Sonova Holding AG (0QPY) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good afternoon, everyone in the room here. Welcome to the sunny Stefan to tease the people on the call. I hope they also have a sunny day. And thanks for joining for the full year results 2023-24 of Sonova. I'm here together with the IR team and Birgit. Birgit will later go through the financials and will be with me on stage with regard to the questions and answers. Regular disclaimer, everybody knows the content, therefore I'm not going to read it, but please take note. We intend to spend about 35-ish minutes or so on the presentation, then we have ample time for Q&A. You all had a chance to get the material which we uploaded, therefore lots of material in the background and the backup for people who want to dive deeper into numbers. From a summary for the last fiscal year, a couple of highlight items here to keep in mind. First, the hearing care market, has been for the full year, if we count the numbers in unit volume and assumptions on price, back to historical growth rates. So somewhere in the 4% to 6%, slightly higher in the second half. Significant regional differences. North America was clearly faster in growth than Europe, although in many European markets we've seen good growth, but Germany and France were more muted. U.S. In Canada, probably more year-over-year effect because the year before they really went deep under the high inflation environment. I think we're through the inflationary concerns on our consumers, at least for the hearing instruments and cochlear implants. I'll comment in a second on the consumer hearing business. From a Sonova perspective, when we met last time, we were at the end of the first half year and we said we're expecting to pick up in the second half year. particularly in the hearing instruments business, and that's what you're...