Surgical Science Sweden AB (publ) (SUS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
February 19, 2025
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Operator
operatorWelcome to Surgical Science Q4 Report 2024. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to CEO, Tom Englund; and CFO, Anna Ahlberg.
Tom Englund
executiveWelcome to this year-end and quarter 4 presentation of Surgical Science. My name is Tom Englund, CEO of Surgical Science. And with me today, I have Anna Ahlberg, our company's CFO. We'll use our time together today to first present the report and then we will take questions from the audience. We can look back at an eventful and positive fourth quarter for Surgical Science and a good end to 2024. The year started weakly with a tough business environment in Educational Products. Our turnaround came in quarter 2 of last year and sales and market conditions have since steadily improved during the year to end with record sales for the group of SEK 252 million. Starting with Educational Products. The quarter saw a growth for the business area of 2% to SEK 125 million. Some geographies had considerable growth like Asia with 29% and Europe with 20% growth whereas our important market Americas decreased by 20%. We're cautiously optimistic about developments in Educational Products even though the growth is not in line with our growth expectations of 10% to 15% right now, which we have for this business area. On the one hand, we're seeing a clear increase in customer activity and requests for quotes in all markets. On the other hand, the global budgetary climate for hospitals and training centers remains strained, which prolongs the time it takes to convert quotes into orders. Our team has a very high activity level and we are taking several very specific actions to increase the growth pace and convert more quotes to orders and our outlook for our different regions; Americas, EMEA and APAC; is positive. A key priority for us right now is also to develop and optimize our sales channels to ensure our now very broad product portfolio has the best global reach. After the end of the quarter, we announced that we had won a procurement amounting to SEK 52 million in a Southeast Asian country. This order is for a virtual or mixed reality solution to train military medical personnel in emergency situations and in emergency procedures. This order is expected to be delivered over 18 months with work starting in quarter 1 2025. We consider this to be a breakthrough order, which is very exciting and holds great potential, as it relates to a new innovative product for a new and potentially very large customer segment for us. There are many similar types of customers around the world and the need for training in these type of procedures and environment is very, very high. Looking little bit at Industry/OEM, which has performed strongly throughout 2024, we continued to perform well also in the fourth quarter. Sales amounted to SEK 127 million with an increase of 21%. Our sales of simulators towards non-robotic customers in the medical device space grew by 124% to SEK 43 million, which was an all-time high. This result is due to a combination of existing customers making repeat purchases from us as well as an increasing number of new customers who are buying simulators from us for the first time. It's clear that simulation is becoming an important tool for med device companies to train their customers and sales teams as well as to use in R&D and development efforts. We also received orders for several large development projects during quarter 4 from robotic manufacturers and medical device companies around the world. These orders did not materialize into revenue in quarter 4, but will do so during the coming quarters. Licenses: license revenue grew by 1% during the quarter to SEK 76 million. Surgical Science gets license revenues from several robotics companies and customers can either be invoiced for the licenses they consume during the quarter or they can buy licenses in packs for several quarters ahead. This means that revenue development can be lumpy in nature depending on when our customers purchase their licenses. As has been mentioned previously, there are several robotics manufacturers right now that are coming into the market and who are in various stages of the regulatory approval process prior to start of sales and marketing. These new companies all now have a steady growth of new procedures, which means that the systems are being used by more surgeons and each system is being used for more types of procedures. This in turn will drive the need for training in simulations on these new systems and since many of the companies are customers to Surgical Science, eventually it will also turn into license revenues for us. We can do little to affect the later part of the commercialization efforts of the robotics companies and we are dependent on their success of course in their robotics sales. One major milestone for our company during the past 2 quarters has been our new agreement with 1 of our main customers and the world's largest robotics manufacturer, Intuitive. This agreement, where prices are set for the next 4 years, means that Intuitive will equip and ship all new da Vinci 5 systems with simulation from Surgical Science. Da Vinci 5 is the latest and most highest performance robot of Intuitive. We have in our existing contract had a significant portion of subscription revenue and starting now in January 2025, the revenue model will become entirely subscription based. And this new agreement is fully in line with the 2026 financial targets that we have regarding Intuitive. Another very important event for us during the last quarter was the announcement of our intention to acquire U.K.-based Intelligent Ultrasound. Intelligent Ultrasound is a Cardiff-based company within ultrasound simulation and which has a broad product portfolio. The acquisition makes Surgical Science the market leader in ultrasound simulation, which is an exciting area with strong potential for us. As was announced by a press release yesterday, the scheme of arrangement has successfully been completed and yesterday we were happy to welcome the Intelligent Ultrasound team into the Surgical Science family and we look forward to the continued journey together. We see a lot of users who need training in simulation in order to use ultrasound to ensure efficiency and quality of diagnostics. In Industry/OEM, we can also see several major application areas combining ultrasound with other technologies. A few of these of many others are needle training, anesthesia training and drug delivery. This acquisition also means that we will open up a sales office and establish ourselves directly in the U.K. market where we see good growth opportunity both within Educational Products and Industry/OEM. Profitability for the quarter was SEK 39 million or 16%. The quarter saw higher costs related for sales incentives and a higher share of sales from distributors, which affects our margins negatively. Furthermore, similar as previous quarters, we made investment into our sales and R&D teams to increase our geographical coverage in sales and our capacity to handle R&D projects and response quicker to customer requests. An important focus area is and will be our ability to scale the company efficiently to make it possible for us to handle more customers and revenue with an increase in our internal efficiency. We also see many opportunities in the market right now outside of our traditional segments where we invest for growth. We approach these investments with a careful and financially very prudent approach. Cash flow for the quarter was strong and net cash increased by SEK 66 million for the quarter. On the topic of operations: after the end of the quarter, the decision was made to expand the production capacity of our existing premises in Tel Aviv in order to continue to grow and handle the increased volumes. As I mentioned in the quarter 3 report, the focus has been on strengthening delivery capacity in R&D and developing our sales and distribution channels to cover the market better. We are during quarter 4 and also in quarter 1 reorganizing R&D to increase our capacity to handle development projects and our ability to respond to customer requests faster. We've also reorganized the sales function into regional division to get closer to our customers and distributors and to more effectively leverage our shared resources. And finally, the management team has been reshaped and reduced from 8 to 5 members to create clear ownership and ensure quicker decision-making. Niclas Olsson has been appointed to the new role of Chief Revenue Officer with responsibility for all sales for all our business areas and Ariel Ben Moshe to Chief R&D Officer. And with that, I would like to hand over to Anna.
Anna Ahlberg
executiveThank you, Tom. So as Tom mentioned, we saw a strong end to the year with all-time high sales coming in at SEK 251.5 million, up 11% and that was the same then in local currencies. Educational Products sales was up 2%. We saw a marked increase in Asia and that was all due to China. We also said that we have a positive outlook on China for this year, for 2025. Europe was also strong both if we compare to Q3 and Q4 of last year. We had a large order in Romania if we compare to Q3. We also had that in Q4 of last year. So we also had other markets being strong. But then as Tom also mentioned, the North and South America region was weaker; Brazil was strong, but U.S. was weaker; and we are cautiously optimistic looking forward for the business area. Industry/OEM up 21% and although not with much, we still saw all-time high sales for license revenues, SEK 76 million and our simulator sales continued its very strong development up 124% for the quarter and at all-time high level coming in at SEK 42.5 million while development revenues for the quarter was somewhat weaker. That meant that for the full year 2024, our net sales came in on par with 2023, SEK 883 million compared to SEK 884 million for 2024, which in light of our very weak Q1 we see as positive. And for the first time in a long time the currency effect is working against us. As you know, we have more than 80% of our sales in U.S. dollars and if we look at sales in local currencies, it was slightly higher plus 1%. Educational Products then weaker minus 15% for the year although finishing better than it started for sure and Industry/OEM continuing its very strong growth journey and being up 21%. And that meant for the full year, you see the graph and the split between our 2 different business areas. For the full year, sales between the 2 business areas was 50-50 and if we compare to 2023, it was 59% for Educational Products and 41% for Industry/OEM. Looking at our revenue streams. As mentioned, license revenues were at all-time high, but a bit lower than Q4 last year as a percentage of total revenues, 30% versus 33% and for the year license revenues decreased by 2% and came in at SEK 272 million versus SEK 278 million. That meant 31% of total revenues that was both for 2024 as well as for 2023. As you know and as Tom also talked about, they are more bumpy for new entrants as they purchase the licenses in batches. And if we compare to 2023, that is what we see that has affected these revenues during 2024. Simulator sales was the strongest it has been since Q4 2022 and a lot then of course due to the strong growth within Industry/OEM. Simulator sales within Industry grew by 160% for the full year 2024. And development revenues consist of both robotics projects and projects tied to sales of simulators within industry. This was, as I mentioned, weaker in Q4; but it is not a sign of new projects being fewer. We have commented before that this can be also bumpy if we are in between SOWs or statement of works for example for long projects. And as you know, we also announced the Singapore deal, which entails development revenues and we also said that we closed some robotic orders where we have development revenues that will come during 2025. Costs and EBIT margin. We had a gross margin of 68% versus Q4 last year when we had a very strong gross margin of 71%. 68% was also the number for the full year compared to 69% for 2023. And compared then to Q4 in 2023, we saw a lower share of license revenues as I mentioned, 30% versus 33% and that had then a negative effect on the gross margin. And since the U.S. market was weaker, that meant a lower share of direct sales and we also had some more service cases affecting the gross margin for the quarter. If we look at our sales cost, approximately SEK 5 million of those were costs of a more rare nature related to things such as demo equipment, provisions we had for a few accounts receivables and higher commissions and that depends on to what country we sell, how these commissions fall. We also had 5 more people joining this team in Q4 in 4 different countries. So we also invest for the future and for the prospects we see. Admin was 9% of sales and we still have some higher double management costs both for current and previous CEO. R&D costs were higher and if we compare to Q3 of last year, we again invest in this organization and we continue to employ more people so we were more employees. However, it is also important to remember that our R&D costs end up on 3 different lines. They end up in cost of goods sold on the actual R&D line and also in the balance sheet that's capitalized. And if we compare Q4 to Q3 of last year since development revenues were lower, that meant that less of the R&D costs for Q4 were moved to cost of goods sold. When we adjust for these effects and look at the total R&D cost for Q4 compared to Q3, they were in line with each other on the same level. For the full year then for these different functions, we see that we increased sales costs with 5%, admin costs 6% and R&D costs 8%. Again all investing in the future to meet all the possibilities that we see ahead. Underlying other primarily 2 items. Option programs that was SEK 1.5 billion for the quarter and then FX effects and they were quite large during Q4. We had a volatile U.S. dollar during the quarter especially towards the shekel. EBIT then came in at SEK 39 million for the quarter, 16% and for the full year SEK 144 million or 16%. Organization-wise we were 14 more people in the organization going out of 2024 compared to going out of 2023 and you can see the split between our different countries down to the right. Adjusted EBIT for the quarter came in at SEK 45 million, a margin of 18% and for the year at SEK 169 million or 19%. Finance net for the quarter slight positive. We have of course interest on our bank balances. For this quarter we also have interest cost for the GBP loan that we took in conjunction with the IU acquisition. And on the negative side, then we also had revaluation of internal loans towards subsidiaries and IFRS 16 effect. There is a large number in the comparative figure. Last year we had the last part of the contingent consideration for the Mimic acquisition. A smaller part was paid out in the beginning of last year, SEK 1.1 million, but the rest was then reversed in the finance net. So that is why that number is so high, that was SEK 70 million. And net result for the quarter was SEK 36 million and for the full year then SEK 132 million. Cash flow, as Tom said, we had a very strong quarter in terms of our cash flow making up also for the weaker Q3 we had. From operating activities, we had a positive of SEK 57 million and we had a slight negative from change in working capital. And looking at the balance sheet in absolute numbers, we can see that inventory and accounts receivable, they increased somewhat, however, this is all due to FX. In local currencies, they were actually both a bit lower going out of Q4 than going out of Q3. Then cash flow from investing activities, that's mainly investments in development costs. Cash flow from financing activities then of course affected by the fact that we took this short-term loan GBP 17 million for the IU acquisition. That was then a positive in the cash flow with SEK 235 million. That meant that we had closing cash of SEK 968 million. However, looking instead of on net cash excluding the loan, we were at SEK 733 million, which was then a positive in the quarter of SEK 66 million. We can see that accounts receivables as a percentage of sales last 12 months was on the same level as last quarter. So this is usually my last slide, but since we had a number of news events after the year-end, I just wanted to summarize them here. On January 15, then we announced the LOI with Intuitive that Tom talked about. Then on February 3, the election committee gave their proposal for the AGM in May and the proposal is for all Board members to be reelected. And for Gisli, our previous CEO, to be the Chairman. Roland Bengtsson, who's been the Chairman for many years, has declined reelection. On February 4, then announcing the contract in Southeast Asia, SEK 52 million over a period of 18 months and then both development revenues and products. And then we had 3 different releases actually on the Intelligent Ultrasound acquisition, but the most important of course being the one yesterday, which announced that it has now come into force and IU will be consolidated as of this date. We are now starting our post-completion review that we also talked about when we announced the acquisition. Payment will be executed within 14 days from this date. And as you might have seen in the report, we had no cost in the P&L for this acquisition in 2024. That will be in Q1 and the costs are estimated at SEK 25 million.
Tom Englund
executiveThank you, Anna. I would like to conclude this presentation by saying that we can look back at the positive and very eventful quarter during quarter 4 of last year. And the team and myself, we are excited and energized for the continued journey for Surgical Science. We have world-leading products. We have a highly engaged and global team. We have the stability and brand of a market leader and we operate in a growing and rapidly developing market with prominent customers. We have great momentum in Industry/OEM. We also strengthened our relations with the key robotic companies during the quarter. In educational, business climate is improving although at a slower pace than expected and Intelligent Ultrasound is an exciting addition to the company and an opportunity to grow further within ultrasound simulation. And with that, I would like to open the floor for questions. Thank you.
Operator
operator[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Maria Karlsson Osipova from DNB.
Maria Karlsson Osipova
analystFirst, congratulations on an all-time high revenue levels. Very nice to see. I have 2 questions; 1 slightly longer, 1 slightly shorter. And I'd like to start with the expansion of the sales force and the expansion of the R&D force to meet all the requirements that you've talked about. Could you talk a little bit about the time frame of this? How will it translate on for instance the employee levels and which regions are you looking at? So in total these projects, how long do you think it will take and when will see the numbers? Can you talk about that a bit?
Tom Englund
executiveYes. When it comes to the sales reorganization and expansion of the sales force, what we are doing is that we are, first of all, trying to -- we are rearranging our internal resources to more efficiently serve the salespeople that we have out traveling, meeting customers so that we can be more efficient with our internal resources. That means then that we will be able to have a financial efficiency as we scale the sales team. And then we are selectively recruiting salespeople in regions where we have direct sales representation. Now that would be mainly EMEA and Americas. And we see investments going both into Industry/OEM with key account sales as well as Educational Products with territory sales managers. When it comes to R&D, what we are doing is that we are reshaping the responsibilities of the R&D team to be able to create competence hubs and to be able to speed up the development speed and development projects as well as handle more projects simultaneously. So it's primarily utilizing the same resources from the beginning, but we're also within the R&D recruiting to meet the increased customer requests that we get primarily on the Industry/OEM side. And we will see a continuous investment into both sales and R&D. I don't foresee it to be like step-wise big steps, but rather a continuous smaller investment into both these areas. I hope that answers your question.
Maria Karlsson Osipova
analystYes, it did. And the shorter one, do you talk about the proportion of direct sales that you have, but could you paint us a bit of a broader picture on that and what effect it might have on the gross margins?
Anna Ahlberg
executiveWithin Educational Products, we sell primarily through distributors, but we do have the U.S. as our largest direct market. So of course the gross margin is of course higher since we have our own sales force. So that's why that is being affected. So we don't have the exact split if that's what you mean, but you can see the split between geographies for Educational Products and there you have the North and South America region and of course a lot of that is the U.S.
Operator
operatorThe next question comes from Ulrik Trattner from Carnegie.
Ulrik Trattner
analystAnd let's start off with license revenues. I know it's lumpy between quarters, 1% growth in this quarter. You talk about a very positive outlook for '25. But looking at rolling 12 months, which I guess it's the best proxy here to get some kind of sense on the direction, it's at 7% and been sort of gradually declining. So where should we sort of look for in 2025? I know there's an expansion of robotics provider and you are the simulation provider of these customers as well as on the DV5. In their communication, they state that the software suite will be available on their DV5 platform by end of this year and you talk about this new collaboration being effective from January '25. So if you can just help us decipher what that entails as well as what does entail for the close to 300 already sort of sold system for the DV5. Will they retroactively be equipped with your software and that will be recognized as revenue or how should we look at it?
Tom Englund
executiveUlrik, I can answer that question. So first of all on the question of kind of general growth levels for the year ahead across both business units. Our messaging in the last couple of quarters has been that we see a very strong customer activity and growth rate increase in Industry/OEM around the 20% mark and we have very positive outlook for Industry/OEM going forward. We have a stated 10% to 15% growth ambition within Educational Products and we have been below that primarily due to the very, very weak quarter 1 of last year and then we have seen improvements, gradual improvements. We would have liked them to go faster, but we definitely see a more positive outlook and then the question is rather on the velocity of the improvements there. We have visibility into the pipeline a couple of quarters ahead so we can already now know about how the market is turning. When it comes to the question...
Anna Ahlberg
executiveIf I can just jump in because we had another question on visibility and a written question. And as you know also within Educational Products, there are usually in many markets very large tenders and we have a very good visibility on these, but they often run for a long time and that's something we discussed many times before. It means we have good visibility, but it's very hard to say exactly in what quarter they will fall. You saw also we talked about the order that we now announced in the Southeast Asian country. We talked about that already in Q2 and Q3. So it is hard to know exactly when these tenders will be ready. And then on visibility within Industry/OEM, again we have the bumpiness for the licenses. It means we have good visibility long term, but it can be more bumpy in the quarters because when we get an order for a license revenue, we immediately recognize them. If we get a batch order, it's not dependent on when the robotic company actually then sell the robots or these licenses that are connected to that robot. And then of course we have many novel projects that we discussed such as again the Southeast Asia and new areas where we now invest where we see great potential, but it's something that is more novel.
Tom Englund
executiveAnd then regarding your question about Intuitive, Ulrik. We have signed now a 4-year agreement to supply Intuitive with simulation software for the new DV5 robot. We have already had an agreement regarding the older Intuitive robot and that's still in place. And this new agreement then is valid from January 2025 so that all robots that are shipped from January 2025 and onwards will carry the so-called SimNow package of Intuitive where Surgical Science is the supplier. It is the ambition by Intuitive to also equip the DV5s that have been sold during 2024 with this SimNow package. However, this is a process that will take more time, it will take a couple of quarters. The ambition is for this reinstallation to happen during 2025, but it can be even longer than that before all the units that were shipped in 2024 are equipped because there's also hardware implications to this upgrade that they need to do.
Ulrik Trattner
analystOkay. Can I just get a sort of a clarification on that? Do you mean that effectively from January of this year, all robots that are shipped from Intuitive DV5s then are equipped with sort of full software including your simulation? Because what we've been hearing from Intuitive's earnings call is that their ambition is for all the software to become effective by end of this year. So if I can get some clarification on that.
Tom Englund
executiveOkay. Starting in January all the DV5 units that are shipped will be offered with SimNow software, which includes then the Surgical Science simulation. So that is the case.
Ulrik Trattner
analystOkay. That's great. And secondly, on the educational segment and you talk about good visibility, but hard to predict when in the quarter that these will hit your sales. How about sort of the political uncertainty that is in the U.S. as of current with different types of efficiency measures put into place. Does that play into further delays from what you saw in '24 or how does that come into play on your end?
Tom Englund
executiveAs I mentioned in the text in the year-end report, it is unpredictable climate now in educational globally I would say. On the one hand, we see an improved market climate and you can of course see the sales growth here quarter-on-quarter in educational. On the other hand, we know that many of the hospitals and training centers have a constrained budget and that deals take longer to close than before. This is definitely the case in the U.S. as well. And now with the new administration, there might be even further implications for that, but I don't foresee any major sort of differences to the situation that it's already been. I mean the truth is that the budgets are constrained, but we are still feeling more and more optimistic both in the U.S. as well as globally with the business traction that we have within the Educational Products. Because it is so that, I mean our customers still need to perform trainings for surgeons. In many cases simulation is not a nice to have, it's a must-have for our customers. So they can delay purchasing for some time, but it's a critical tool for them to ensure healthy patient outcomes and good surgery quality and that then speaks in favor of sales then coming back.
Ulrik Trattner
analystYes. If I can just get a quick sort of follow-up. It will be a quick one I promise. Would you say that the majority of your educational simulation sales is related to replacement of old systems that are on the market or is it completely new purchasing, i.e., sort of new training centers?
Tom Englund
executiveIt's a very good question and it's a very healthy mix between existing customers who want to increase the capacity of their training centers either for making more students go through a specific procedure or they want to grow the number of applications that the training center can provide, but also many new customers that have not used simulation before and are jumping on the bandwagon. For example smaller hospitals in smaller cities outside of the main university hospitals. So there's a healthy mix of existing and new customers.
Operator
operatorThe next question comes from Viktor Hogberg from Danske Bank.
Viktor Högberg
analystSo on the Intuitive agreement without delving into the contract specifics, you've said that Intuitive is part of the 2026 targets and that already a substantial part of the license revenues are subscription-based from Intuitive that is, more than half I would assume. Could you confirm that it's above 60% or say anything about the already now subscription-based revenues just so that we get the base to model from?
Anna Ahlberg
executiveYes. We know that it would be good information to have how much has been recurring or not. What we have said and always say is that when we acquired Simbionix, the revenues they had from Intuitive, the largest part was recurring. And again, as Tom said, we did have a good portion of recurring already before and now we're moving to a fully subscription-based model. So sorry, Viktor, no, I cannot give you any more details than that.
Viktor Högberg
analystOkay. Fair enough. And on the Intelligent Ultrasound acquisition, it dilutes the group margin 3 percentage points to begin with. Optically it makes it increasingly hard to reach the 40% EBITDA margin target for 2026, but you're still keeping the target. Just what kind of levers are you going to pull within 2025 and 2026 to be able to come at least close to the 40% target? Is it relying mainly on maybe a software acquisition that you have lined up that would increase the group margin or is the implications from the Intuitive deal accretive to margins? Just some of the drivers for basically doubling the margin from 2024 to 2026. That would be helpful.
Anna Ahlberg
executiveYes, we still have the financial goals for 2026 of SEK 1.5 billion in revenues and 40% adjusted EBIT margin and I mean that's something we of course constantly look at. What we said when we announced the IU acquisition is that of course all things equal, that will make it easier to reach the revenue target and harder to reach the margin target. And as we also talked about, we are now entering this post-completion review and that is a process we want to look into. Now we also talked about the cost savings that we anticipate, but we need to do this post completion review.
Tom Englund
executiveAnd then to add to that, I mean the profitability goals that we have set up for 2026 implies that we have a large increase in the license revenue from several big robotics customers and that it would be back-end loaded as well more towards the latter part of 2026. And we still have very strong belief in the kind of underlying growth in the robotics market and it's also mentioned about the strong procedural growth about the new entrants that are coming in. So we still feel very, very positive about our opportunities to get license revenues from these players.
Anna Ahlberg
executiveAnd you also asked about acquisitions and I mean we just announced 1 and we said before and that's the same answer now that that's an important part of our strategy and it continues to be. And the goal that we had for SEK 1.5 billion clearly said that it can entail complementary acquisitions, which this one then was. Do we still have Viktor on the line?
Operator
operator[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Christian Lee from Pareto Securities.
Christian Lee
analystSales of simulators within Industry/OEM have been really strong in 2024. So it would be very helpful if you could give us some color on the outlook for 2025, if you expect to keep the strong momentum.
Tom Englund
executiveWe definitely expect it to keep a strong momentum. Simulation is becoming a very important tool for the med device companies in both the revenue-generating activities for the new products that they launch into the market as well as for the education activities when they educate customers on these new products and then also for their R&D activities. And many times there are no alternatives really to simulation for these companies. They can't use live people or any other tools available and this is then now becoming more and more aware. Awareness around this is becoming bigger within these companies and that's then driving the demand. So we see repeat business from existing customers with increased volumes of simulators and we also see new companies and these new companies buying simulators from us. And some of these medical device companies are very, very big companies so that can mean that we move from 1 division or 1 function into another division or 1 function within the same company, but it can also mean completely new big companies.
Christian Lee
analystThat's very helpful. And regarding Educational Products, the U.S. market has been a little bit weakish, but you sounded a little bit more optimistic about the growth opportunities. Was it for the long term or do you also see any changes of the market easing up in the short term?
Tom Englund
executiveIt is quite difficult to predict the pace of recovery. That's probably one of the areas where there is like biggest question marks because on the one hand, we see a very healthy pipeline and optimistic sales team and lots of very good dialogs both globally, but definitely also in the U.S. and definitely also in the short term, Christian. On the other hand, we know from experience now in a couple of quarters back that, as I said, growth rates within Educational Products for certain areas have not been where we wanted them to be and that is then due to the budgetary climate. It's not that we're losing out on orders for competition. It's rather that they become frozen because of budgetary reasons. And then of course to predict how this will develop also perhaps given new political developments and so on becomes difficult. But if you look at kind of the visibility that we have in the pipeline and the other sales-related KPIs that we follow, we see a positive development in the short term both in the U.S. as well as in the other countries. But then we are also cautiously -- we are cautious about it given the past performance and some of the difficulties that we've had in closing those deals. So it's that kind of balance that is difficult to get our heads completely right around, which makes it a little bit difficult for us to be more specific in our kind of forward-looking statements.
Operator
operatorThere are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for written questions and closing comments.
Anna Ahlberg
executiveOkay. So let's just briefly look at the written questions. We have a question saying given the procurement deal of SEK 52 million, large development projects starting and DV5 start, what does that mean for margins, revenue growth going into Q1 2025? And maybe more a general comment on 2025 not Q1 and this development -- the deal in Southeast Asia is of course for 18 months so it only just started now towards the end of Q1. So we will not see any effect of that in Q1, but it's of course important. I mean our different revenue streams have very different margins and that's of course why we want license revenues to be as large as possible because that pretty much falls all the way through. And then we have our development revenues and often tied then to simulator sales or just development revenues tied to license revenues for the robotics projects. And if we talk about these large development projects that we now see and that we discussed, many of them are sort of a novel nature where we are expanding into new areas, finding new niches, et cetera. That's of course very important how we work with these projects and Tom talked about efficiency in the R&D organization, et cetera. That's super important that we are able to scale up and use these efficiencies because many of these projects are a bit new to us and we of course need to be very well aware and keep track of hours, et cetera. At the same time, we are also investing for the future when we do these projects. And again going back to the Southeast Asian project, as Tom mentioned, this is sort of a concept that we hope that we will then be able to sell more of. So in some cases, it might be a mix between investments going forward and new projects. And again the split between our different revenue streams of course affect our margins.
Tom Englund
executiveCan I build on that just a second, Anna? Also this is one of the reasons to why we did this R&D reorganization, right, because we see a very strong influx in development projects both for new areas that Anna just said as well as for existing customers who want to do more about them. Then our ability to handle more projects with existing staff or only with limited investment into R&D becomes a key growth driver for us, right? And I think that this is an area where economies of scale are very important. As the biggest company with many, many software developers; we will be able to build platforms, we will be able to reuse assets, we will be able to create uniform ways of working and load balance the teams geographically in a better way and that then will drive this efficiency and customer responsiveness. So it's definitely a key area here for us to be able to continue to grow both within industry and education. And I guess underlying it's a very positive problem to have, right, but you have to think about financial efficiency as well as together with the operational efficiency.
Anna Ahlberg
executiveThen we have some questions on Intelligent Ultrasound. Maybe I'll just start with some parts of it and then you can talk about the outlook, Tom. So 2024 revenues, does that match the guide expectation given in December? It has actually been communicated. The final number was GBP 8.5 million was in one of these announcements that were made. And also a question on if it was consolidated then in our P&L from yesterday? And yes, it will be so it will be consolidated as of yesterday for the Q1 report.
Tom Englund
executiveAnd the growth profile of Intelligent Ultrasound going forward, we believe that the growth profile will be in line with the growth profile of Educational Products in the short term. And then if you think about the opportunities that we have long term to develop the product portfolio to grow both into new applications within Educational Products, but also to grow into applications within Industry; we see that we would be able to accelerate the growth from the Intelligent Ultrasound acquisition. This is a very big market potential for us, but it will take some time to sort of kink the growth curve here and get the synergies from the combined ultrasound offerings from Surgical Science and Intelligent Ultrasound. Do you expect a material impact from the Intuitive deal on your OEM growth already in 2025? We expect some impact from the Intuitive deal on the growth for sure in 2025 and it's dependent a little bit on the mix of robots that are shipped, the different types of models of Intuitive robots that are shipped and it's also dependent a little bit on the customer mix within the OEM segment, how big that growth rate will be.
Anna Ahlberg
executiveI think that concludes the -- the margin profile of the TraumaVR product. You saw this is still a very early phase product and for the large order in the Southeast Asian country, as you saw, it also entails development work and so there will be a lot of development work in different versions, et cetera. Of course in the beginning when you start with a new product, it's always that you have a smaller scale. We have some products that are smaller and of course then the margin is often lower and grows with I mean the number and scaling up production, et cetera. But in line with our Educational Products I should say.
Tom Englund
executiveI think that's all the questions.
Anna Ahlberg
executiveYes. I think that concludes also the written questions. So with that, we...
Tom Englund
executiveUnless there's any more questions.
Operator
operatorThe next question comes from Viktor Hogberg from Danske Bank.
Viktor Högberg
analystLast question. So just a follow-up on the last written question on the growth effect from the new Intuitive agreement. Just if you could say because in general when you spread out revenues over time, which was previously paid upfront, that's a negative effect, a hammock effect on revenues. We don't know the number or the share of subscriptions today, but it's fairly high and you've hinted that. But do you expect this to be a positive or negative thing for growth in revenues from Intuitive in 2025? In any other company, it would have been a negative effect to begin with. Just a clarification on that.
Tom Englund
executiveLong term, we think that it can be a positive effect; but short term, there are so many different factors in play. It's the number of robots that are shipped, it's the mix of the robots that are shipped and some other factors as well that we can't go into. So we can't comment on the short term. Long term of course it will have a positive effect. Great. And that then concludes our presentation.
Operator
operatorThere are no more questions. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for the closing comments.
Tom Englund
executiveThank you for all those questions and thank you for listening to our presentation. Have a great day. Bye-bye.
Anna Ahlberg
executiveThank you. Bye-bye.
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