?

I think at this point the targets that we have out there reflect our views on tailwinds and headwinds. There isn't a major headwind that we can think of. I think the health of the business is good across the board. We will be in a position to give more specifics about '22 and fine-tune some assumptions pretty soon, in a couple of months, when we give guidance for 2022. But I don't -- we are not seeing at this point. Obviously, there is COVID and -- but I think with the vaccine and other things, we'll get to a better place soon. But other than that, we're not seeing any major headwind. And there are investments that we have to make. It's not only about -- I think Neeraj said something really important, which is not every single dollar of growth is the same. And we want to make sure that we make investments to improve the customer experience. We want to make sure that we don't get ahead of ourselves in certain markets where we like to do a lot more than what we do today. But we want to do it at the right pace so that when we go, it's going to be sustainable. And that is very important for us.

Okay. Great. And then maybe just a quick follow-up. Don, in the presentation there, I think you mentioned DTC for clear aligners, which was really interesting. Was that specific to the SureSmile platform, to be clear? If it was, why now? Would that be TV? And then maybe just flip over to Byte. Neeraj, we've heard a lot of stuff about Apple iOS, the new platform and the headwinds that it's created for some companies that are heavily relying on digital. And you guys have done a great job. How are you navigating, if you are, in avoiding some of those pitfalls?

Well, let's start with the DTC. Yes, that was 100% going at SureSmile. If you look at the evolution, John, first, we had to get Mexicali up. And second, we want to be in a position where we have a broader range of products. So when you start talking about HyperByte, by the way, we'll strike the [ trigone ] of your mouth. If you guys have ever done the trigone -- trigone of the mouth would be a little brutal. But our thought process is when we get HyperByte and get whitening and a few other things and get our manufacturing to the point where we feel it's a strategic advantage, that gives us an opportunity to do it. And again, we're going to do it in a measured fashion. I mean tomorrow morning, don't expect a SureSmile Super Bowl ad. But in our budget, we have a program, DTC. A lot of it tends to be social. Because one of the things we hear from dentists is we want to make sure people have at least heard of SureSmile. So that -- Chidam is in the process of rolling that out now. And look for that. If it works the way we hope it works, that will be expanded in 2022. Neeraj, you can talk to the...

Yes. No, no, it's a great question. So yesterday you probably read that Facebook came out and talked about lowering their numbers. The reality is you want to play the digital marketing game a little bit differently, because there's a CPM rise that Facebook drives that they try to play and manipulate advertising rates. So CPMs will go up on Instagram and Facebook. What we constantly navigate is just the efficacy and the efficiencies of those marketing channels. So we might move very quickly off Facebook and Instagram because of the high CPMs on the higher-cost CPCs on Google, for example, like so we could go buy competitor terms, because the math model works on that. So you have to be in tune with these channels in real time. And one of the things I think we're all learning here and folks at Dentsply is like it's a trading desk on our side. Like we're moving every single minute. I mean weekends are not off. Sun -- Saturdays and Sundays, my teams are always managing these things. And we've got that experience because auto is so heavily marketed, and we're bringing that same expertise here. So there's definitely issues because -- I mean, you probably guys have all done it on your iOS, like I don't want that app following me, I don't want that app following me. So the cross-app thing is more of a targeting thing. So it's more about like Facebook will try to sell you audiences, right? So that audience is a look-alike like this based on all these tracking things that they have. You're having issues on that, but we're able to quickly navigate those things based on our internal data or our quiz data and retargeting our quizzes and stuff like that. But other companies will. If you don't have this kind of expertise internally on a digital perspective, you're going to deal with these issues.

I guess I'm next, John Kreger. Could you guys just do maybe dig in a little bit more to the implant restart that you're doing? I guess sort of 2-part question. One, let's step back. What didn't you do well over the last 5 or 10 years, really since the Astra purchase? And then looking forward, it seems to me like Straumann has consistently kind of out-executed everyone else in implant. What do you think you have that can sort of systematically claw back some share from Straumann?

Sure. John, I actually think if you look at our history in the implant business, it almost tracks to the history of Dentsply Sirona. I mean there was Astra, Astra EV, Ankylos and Xive. I remember, literally, one of the first rides I did with an implant rep, she was very aggressively assuring me she was an Ankylos rep. And I was like, what else do you sell? I'm an Ankylos. It's the Ferrari. It's the best anterior implant thing. So for instance, in the U.S., we had 4 different sales forces, one for each. And when you don't operate at scale, which is why you keep seeing us put that in our values and whatnot, you don't have a common R&D. Common R&D in implants is 18 months old now. So okay, that's the first thing we have to do. Dan has been able to rationalize manufacturing, which should give us a fair amount of opportunities to improve the cost position. But from a marketing perspective, the number of dentists that are actually able to identify Ankylos, Xive and Astra with Dentsply Sirona is very, very low. And the amount of people that can identify something like an Atlantis with Dentsply Sirona is -- you're talking in the 20s and 30s. So our thought process is the biggest asset we have is our name. And the biggest asset we have is our installed digital base. So we've spent in the last 18 to 24 months working pretty aggressively to actually make these workflows go. I mean one of the things in [ 5 2 ] when we keep talking about the Atlantis full arch scan, I mean that's like magic. So we had to get that set first. Second, we had to make decisions. Like I talked about SIMPLANT. So we're picking. We're picking things. And Walter, you've actually got some history on implants. And I know you're a huge advocate of what we're finally doing on implants. Maybe you could offer some perspective.

[indiscernible]

For the people aren't here, Walter.

Yes. I hope it's on.

Yes.

Is it on?

Yes.

Like Don, you described implant being kind of 4, 5 separate companies internally and it was run commercially very similar. Every implant was separate. The teams were separate. Now we are, a, brought implants together as one team and same on the commercial side. And b, in all our big markets, we form these hot teams where they interact with -- on a regional -- on a territory level with their peers so that they can cross-leverage the contact. So we basically stop the isolated go-to-market and made it a unified, synchronized effort and that works.

Yes, and the last thing I'd add, John, is we were big advocates on parallel wall. I mean if you actually go through Astra, Astra EV and Ankylos and Xive, there's a parallel wall and the market's really moved the other way. And there was a lot of conversations within our organization about the appropriateness of moving to immediate load. And we've kind of gotten around that. We've gotten over that. So the steps that we're taking is, okay, recognize what our advantage should be versus Straumann: big installed digital base, part 1. Part 2, get your products up to speed, which we now feel that we're in a very competitive position. Bringing ancillaries that are really important. I mean I'll stack Atlantis up to anybody's custom abutment program in the marketplace on a global basis. Add something that's -- Eric Bruno will be the first to tell you, it's a door opener, I mean with OSSIX right now. It is a really awesome bone growth factor that we're excited about. And then over time, when we begin to aggregate things up to Dentsply Sirona, that's the same people who are bringing CEREC and other things. We think it gives you a lot more leverage. The -- I'm not sure we're going to be able to quite do it today, but I'd give us a month, John, and go on the site and really look through the continuing education. It's now -- there's going to be a substation within Dentsply Sirona called implant -- Dentsply Sirona implants. Today, if you wanted to go search how to do a multi-tooth replacement, you could come up with an Ankylos, Xive, Astra or an MIS version scattered throughout because it was organized by brand as opposed to organize how a clinician might do it. So again, I mean we're -- I think Straumann has done a wonderful job, done some things really well, if you look at the institute, you look at the fact they've got premium and value. We feel very good that our premium -- we have a great premium and a great value offering. We're now going to put them together and we're going to leverage it under a single brand name.

Elizabeth Anderson from Evercore. Just a follow-up maybe on the implant side of things. How do you see the transition from -- for a new person to some of these digital-based implant solutions? Like is it something that you have to go out there and have people sort of train and input? Is it just something that people can plug and play? I'm just trying to think about how the ramp when somebody would be converting to this product and sort of what that looks like over time.

Yes. And Elizabeth, let me build on the question and actually finish off a question of John. Look, our immediate goal is we've been losing share of wallet. If somebody's got a brand X and brand Y and then us, because we didn't have the product and a few other things, we were losing share wallet. We feel we can stop that now, which, in my mind, [ welter ] skies, we're out filling in the bucket, but there was a leaky -- it was a leaky bucket, if you will. So look, the journey that -- first, we feel we've got a very good offering for specialists and we're going to hold -- we want to hold -- serve with specialists. We do, however, and you heard it again and again, every dentist that got up and talked today, he was talking about practice expansion where you're trying to increase revenue per hour that the dentist is going to spend. So the -- we would say the best way to approach things is if you're a general dentist in a DSO, you're going to learn single tooth implants. And then it's the digital technology where you're going to get a surgical guide and you're going to be able to talk to a lab by virtue of the fact that you're looking at the same thing, you'll start the progression up. We would tell you it's got to start with CE theory. And then invariably, and we're pretty well set up for this, you're going to go to physical training. Like I'll go to Dr. Gomez and I'll actually place 3 or 4 of these implants. Once you've placed single tooth, the march up is really your confidence level. The second big thing that was mentioned here that I feel we're starting to gain momentum is patient activation. A general dentist going to patient Gomez here, "Hey, you really need an implant. It's going to be $3,000 to $4,000 to $5,000." They get very nervous about patient activation. The digital tools, Elizabeth, are absolutely essential in having that conversation, which is why we want to anchor things in digital. So I would tell you, we've identified people who should be on that journey, single tooth to multi-tooth, multi-tooth to full arch. Filling in the funnel. It actually starts with didactic, where it's going to be online learning. Then you go to these activations, if you saw the DS Activate program where you're going to go get hands-on training. And then ultimately, you're going to spend time, and we're pretty well set up on a global basis, with KOLs, which we'll do hands on. It's not a light switch that goes on. But our best target, I would tell you, is somebody who left the DSO, hung out a shingle and she realizes that drilling and filling isn't going to pay for my dental school and to buy the practice.

Got it. Okay. So a couple of follow-up questions from that. One, so it's launching globally? Yes. At the same time? Okay. And then two, do you feel like in terms of the -- I guess, is there COVID impact to like doing these in-person trainings? Or is that something we shouldn't really have to worry about too much? Like if I have to go -- you said -- as you said, with the single implant and I have to go train with Dr. Gomez, like is that a COVID-impacted activity or not so much?

No, it's not as much. I mean I think it's what you see outside and you can hear it. Dentists have gotten pretty comfortable that they can manage aerosol. So that -- we haven't seen a die-down in physical training. The amount of hands-on training, Elizabeth, you do from a single tooth to multi-tooth is de minimis. It's really -- it's really get that first kind of experience with single tooth. I mean if you guys want to comment, Matt or Walter, that's fine.

Yes, I mean in terms of training, physical training, things have come up to almost normal levels. I mean you have to keep spacing. So of course, it can't be that full. But we see all around the world a lot of activities and doctors feel safe. So that's going for speed. And there is an element of us training our reps, too, because this whole digital journey really means a big expansion of what the rep used to do, selling bridges from selling solutions, so suddenly the implant, that needs to understand our digital devices, our software, which is another step of education and training. So there is that taking place on our own website and then with our customers.

And then last question. Do you feel like you have the whole portfolio you need at this point in terms of your ability to do with new product launches or these launches? Or is it kind of one of those things where you would also look to supplement it with maybe some inorganic expansion maybe on the value side or in certain geographies or something like that?

I would answer that question, Elizabeth. 100% we feel our portfolio is competitive today. There's nothing that's on our shopping list right now to say, boy, that's really going to hold us back. Getting Prime approved in every country around the world and registered and getting Omni approved in every country around the world. It takes a little while so you got to roll it there. But in terms of like OSSIX, Atlantis, the continuing education, SIMPLANT, that's -- we feel really good that we're good to go. I think MIS, I mean, it's fair to -- in our mind, like the 2 jewels in the implant portfolio were actually MIS and Atlantis. And so we feel like from a custom abutment perspective and from a bone growth perspective, that has been outpacing the category.

Jason Bednar with Piper. Don, I wanted to ask on the supply chain challenges you brought up or at least alluded to in some of your opening remarks. I mean this isn't unique to your business by any means. But I guess just wondering if there's anything you can talk to about whether there's certain business lines within Dentsply Sirona that maybe aren't seeing the same level of pressure or those that may are -- maybe are seeing an outsized level of pressure. And then the follow-up to that would be any line of sight to some of those pressures alleviating.

Yes, sure. I'll start and then Dan -- Dan is sitting a couple of feet away from you. The businesses we worry the most about right now are chip-related. We feel very good that we have adequate supply. But where we might have been holding 180 days, we're now trying to hold more just because we keep hearing from the car industry and other stuff that there's going to be chip challenges. Medical grade plastic is something that we see a little bit of a push on. But again, one of the reasons I actually wanted to have our supply chain people is because it comes up, and I think they've done a heck of a job. Right now, we don't have anything that's blinking yellow or red. I mean, Dan, did I miss anything there?

No, you didn't -- I don't think this is on.

It is. It is, Dan.

All right. I didn't -- no, Don, you hit everything correctly. Yes. So if you look at supply chain across the world, there's the chips, but then there's the containers, there's 70 ships sitting outside Los Angeles to be unloaded still. We're able to -- with our procurement team and logistics teams, we've been able to find ways around that. And they've been extremely creative. And I think that's the advantage, as Don said earlier, of a centralized supply chain leveraging scale. So we've been able to finds ways around and continue to keep the supply coming in and be creative with our suppliers. And that's helped us through all this. And so there's nothing right now that is red blinking light to -- for the rest of this year and the next year at this point.

Jason, just to add some flavor to your question. I think, so clearly from a supply disruption perspective, we are fine. But it is clear that there is inflation in some places. Costs are going up. Shipping cost is much higher now than what it was 12 months ago, right, Dan? Some of the raw material prices have gone up as well. Dan and the team have done a great job trying to offset some of that. We have other savings in other part of the enterprise that we're using to offset some of that. So I just don't want that point to be missed because it's real.

That's super helpful. Maybe to transition over to the implant business, back to the implant business. Don, I think you mentioned you're now consolidating everything under Dentsply Sirona, including MIS. That's a little bit of a unique strategy, different from what maybe what your peers have done. So I guess just maybe expand a little bit more on that go-to-market decision. Why is that the right decision with MIS? And I just want to make sure I understand, right? If I'm right on that point, is it just implicit then the price that the doctors are paying that, that's for the level of service that they're going to get? Higher price, higher service? Lower price, lower service?

First, if you go on to any place on our websites or anything, even our e-commerce site, MIS literally has no relationship anywhere, continuing education and stuff like that. So that's getting pushed together. And it's not going to be MIS from Dentsply Sirona, but it will be marketed under the same umbrella, if you will. It varies by country. Like right now in the U.S., we still have 2 separate sales forces. But we've consolidated MIS...

[indiscernible] because we just [indiscernible] that doctors use different systems, doctors use different systems, a value depending, brand also on the price availability of the customers. So it makes perfect sense to bring it together in one bag and that did grow sales.

Yes. And what we've seen is that the doctors kind of understand if I'm going to pay this for a value of abutment. Do not expect that a rep is like the following, "Oh, I don't have a driver. You better go hustle one of those over." They're pretty good about that. So to answer your direct question, we don't see erosion in the countries where we put it under one bag.

Okay. Great. And just sorry, just one quick follow-up just on ProTaper since that was the other focal point today. I understand that the simplification, using fewer files. Can you talk about maybe procedure time cutdown? Maybe quantify if you can, what an average root canal now looks like for ProTaper Ultimate versus maybe Gold previously?

I don't think we -- Eric, we didn't push the number out. Did we?

We didn't push the number out [indiscernible]

Yes. We'll get you a number on that. We -- I just want to -- we've been hyper careful about what numbers we're putting out clinically because our lawyers were viewing everything. But it's a significant. It is going from 7 files to 3. Basically, right now, if you're going to do a chemical clean of the tooth, that's 15 minutes. This is 90 seconds. So we'll get -- literally, when we -- I hope you're going to do the tour. When we do the tour, John West is going to be there. We'll give you a number when we...

[indiscernible]

Yes, yes, the disinfection with the activator is a big deal.

We do have a question that came in from the virtual audience.

Do you have the microphone, Andrea?

I have a mic right here.

Okay. Very good.

So the question is around, there's some interest around BytePro and specifically what that experience might be like or initial thoughts on that. What that experience would be like on the dentist side as they think about workflow.

Matt, do you want to take that one? With the microphone.

Yes. Listen, it's still very early on. But I think Neeraj touched upon it really well. It's going to be sort of a nonlinear approach. We don't want BytePro to be perceived as is just a lead gen tool, right? We know others have tried it, it doesn't really work. So there's other things that we're building on the back end of it. But essentially, if you think about it, what is really instrumental to a dentist is we were talking about incrementality before. It's this concept of new patients drive growth. Well, if you think of the consumerism that's happening in dentistry and a lot of it is around the aesthetics of dentistry, right, I want straight smiles or whatever. And that was a main narrative around acquiring something like Byte is if we can catch to that patient, begin educating that patient, whether they go through a Byte journey or they go through the professional journey, we'll meet them where they choose to be meet -- or met. But I think if you think of that as a real patient acquisition, patient engagement tool, it becomes really critical because that's what a dentist wants, right? We saw some commentary earlier today is if we could put engagement tools in front of patients to get them to accept cases, it grows categories. And that's what you're essentially doing here with a lot of underserved patients. But one thing not to overlook, Byte, yes, there's an aspect of price sensitivity in patients engaging DTC platforms. But also remember, think of us as people as well or as consumers in dentistry, there's a fear of going to a dentist. So as you start educating that patient and getting them comfortable again with going to the dentist, we really believe it drives a significant amount of new patients into the dental -- the dental practice.

I always boil it down -- because Matt and Neeraj are much smarter than the CEO, so when I listen to how excited they get about stuff, I have to simplify it. It's basically, if you're not eligible for Bye, Class II, Class III, we can give you names of dentists. And we will create websites with the names of those dentists, and we will give them marketing tools to help them attract the Byte patient. And we're obviously going to drive them to places where there's a Primescan. And there -- as Neeraj always corrects me, it's a curated dental experience. It's not going to anybody that's going to be somebody who's got a great patient experience. Because literally the biggest differentiator in Byte is the patient experience. And to the point, we've seen other people try and build in the DTC space, try and build a professional relationship. And it's transactional as opposed to part of a continuum that we believe Dentsply Sirona is bringing these solutions.

And then we have one other question that came in from the line regarding the idea of a number of doctors doing SureSmile today and how we think about that penetration in terms of growth.

Yes, that's -- we're not going to give you guys the number on -- number of dentists. I mean, obviously, we track it. To us, it's less important the number of dentists doing it than the number of dentists having gotten through their, what, -- should on their fifth case or sixth case. It's basically you need to get them through 5. So if we gave you a number of 100 but only 10 of them have done 5, it's -- we think that, that number is not particularly useful. So in our mind, we can do a better job and we will try to give you a kind of a number of cases that can do it. And in our case, because our strategy is so intricately linked to Primescan, in our mind, it's number of Primescan dentists that are doing SureSmiles is the key number for us.

Any other questions in the room? Let's wait [indiscernible] the mic, please.

Sorry, one last one. Don, I was interested on the clinical application suite and just thinking about your move to software and digitization in that. You charge right now some CEREC data streaming fees, things like that. As you move this into some other areas, do you monetize this in a software like SaaS model where you could charge monthly fees? Is this just going to be bringing this all together, have this cloud-based AI kind of stuff to sell more consumables and equipment? Just is it drive consumables and equipment sales? Is there a way to monetize a nice software margin over time, a SaaS-like model?

It's both, Jeff. I mean, look, we're spending a ton of time on looking at how the business model may evolve as the cloud-based machines come in. When we think about it, there's -- we would tell you that in the future, we believe there's going to be a service component, a software component and a technology and equipment component to what would be T&E today. How we generate growth over time, though, is really making sure that we're coming up with value-added services that they haven't necessarily seen today. Just to tell you why we're confident about this. SureSmile is basically you're selling a treatment plan. I mean if you look at Atlantis, it's custom milling, but it's really a treatment plan there. And actually, we do sell CDOCS. I mean there is a software upgrade program. That's a revenue producer today. So the dentists are comfortable with that. But as you look out 2 to 3 to 4 years, we would expect that there's going to be a lot more emphasis on software and services, whether it's transactional, whether it's SaaS or whether it's on a transaction. There's a lot to be learned. And if you look across the category, there's a lot of examples about how. But we tend to look at that as that's going to be an evolution as opposed to one day we all wake up and the model shifted.

A follow-up question. Don, I know you've talked a lot about the key strategy is sort of integrated digital solutions, I think. So number one, are there -- I think that means, as you drive that, you end up getting a lot better kind of consumable. So can you talk about categories where you think you're sort of undersized and you're not getting your fair share? What those might be of sort of consumable streams? And then I guess the other question is, 5 years from now, is there another key part of the sort of equipment landscape that you think you're going to try to convince dentists to add on top of the sort of imaging and scanner and CEREC? Is there another thing like 3D printing or something that we should be thinking about.

There's 2 questions in there, John. And then Jorge jump in. I'll start. Is 3D printing going to be a much more prevalent feature in the category in 5 years? 100%, yes. And look, I mean, we got asked, what, 2 quarters ago, people had actually seen patent work around some of the work we've been doing. And when we introduce stuff like Lucitone, look, we're interested in the 3D printing market, but we want to make sure when we come up with a 3D printer, it's got a killer app and is ready to rock and roll. So when it's appropriate to talk about that, we'll talk about that. Just on a macro basis, I tend to think that if we can get -- and I was borrowing Eric Bruno's slide. There was one slide, it was like a little quadrant and were showing an arrow. The amount of consumables, if you're just a consumable user, we quantify that, that's a couple of thousand dollars a year that you buy from us. If you buy one piece of equipment, that number is 2 to 3x. If you buy 2 pieces of equipment, like -- our home run, which, by the way, the penetration on this, John, is really tiny. But if we had a DI and a CBCT in that, the amount of consumables goes up dramatically. And so our thought process is where are we under -- where we'd like to be today, I'll start right with implants. I go to implants, I think it's going to propel our rest of business. We think endo is dramatically underdiagnosed in this country and around the world. And then I'm quite confident that as Chidam's best friends, all is Primescan buddies, because those are the best customers we have for SureSmile. And Jorge, you got?

No, I think you covered it.

Okay.

Any other questions in the room? Okay. Any closing comments or anything that...

No, what -- agenda-wise, I think we're going to go out and walk the floor.

Yes, going to walk us through [indiscernible]

Good. Before Andrea walks you through the plan, so Andrea has been with us for how long now?

Since May.

Since May. And I'll tell you what we -- I hope you're enjoying here as much as we are. But she's -- we're super happy you're part of the team. Andrea, you, and Colleen and Julie, these guys worked real hard. So hopefully you guys find kind coming to the DS World worth it even if it's not just to see Gwen. So anyone?

All right. That concludes our live webcast. Okay, for folks in the room, so we have about a 30-or-so minute break. We will go on a booth tour at 2:30. Some of the docs...