Bioretec released today their year numbers, and we have with us the CEO. Sarah van Hellenberg Hubar-Fisher, Sarah. Good to have you on the interview.

Likewise, good to see you.

How would you summarize Q1 in a nutshell?

So when I start with commercial momentum, I think we showed continued growth in Q1 with net sales year over year growing by 60%. We achieved over 100% year-over-year growth in the US and over 60% in Europe, which is really demonstrating consistent volume growth and representation across different geographies. Our revenue base also continues to reflect that deliberate diversification through product customers, distribution partners and across key markets, and this is really reducing concentration risk and strengthening the quality of the revenue that we report. This is also reflected in this improved structure as reflected in the adjusted sales margin. It was also a period of additional leadership transition. So we had announcements of a CTO and CFO transition, as well as the hiring of a new Head of R&D and a new CFO, which occurred after the reporting period, but these transitions reflect our laser focus on positioning for growth, and the first quarter's dynamics really provided clear signals. We believe that our strategy and our commercial investments are really translating into measurable results, so we plan to carry this momentum and increase confidence into the rest of 2024.

As you mentioned, in Europe you grew over 60%, so can you add a little bit of detail on what were the drivers and how that growth materialized, and specifically how the commercialization developed during the period?

So the growth in Europe is a direct reflection of our where-to-play strategy, which we conducted in the back half of 2025 and communicated in previous updates. In these updates, we stated that the strategy was to focus on high-priority markets, where our 2025 revenue representation was lower than expected and desired, and where we knew the market demand was absolutely favorable. So this has resulted in delivering higher revenue numbers from these prioritized markets in Europe, including the UK and Germany, in the same comparison period, but this is also a direct result of the distribution changes we made in selected markets, where our previous distribution partners were underperforming and we were looking for some higher-performing partnerships.

In the US, you saw triple-digit growth year over year, so the same questions for the US market. What were the drivers of growth in the US, and how did revenues develop?

So as we've communicated, and we can state consistently, we all know that the maturity of the market for metal screws within the United States means the US will continue to be a massive focus geography for us in terms of geographies. The US does continue to deliver and drive growth quarter over quarter, and our Active line again will remain our dominant source of sales volume and investment there because in the US, we have an even more limited revenue portfolio than we have in Europe right now, with one product design. So our focus is to increase our presence in the United States with people and increase our product offering in the United States through broader product approvals and product portfolio, and that will continue to support driving growth.

Finally, the rest of the world segment, is there anything specific you would like to highlight there? And also I want to ask about the Chinese market, how has that developed in terms of your business and the operating environment? How is the rest of world performing?

Exactly as we expected and planned. The comparison period due to stocking orders from last year gives, we believe, a real artificial impression of actual progress and expectations based on where our where-to-play focus is. So China is in line, rest of world is still progressing, and we are also registering the products in new countries every single quarter, so rest of world is in line with our expectations.

I noticed there's another investigator-initiated trial from the famous Mass General Hospital from Boston. So can you tell a little bit about that trial?

So the majority of our clinical data collection has been in Europe historically for Bioretec, and I would still say predominantly that is our focus, especially for pre-market approval data, but also to meet post-market approval data collection requirements related to our CE mark. However, we do recognize that there are instances where US data is important, and in some cases there are procedures that are done within the United States that are not done in other parts of the world, and so it's the only location where data can be collected. Mass General has been an institution that is highly respected, a financial research institute that is also known globally and respected worldwide, and so we have been in conversation with them about a clinical trial, as you mentioned, and we have plans to finalize those details related to the trial, which has not been initiated, but we're finalizing these details in the coming months.

In your own R&D efforts, you highlighted that the preclinical development in spine products, so can you share more details on that?

Spine as an area within orthopedics has had a massive interest in biomaterials, and we are seeing interest in conversations that we have with industry players within our space, so in addition to our strong focus on procedures. We made some early investments in preclinical data in the spine on the back of our breakthrough device designation for the interbody cage and we're going to continue this early development in 2027 and look to discuss the progress of this early development with strategic partners at that time.

Thank you very much for the interview and best of luck for Q2.

Thank you so much, it was a pleasure.