Sectra AB (publ) (SECTB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

March 12, 2021

Nasdaq Stockholm SE Health Care Health Care Technology earnings 44 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Operator

operator
#1

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Sectra Q3 report. [Operator Instructions] I am now pleased to present CEO, Torbjörn Kronander; and CFO, Mats Franzén. Please begin your meeting.

Torbjorn Kronander

executive
#2

All right. Thank you. This is Torbjörn Kronander, and we also have Mats Franzén, who will take over a little later. So welcome to our quarter 3 report for this year. And I will say next slide when I want to advance slides here. Next slide. The value we create for customers at Sectra is divided into 3 areas, though 1 of them is subdivided into 2. Imaging IT, which is a bulk of business, we manage images, we handle images in hospitals and health care. We started with radiology only, but it's also now comprising more imaging modalities such as pathology, where we are uniquely positioned. Cardiology, ophthalmology, other ologies that use images in hospitals. So the imaging volumes and the imaging -- image's influence on diagnosis is increasing all the time in health care. Then we have Secure Communications where we do very high-level encryption, the type of encryption that is used for saving national securities. We mainly target areas where authorities are required to use encryption and protected systems. We are focusing a lot in mobile security now because that's a key part and not the least with COVID-19, an increasing area. And now we have Business Innovation, which comprises of 3 parts: one is research, so that's long-term research on various kinds, mainly in AI. And we do orthopedics and that is planning and follow-up orthopedic procedure, a rapidly growing area as we get older and older population. And we also have education there, medical education, which has seen increased interest over the last half year or year because of COVID-19 when all medical students have to be at home. There's an increasing area where you can actually teach students at home without them coming in with full good results. Next slide. Q3 highlights. Our order bookings increased by almost 80% to almost SEK 2 billion. Our profit per share, which is a number we follow closely, increased by 3%, and that's despite that we have the Swedish crown having an adverse effect of situation here. And we have been hampered by restrictions of the pandemics by stronger krona. However, we do not know what would happen without that change. So we cannot compare and say this is caused by that and that, except for the krona, where we can definitely say how much that influenced us. Next slide. Our 3 financial targets are all fulfilled. We have them in priority. A is equity to assets ratio that should be above 30%. This is a long-term stability. And the customers of ours, both in orthopedics or in communications and in medical IT or medical imaging IT is all dependent on our system not failing and us being around. The contracts are very long and if our systems fail or if we fail, it will be a huge problem going forward, so they need a trustworthy partner that will be around for a long time. Therefore, we have a quite conservative equity assets ratio above 30%, and we are above 50% there. The second-high priority is profitability, where we count operating margin. We don't want to take that up to very high levels. We are -- our target is 15%. Everything above 15% should typically be used to be invested in future growth, which is better for our shareholders, long-term. Target of 15% is more of a high gating factor. However, with the pandemic, it has increased. We have less cost, and we also want to be a little extra safe there because we don't know the outcome of the pandemic would be long term. So we are currently a bit higher at 19.2%, well above the target of 15%. And then we have the real target. However, prioritized #3 is growth of profit, and we count that in EBIT per share over 5 years periods. That should be above 50%, and we are currently above 100%, more than doubling EBIT per share every 5 years for the time being. Next slide. The seasonal effects and the pandemic. We do have quite a large variation between quarters. Last Q3, for instance, was exceptionally good. The long-term trend is longer than 1 year. The variations between quarters will continue to be large due to COVID-19. But over time, we think it will gradually decrease, both because pandemic will finally go over and we will also see that more and more of our revenues coming in as pay for usage, Software-as-a-Service income, and that's much more stable between quarters but that will take some time for that to have full effect. Next slide. COVID-19 impact on the health care IT market. Exhibitions and travels have been canceled or gone virtual. Of course, we need to see net new customers, and we meet a lot of them in exhibitions. We haven't seen that in the order intake yet, but it might still come, we don't know. The virtual conferences are not the same thing as a live event. We have seen delays in deliveries. A lot of hospitals have more or less shut down. Many are still completely shut down. All of Germany is in complete lockdown, for instance, and substantial parts of the U.S. And that means we cannot come to hospitals and then it's difficult to go live with installations so it results in delays. So we also see the hospitals being financially strained in a way we haven't seen before, where a lot of hospitals depend on the income of elective procedures, and if they are canceled, they make much less money. Elective procedures are on hold. That has, as I said before, a large impact on hospital's financials and also imaging volumes. However, on the positive side, we'd see telediagnosis taking a leap. Also pathologists want to sit at home and work from home during the pandemic and that has increased the trial, at least, not completely the sales yet, but a lot of trials and a lot of pathologists have been trying to do work from home. And that might -- or that will result in a faster adaptation into the market going forward. We also think that the post-COVID-19 patient imaging volumes may overwhelm hospitals. There is a large bump of people who have not been -- had their examinations or surgery procedures during the pandemic, that will be a large part ahead of us, and that will increase the amount of efficiency if the hospital is going to cope. Next slide. In cybersecurity, the same thing with exhibitions and travels, delays in deliveries, almost more prominent in cybersecurity because a lot of our deliveries have -- cannot be done with normal shipments, it has to be done by courier. If we sell this level of encrypted telephones to the countries and national security agencies, we have to take them there by people. And if travel between countries is limited, that is difficult. Increased demand for cybersecurity products. We do see an increase in demand. A lot of people working from home. A lot of teleconferences, video conference like this one needs to be done. But cannot be done over the public means, and it has to be encrypted. That has resulted in larger -- a large increase in need for high-speed mobile crypto solutions. We also see a long- and short-term increase in demand for secure mobile workplaces. People want to be able to work in a secret environment and with sensitive data also while traveling or sitting remote that will drive the long-term needs. Next slide. Q3 highlights in Secure Communications. We did increase our order bookings. We also have orders in EU institutions for our mobile encryption systems, where the EU authorities and institutions want to communicate internally in a secret environment. So secret means very -- the highest possible level of secrecy. And we provide EU with their mobile units for that environment. We, however, did not reach our target for margins both because of delays in deliveries but also because we're investing in the growth initiatives within communications. Next slide. The growth initiatives are mobile secure workplaces. As I said before, both industries and also a lot of people who are working from home, they do not want to do that over open lines. And they want mobile secure workplaces. We have very good products, but we need to invest further and build marketing and make them complete. We also invest in critical infrastructure, where we have seen quite a few delays now in orderings, people -- power suppliers and power plants are still interested and they need to invest. But because of travel restrictions, it has not been a lot of activity on the sales side during this pandemic. And the third area is very high-speed network encryption systems, so we can do secret communications that ways above gigabit levels, which is needed in modern networks. Next slide. The Q3 highlights in Business Innovation. We just were awarded a part of a very large EU project to create data and a common framework for AI in digital pathology. It was awarded to Linköping University in Sweden, and we are subcontracting the management of images in that system and presentation of images, which is a good thing. We had a strong negative impact from COVID-19 effects, however, especially orthopedics but also in education to some parts, some markets has been more or less shut down, notably Far East. Next slide, the growth initiatives in Business Innovation is medical education transition. We have the device deliveries before we deliver our visualization tables that is changing in the cloud-based content deliveries and subscriptions. Of course, in the first year we do this, such a change, it's less good, and the long-term is much better business in that area, good for both customers and the provider. We also see a transition where people want to visualize on iPads and PCs and sitting from home, participate in medical education. So that's a very interesting area for the textbook of medical students is going to fade away in favor of digital media. We're well positioned in that area. New areas within orthopedics. We had something we introduced a couple of years back, Sectra Implant Movement Analysis. This can take down the number of revisions that is a second operation of the prosthesis as beginning to loosen. That's a very dangerous and very tedious operation that -- a surgery that you don't want to do if you can avoid it. It has been overutilized. You have -- people have been revising too many patients who didn't need it. We have a very fine tool that can take down the number of reoperations of prostheses. It's growing, but also we've been impeded by the lack of or the closure of a lot of elective surgery. We have a variation of that technology, which is very similar, but that can be used for research for prosthesis companies, which we call CTMA, computer-moderated micromotion analysis that is used for clinical approvals and clinical studies of prostheses. Basically the same technology, but in a very different area. We actually subcontracted large proceeds as a manufacturer to do research for them. In research, we have a large focus for AI for medical applications. That is continued. Next slide. Imaging IT Solutions, our largest part and by margin, kind of the large revenue generator and profit generator of Sectra. Increased order booking with regional contracts. We have several very large orders for entire regions. We see the size of orders are increasing. The customers are doing more in consortia. As we have presented, we will see the general Greater Manchester order which was a lot of hospitals in the Great Manchester area of the U.K. We also received an order for Southern Norway, also multi hospitals, and we have several orders from the U.S., also comprising entire chains of multi-hospitals contracts. As I said before, we had a large contract with Norwegian health care region, which is a very interesting area. We, however, had a lot of those hospitals before as individual customers. Now they merge into a whole solution and adding more hospitals to that overall solution. We also see that a lot of customers add digital pathology, the previous solutions from Sectra, but also net new pathology sales. We are currently the only provider who offers and can deliver one system to take care of both radiology, pathology and cardiology, and that is very beneficial for the long-term cost structure of the hospitals, and they're beginning to realize that now. Next slide. Growth initiatives, Imaging IT Solutions. New markets, both direct, but we've also seen increasing demand, especially for digital pathology, from new areas where we sell through partners. We have enterprise imaging, as I said before, with different ologies, digital pathology, integrated diagnostics, which means that you actually for, especially in cancer care, needs to look at both pathology and radiology at the same time. We have all those images in 1 single system, which is very beneficial and good for quality in oncology. We're also adding cardiology and other ologies to this. We are focusing on the U.S., which is the world's largest market and currently also our largest market. We were -- we received a new top customer satisfaction ranking, which we're very, very happy for, and I'll come back to that later. We have a small but growing market share in the U.S. Next slide, and I'll leave the word to Mats Franzén.

Mats Franzén

executive
#3

Thank you very much, Torbjörn. Next slide, please. So initially, touching back on what you said, Torbjörn, about the order intake being strong also in the third consecutive quarter. Besides the 3 big markets we have, Sweden, U.S. and the U.K., we also see in this quarter that Norway contributes to the strong order intake. Currency neutral, we see that net sales is moving sideways, just a fraction of a percentage point upwards. As you can see, we have a headwind this year compared with last year, especially in the third quarter in terms of currency rates, especially in U.S. dollars. Net sales going -- actually contracting somewhat at running currencies. And this means when taking the ratio of those 2 in the order intake, we have gone from a book-to-bill ratio of 1.09 to 1.66, so there's a pent-up demand to be delivered down the road. So we can go to the next slide. So how does that 4% contraction play out by region? We can see that it's fraught with uncertainties to say how the cohort has played out in different parts of the business, depending on market footprint and level of recurring revenues, but also, as you all know, how lockdowns nationwide, regionally and locally has played out in different markets. Having said that, we do see that where we tend to have a higher share of new sales, those markets have been impacted more than the markets where we have a higher level of recurring revenue, which isn't all that surprising perhaps. And this means also that we are more exposed to larger variations in markets where we have a higher proportion of nonrecurring revenue. And just to give you a bit of a flavor, you see that in the U.S., for example, we have a SEK 3.5 million increase in Swedish krona measure that would, at last year's currency rates, have been close to SEK 30 million or SEK 28 million. So also the currency impact comes into play here, obviously. Next slide, please. So looking from the business -- the different business segments we have here, obviously Imaging IT Solution carrying the bulk of the weight volume-wise, but also in terms of currency exposure takes the brunt of that. Secure Communications has, to a lesser extent, a foreign currency exposure being -- since Sweden is the -- our home market, although still exposed. It is but not to the same extent. As for Business Innovation, it's the brunt we feel from the COVID in terms of elective surgery and so on, as Torbjörn mentioned, is clearly playing out in the Business Innovation on this. Okay. Next slide, please. And as for earnings, we see a traction upwards, 8.4%. Now it is what it is compared with previous currencies, but it would have been close to 20% up in earnings should we have enjoyed last year's currency rates, but that you can also see in the reporting effect of that. We do have the bulk of our expenses in Swedish krona, whereas about 70% of our sales is in dollars, pound sterling or in euros, as some of you know. And you could say that earnings effects, we do have, compared with last year, we increased personnel costs, a higher installed base of personnel resources, but that, you could say, has been countered by the lower travel frequency and marketing activities that we have touched upon previously. So let's go to the next and final slide on this section. We managed to get some increase in the cash flow compared with last year, pretty much the same for the third quarter. So the main bulk of the cash flow increase comes from the first 6 months. Generically, you can say that the operating profit increase obviously carries some cash and also we have somewhat less cash tied up in -- especially in inventory, which is a minor item. And the cash flow per share, actually, for the first 6 -- sorry, 9 months amounts to SEK 6.71 compared with SEK 5.59 for last year, where about half of that materialized in the third quarter. As you can see to the right here, the third quarter has been very strong for us in the last 2 years in terms of cash flow conversion. So for the full year, excluding the share redemption program, the total flow -- cash flow was SEK 191 million compared with SEK 140 million last year. And we do have actually increased somewhat the focus on the cash flow, given pandemic uncertainties. So we end January with a net cash or a gross cash position, I should say, of SEK 364 million compared with SEK 304 million last year. So I think we are pretty well-staffed in terms of liquidity for the future. So that's it. So back to you, Torbjörn.

Torbjorn Kronander

executive
#4

Okay. So then I'm coming in. Sectra's way forward. Next slide, and we are now on the focus forward slide here. We will continue to concentrate on high customer satisfaction. And in order to fulfill high customer satisfaction, which is kind of main argument or unique selling point, in order to fulfill high customer satisfaction, you must have happy employees and a good company culture, otherwise, it can't be done. So that is also important for us. And that will, of course, result in profitable growth if you manage to the expense in the same way. We also want to see a little longer forward than the average player in the market. We want to have investment that will come to fulfillment 3 to 5 years away as well as making good business today. So this is our main focus at Sectra. Next slide. We are very happy that we again won the highest customer satisfaction in U.S. large hospitals. That was the eighth year, we had the happiest customer of all vendors in the U.S. market for large hospitals in our radiology PACS business. This year, we also won small hospitals, which is actually not our focus segment, but that came because of the culture and the way we do it. And we're, of course, very, very happy with those customers, also very important, even though it was locked and we cannot focused on the marketing area. We also won Canada, and we won the 2 new ones, which is Europe, we were second in Europe last year, but we now have regained the position we like to be in, #1. And in digital pathology, which was only measured outside of the U.S. because it's too small market, the FDA approvals came very late in the U.S., so they don't have enough customers being completely digital to measure it yet. But KLAS measured digital pathology for the world outside of the U.S. and we won, by a huge margin, the happiest customer in that future growth segments as well. So we're very proud of this. We never had 5 Best in KLAS before. Next slide. We do have increasing recurring revenue, and we want to increase that further. We are moving over to a model where customers pay for usage as most software vendors these days are doing. We go away from the huge license sales. We're still doing them in many markets, but we gradually are moving over to that customer actually pay for what they use. Long term, that is a win-win for both customers and the vendor. Short term, it will have a negative impact on cash flow, especially when we do the transition, but we are strong in cash flow, so we have a space for doing that. The new business model was presented in the previous presentations. We call it Sectra One, was introduced in May. It will play an important role in Sectra's future, and it came in very timely in the COVID situation where the hospitals have lack of liquidity, this has gone even faster than we anticipated. And most discussions right now in the U.S. is around Sectra One business model. But we haven't had many orders yet because of the long sales cycles in this market. The transition to the new sales model will be over several years, but it will be accelerated by COVID-19, especially as I said, as U.S. hospitals especially have an increased problem with liquidity in the -- due to the pandemic. Next slide, how we handle the pandemic going forward. We must make sure customers -- the highest priority is to make customers feel okay so they can do good to society when society needs it the most. We have several situations where customers have been overwhelmed, both by their own staff being sick, but also by incoming patients. And it's our job to keep them floating, so they can do their job. We, of course, want to see that the health and the well-being of our employees is kept to a high level. We have had quite a few cases of COVID-19 infections in the company, but we have had no one who actually hospitalized and everyone isolated when they were sick. In some countries, we're completely locked down. Some countries, we still have the offices open. And then we have financial stability. And in financial stability, we, of course, want to keep that up, both in order to handle the transition to new sales models, but also because customers require that from a player in this market. If our systems stop, nation securities will be at risk and also entire hospitals operations. We need to be -- have a very, very strong brand also financial stability. Next slide. We normally say it's quite easy to do business. You need a culture in the company that -- where everyone does things for the customer without asking management all the time. And there is a very good rule for that I've shown it before. I'd like to show it again. It's quite easy to do business. You just follow the golden rules. Do unto others as you want them to do to you. And that is something we preach. And I think almost all of the employees and competitors with their full heart. As long as we can do like this, we are fine. We'll do to customers as we ourselves would like to be treated. Next slide. As for shareholders, we say that if we have happy customers, happy employees, a good strategy and execution in growing markets, a reasonable cost control and dare to be expensive when we deserve being expensive, then shareholders will be happy. But it comes in that order, and we have to start with the customers. Next slide. This kind of close in on the end of this report. So the future financial reports is June 2, year-end report and presentation; September 3, that will be 3-month interim report for next year; and September 14, we'll have our Annual General Meeting here in Linköping in Sweden or perhaps still virtual, depending on how the pandemic goes. Next slide. I'd like to remind you that this presentation is not done for our own sake. It's done for you. We would like to get them better every time we do them. So please let us know what you think at the provided link or send an e-mail to [email protected] what you think of the presentation or what we can improve in the presentation. And then we go to the questions section. [Operator Instructions] And that concludes the general presentation.

Operator

operator
#5

[Operator Instructions] We have a question from the line of Kristofer Liljeberg from Carnegie.

Kristofer Liljeberg-Svensson

analyst
#6

Yes. I'll start with 3 questions and then get back in the queue. First of all, could you describe a little bit right now how you view access the hospitals and their willingness to place orders? If there's any improvements there? And also, if -- you talked about delayed deliveries. Is it possible to quantify this since the -- since COVID started and also whether you expect there will be a lot of them now planned to be delivered in the next few quarters that would make those quarters may be above normal? And then the third quarter, gross margin surprised me a bit on the upside given that there should have been negative currency impact, if you could explain that.

Torbjorn Kronander

executive
#7

Okay. Thank you, Kristofer. I'll do the first 2, and Mats will take the third one. Access to hospitals is very large difference in different countries, but in general, it's difficult to have access to hospitals. Now it seems that orders are continuing. It's with increasing stress and efficiency stress and a few people doing a lot of thing, IT system becomes even more important than before. Slow IT systems, so IT system that fail on you, is in high priority to be replaced in hospitals. So we don't see demand going down a lot as for the orders. But of course, the sales cycles are even longer than normal because meetings are difficult. However, we are all learning how to use Teams and Zoom these days, so more and more, that is kind of compensated for by increased using of virtual meetings. So order -- as for orders, we don't see a huge impact any longer from pandemic, even though it's slower than before in the medical side. In deliveries, we do see a continued slowness. And also after the pandemic stops, I think I said in the beginning, we don't anticipate this be a huge bump that we'll do all of a sudden because hospitals are incredibly loaded these days with things that they have to catch up with. So if you do not do an operation for a prosthesis during the pandemic, it still needs to be done after. We don't know exactly the outcome of that, but we think it will be so much load or stress a load on the hospital, they don't have time to buy anything new that is not in panic mode, more or less, for some time before it gets back to normal levels of activities in hospitals, and then we'll be back to normal again. Except for that, the financial impact of hospitals have been very large, and it will take time before the privately operated hospitals of the world have recovered so they can do investments as before. And that will affect all medical investments over the next 3 to 5 years, I think, but we don't know that yet. And then your second question on delayed deliveries. Quantify? We cannot quantify that. We don't know. We see an increased slowness. We do see some orders moving over from one quarter to the next. We don't see many orders just disappearing or I would say, literally none, but we see slowness and things moving between quarters that they normally don't do. We can't afford to quantify it. We don't know what the outcome would have been without the pandemic. And then for the third question, I'll leave the word to Mats.

Kristofer Liljeberg-Svensson

analyst
#8

So could I ask on that, so it sounds like rather that there's -- it sounds like it's more going to be a continued negative impact on deliveries, installations in the next few quarters rather than that there's a lot of things that's just waiting to be installed and could help you short term.

Torbjorn Kronander

executive
#9

We don't know. I just wanted to point out, if there will be a positive impact from the demand that has been accumulated but there also will be a negative impact from that hospital will be extremely stressed for work and we don't know what the outcome will be. It's not clear if it will be overall positive or it will be just as now. We don't know. And I'll leave the word to you, Mats.

Mats Franzén

executive
#10

Yes. Kristofer, your immediate reaction, everything else being the same, is completely logical that you would expect a downturn in the gross profit, everything else -- the gross margin rather, everything as being the same now. In this quarter, we have a significantly higher -- lower part of third-party content in hardware, mainly, which -- and the mix of things. So should we make this currency-neutral also on this level, we would see a negative effect on the currency when looking isolated.

Operator

operator
#11

[Operator Instructions] We have a question from the line of Daniel Albin from Danske Bank.

Daniel Albin

analyst
#12

Yes. I have 2 for you today, and I think we can take them one by one. So maybe if we can be a bit more specific regarding order intake momentum. I would like to come back to order intake momentum in U.S. pre- and post-COVID-19. And my question is are you executing according to the plan presented at your CMD, meaning 2 -- or 20 new wins per year with a hit rate of 30%. Or has this goal narrowed or expanded due to COVID? I'd like to hear some of your thoughts here, please.

Torbjorn Kronander

executive
#13

I will say that we are, more or less, following the plan. Of course, it's very difficult to plan when things strike from above, like it has been this year. But we are following the plan. We have a hit rate for above what we planned for. And there is no big impact on that percentage.

Daniel Albin

analyst
#14

Okay. And my second one on digital pathology. So if I'm right, there are about 5,000 pathology departments in U.S. and around 30,000 departments globally. So just to understand what percentage migrated digitally in U.S. and globally as of today and what's your sort of best guess where this will be in 3 to 5 years from now. And also on that, as how I understand it, you have penetrated circa 30 pathology departments or laboratories as of today, is that correct?

Torbjorn Kronander

executive
#15

The percentage of pathology department in the U.S. which are completed digital is very small. It can be counted on your fingers, more or less. And then, I mean, completely digitized. A lot of pathology departments have, however, acquired a scanner and do occasional reading from home. So that's a little bit different. But the complete digitization is not -- have not in the U.S. even begun yet. As for the total number of installs, your number is, ballpark, is right. It's a few more than that. And what the prediction will be in 3 to 5 years, we don't know. Long term, all the pathology departments will be digital. The benefits are too large, not the digitize. But we know that it's a conservative market in medicine and the pathologists are no less conservative than anyone else. So how fast that will go we don't really know. But we think it will be -- it will have sped up due to COVID-19 because people realize there's huge benefits of being able to consult other pathologists and also working from home.

Operator

operator
#16

We have a follow-up question from the line of Kristofer Liljeberg from Carnegie.

Kristofer Liljeberg-Svensson

analyst
#17

Actually 3 questions. The first one, if I'm looking at sales divided by product group, you have this large 25 -- 65% coming from service. So I wonder if it's possible to give some more color of that -- how much of that is long-term service contracts versus other type of work you do for customers. And I guess also with the new subscription model, those revenues is going to show up here as well. Yes, maybe take that one first.

Torbjorn Kronander

executive
#18

Okay. We have not publicized that, so I cannot reveal it now, but we are working on being more transparent on the service incomes and recurring revenues because I agree we should be more public about what comes from the new business model, what is just the new contracts. But I'll pass that question and try to get a little better that accounting part later.

Kristofer Liljeberg-Svensson

analyst
#19

Okay. That would be great. Another one, with the stronger Swedish krona, it would be interesting to hear how much of the operating costs are in Sweden. You said it's sort of majority of cost, of course, but...

Mats Franzén

executive
#20

Yes. The cost base. Well, I can give you an indication on -- close to by half, at least, I would say.

Kristofer Liljeberg-Svensson

analyst
#21

Okay. Then as a follow-up on this pathology question before. When it comes to your market share, do you have such a figure, a rough one?

Torbjorn Kronander

executive
#22

It's very difficult to determine. We don't know all deals, but there are a few players, very few players right now. It's more or less 3. We are, by far, the company and the product right now that is considered most, but we don't have the sales width of one of the -- at least, Philips is one of the competitors, and they, of course, have sales in many more countries than we have. Globally, I don't know. Local markets where we are present, both our companies, we are larger than Philips is.

Kristofer Liljeberg-Svensson

analyst
#23

In the markets where you are, but not on a global scale or...

Torbjorn Kronander

executive
#24

We don't know. There is no publications of figures from Philips on the number of departments. We don't know.

Kristofer Liljeberg-Svensson

analyst
#25

And maybe together in any case, in the markets where you're also active, how much larger would you say you are? Are you twice the size of Philips? Or is it more clinched?

Torbjorn Kronander

executive
#26

It depends a lot on the local market. But in Sweden, we are, of course, completely dominant. In Netherlands, we are larger, which is interesting because that's the home market of Philips. And we are larger in the U.K. And then the other markets, I'm not perfectly certain because we don't know how many installs there are from our competitors.

Kristofer Liljeberg-Svensson

analyst
#27

Okay. And I think I've asked you before with pathology here being completely new markets for digitalized and the opportunity you see breaking into new countries and what you do to secure that this opportunity.

Torbjorn Kronander

executive
#28

You're completely right on that. It's very difficult to break in with radiology PACS right now into new markets because it's a mature market and the incumbents will defend their positions with all means and price. But pathology is different. And we are -- we have started up in France. We have gotten one of the major contracts, most important institutes in France, one of the leading cancer institutes already. And we have also have successes in Korea and some other markets where we have not been present before or very weak before we're coming in with pathology. So -- and that is definitely a way of going to new market, and then we can pull the other products with us later on.

Operator

operator
#29

There are no further questions at this time. Please go ahead, speakers.

Torbjorn Kronander

executive
#30

Okay. We have no questions that come in over e-mail. So we have no questions here either. And then I'd like to conclude and thank you very much for listening. I'll remind you again for trying to give us feedback on the meetings and in order for us to improve them. Thank you very much, and see you again in June.

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