Good morning or afternoon, and welcome to today's webcast, where representatives of the Medartis Executive Board will discuss the half-year results 2023. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please press star one on your telephone keypad at any time to signal for question. You may press star two to withdraw from the queue. This meeting is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to hand the call over to Fabian Hildbrand, Head of Corporate Communications. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Saskia. Good morning and evening, everyone, on the call. Welcome to this video webcast, the Medartis 2023 half-year results. We appreciate you taking the time to dial in on this Tuesday, despite your busy schedules. Seems that Tuesday, after the back-to-school event in Switzerland, is a popular reporting day. As usual, I'm joined by our CEO, Christoph Brönnimann, and our Chief Financial Officer, Dirk Kirsten. As customary, we will use the presentation Slide deck, which was published this morning on our website, together with our press release, as well as our H1 report. Turning to page or Slide 2, in particular, I would like to draw your attention to the disclaimer on Slide 2 regarding forward-looking statements. On Slide 3, you can see today's agenda. At the end of the presentation, as Saskia mentioned already, we will look forward to answering all the questions you might have. With this, I would like to hand over to our CEO for his opening remarks and the key highlights of the first 6 months. Christoph, please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Fabian, and good afternoon, everyone. Also from my side, thank you very much for taking the time and dialing in, in our presentation of our H1 2023 results. On page 5, you see an oversight of the key figures. We're proud to report that we have achieved total sales of CHF 103.3 million, which is an increase of 20.8% in constant exchange rate. We're very proud and pleased with the performance in EMEA, as one of the key contributing area, followed by the U.S., who has been the fastest-growing region in the first half of this year. The revenue growth, the internal revenue growth, and that excludes the NSI. That excludes the NSI third-party cost of manufacturing, reached 16.1%. The reported EBITDA margin achieved 12.6%, which includes one-off costs for the remediation of the IT attack that occurred in the second half of May. Excluding those one-off costs, the margin would have reached 14.3%. Underlying half one results were in line with our full-year guidance. The IT attack at the end of May temporarily slowed us down, we are confident of regaining our momentum in the second half of this year, and thus confirm our financial guidance for the full year. On the next page, on the business highlights, three out of the four regions grew double digits, we are particularly pleased with our performance in EMEA and also in the U.S. The execution of our strategic initiatives leads to market share gains in our key segments, hand and wrist, drives growth across lower extremities, and also all of our key markets have been on track with performance. Our partnerships with KeriMedical and Field Orthopaedics are gaining momentum and adding to our growth, especially pleased with the KeriMedical performance, which is doubling sales on a year-on-year comparison. While sales volumes in Australia surged 15%, the anticipated price adjustments in the private sector, mandated by the Australian authorities, damped the growth in the APAC region down to single digits. At the end of May, we have experienced an IT attack, which was enormously well handled and managed by the entire organization and had only temporary impact on our top line and profitability. We're looking forward to the completion and inauguration of our new IBRA Institute here in Basel, which will be formally inaugurated at the end of August. The effective OpEx management mitigates the impact of a lower gross margin in the first half of this year, which can be attributed to a combination of various factors, which Dirk will soon explain in more detail. With those opening remarks, I would like to hand it over to our CFO, Dirk Kirsten. Thank you, Christoph. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone, also from my side. Before going into all of the figures, let me start with informing you about an incident which happened end of May, as Christoph has already mentioned. On a Saturday evening, a criminal IT hacker organization was able to invade our system. We immediately discovered it and protected ourselves by driving down our complete IT infrastructure. The good news is that there's no data which was destroyed, and thus, we also didn't need to pay any money to the invader. Nevertheless, the attack was a huge challenge and stress for the entire organization and forced us to spend unexpected money for restoring systems, buy additional IT security, and engage IT and legal advisors. The immense overtime done during almost six weeks had an additional P&L impact. While we didn't compromise our business activities with customers, the short manufacturing break and subsequent delivery delays have had some limited impact on top line. For the full year, we believe this will not affect our growth and possibility materially, but for the first half, it will have or it has some impact, as I will show you. Now, this being said, let me now first lead you through our regional and product sales performance. On page 9, you see sales on a like-for-like basis. Our own Medartis business grew 16.1% at CER, including third-party manufacturing sales from former NSI. The growth amounted 20.8%, as Christoph already said. For the first half of 2023, we report CHF 103.3 million net sales on a group basis, CHF 51.5 million in EMEA, CHF 19.9 million for the U.S., CHF 15.8 million from APAC, and CHF 10.5 million from LATAM. Finally, the third-party manufacturing business contributed CHF 5.6 million sales. Turning to page 10, our business in the U.S. has again improved sequentially and reached 20.1% internal growth by H1. Christoph will later elaborate on this one and is for this important and strategic region. In EMEA, the German-speaking countries region was once again specifically strong, fueled by KeriMedical products, as well as strong demand from the Medartis screw and plate products. We are happy to report that the U.K., a market of rising importance, has grown very strongly, although Brexit and the fact that the U.K. has a very high sterile business, makes supply chain and set management more demanding. France supported lower than anticipated growth. Poland developed very nicely, and I'm specifically proud that Spain once again generated growth of almost 100% versus prior year. Supported by strong demand from our distributors, the entire EMEA region grew almost 18%. Moving to APAC. At a first glance, APAC growth looks rather soft on this chart. However, this can be explained. In July 2022, the Australian authorities enforced a 10% price reduction in the private market segment, followed by another 5% right now, and finally, 5% to come next July. On a volume level, Australia grew mid-teens year-on-year. However, the price decreases diluted the according value growth. At the same time, Japan grew very strongly, again, obviously on small absolute levels. Overall, the region reports 6% growth year-on-year. In LATAM, we reached 17% growth year-on-year, slightly below our own expectations. Political turmoil at the beginning of 2023, as well as prolonged regulatory processes, temporarily affected Brazil's growth. On the positive side, Mexico overcompensated this through successful participation in new public tenders and some price increases implemented. As mentioned earlier, the IT hack had some limited impact on top line in H1. We estimate a loss in related demand for H1, mainly derived from the U.S. This transforms into 2-3 percentage points growth for the first 6 months. We show the growth breakdown per product segment. Our largest segment, which is upper extremities, grew 13%, driven by good distal radius sales, growth with distal ulna, wrist spanning, and forearm shaft plates. Our KeriMedical sales nearly doubled year-on-year and allow us to convert new customers in the countries where we distribute KeriMedical. The lower extremities segment grew 33%. This includes sales from some NSI products, on which Christoph will inform later. CMF, as well as other products, including Field Orthopaedics, grew about 14%. This includes a negative year-on-year performance from one Asian CMF distributor, who ordered high amounts of MODUS 2 in H1 2022, which creates a high comparison basis. With that, let me turn towards costs and profitability. On page 12, you can see the like-for-like gross margin, which came down from 83.1% to 77.7% in the last 12 months. Mix changes within the core Medartis portfolio had a negative impact of 0.8%. Another 1.1% year-on-year dilution comes from high third-party manufacturing sales of former NSI. Last but not least, as we're selling Keri products only as a distributor and the sales of that business has almost doubled year-on-year, we experienced an additional negative margin impact of about 40 basis points. A combination of all of these factors, let's call it mix effects, have brought down the gross margin about 250 basis points. On the manufacturing side, we had several cost increases, which account for about 1.5 percentage points margin impact. In addition, our global operations team launched several measures and initiatives to improve inventory efficiency. The temporary reduction of production utilization has caused a margin decline of about 1% in H1. A part of that will clearly disappear in the second half of the year again. While this gross margin development looks surprising at a first glance, I would like to recall that our Medartis business, our own Medartis business, has still a margin of about 81%. Going forward, a combination of ongoing efficiency improvements in Basel and the sequential increase of production utilization in Warsaw are expected to compensate for some of the negative product mix effectives, which are in line with our defined strategy and which drive above-market growth. We are confident to show some improvement in our gross margin again for the full year. Page 13 shows our progress on cost management in H1 2023. While the headquarter has maintained its absolute cost level, we report slightly higher spending in the regions. Please recall with me that the increase in the U.S. now fully includes the entire Warsaw for 6 months, whereas in H1 2022, only 2 months were included. We have successfully completed the close of our offices in Exton, Pennsylvania. The related restructuring costs are reported as ordinary costs as a part of the CHF 5 million increase in this chart. As one-offs, we only show impacts from the IT cyberattack. Overall, our underlying OpEx ratio has come down about 7 percentage points year-on-year, besides arithmetic support from the higher third-party manufacturing business. This shows that the operational leverage of our business remains strong and should lead to clearly stronger EBITDA margins in the periods to come. Page 14, we show an EBITDA margin of 12.6%, including IT attack costs, and 14.3%, excluding such. The latter reflects the gradual improvement versus last year, following the initial impact from the NSI acquisition. While we cannot avoid any FX influences, we have compensated the negative gross margin impact fully by OpEx ratio improvement. Assuming some accretion of our gross margin in H2 and the non-recurrence of additional IT costs, we thus remain also confident to meet the EBITDA margin guidance for the full year. Slide 15 shows the main changes of the net result year-on-year. Besides the operational effect, as explained earlier, we faced 1.3 million Swiss francs, mostly unrealized FX losses for the first six months, mainly due to a stronger Swiss franc against the U.S. dollar, the euro, and the Australian dollar. In addition, the financial guide also includes about 1 million Swiss francs annualized interest expense accruals for the contingent payments expected in context with the NSI acquisition. Finally, I would like to close my comments with page 16, which shows year-on-year cash movement. The combination of continued CapEx investments, initial inventory building for KeriMedical and Field Orthopaedics products in the U.S., CapEx for IT, the new IBRA Institute training center lab in Basel, as well as capitalized R&D, have led to CHF 50 million cash outflow since December. In addition, we have increased our staking KeriMedical towards 47% in the meantime. A small capital increase after the full year results generated cash inflow of about CHF 30 million, and the combination of all of these developments led to a cash, cash on balance sheet of CHF 16 million, which is supported by external credit line. We do expect the cash outflow in H2 clearly lower due to planned improvements in working capital, the non-recurrence of recent investments, and a higher top line and gross margin in H2. Of course, this is all barring unforeseen events and doesn't foresee any larger spending due to the IT hack in H2. With that, let me hand back to Christoph. Thank you, Dirk. Let's move on with the business update. We continue to execute our strategy, which drives significant growth across all our key segments and markets. Our strategic priorities on the left-hand side is to deliver the innovation, continue to penetrate the markets, and deliver profitable growth, and the third is protect our margin. Our main activities in delivering our innovation, very happy about the LapiPrep launch that has started at the end of March, at the end of Q1, and we continue to receive very positive surgeon feedback and also interest during our wet labs, where we invite surgeons for training and also for conversion. We have now also, in combination on the first cases with the Lapidus, which is a compatible technology with the LapiPrep, for the treatment of Lapidus and osteotomies. In line with the launch of those NSI technologies, we are focusing and continue to focus now to support the launch, with the focus on surgeon conversion trainings, the sales force training, and also expansion, especially in the lower extremities sales channel in the U.S. The global launches are on track. We're very pleased also about the addition of the digitally enhanced patient-specific offering now in the lower extremities in the ankle indications. On number two, the profitable growth. As we see significant potential across all the markets, across all our portfolio, our key priority remains to increase share and gain additional customers in the hand and wrist across all our key markets. The Field Orthopaedics portfolio and also the KeriMedical, as mentioned before, are gaining traction and become a significant part of our growth, especially in the hand segment. Focus on the training of surgeons in the treatment of wrist arthrosis and driving market penetration with the TOUCH prosthesis and also with KeriFlex, used in the replacement of finger joints. On a worldwide basis, we continue to expand our sales force, with a special focus on expanding the lower extremity sales force, especially with the attractive product pipeline on the NSI technologies on one hand, but also of the plates and screws, extensions, and pipeline developed here in Boston. On the third, Dirk has already alluded to what we expect with all the initiated measures on the gross margin, especially in our operation area. We expect a continuous improvement now throughout the second half of this year. Let me move to the next slide on page 19. An overview of the launches. With all the launches, we are on track. I'm very pleased about, as I mentioned before, the interest and feedback that we receive on LapiPrep, especially in the workshops, in the training sessions, but also as we use more and more surgeons now to help us on the peer-to-peer training. The feedback that we receive is mainly, and very consistent in direction of the impression of the precision in the reproducibility correction in all planes, the easiness of handling, the standardization of the entire procedure, allowing better outcomes for less trained surgeons, and also what many surgeons pronounce and highlight is the flexibility in the fixation, as the LapiPrep system allows the surgeon to use the fixation of their choice, which could be screw only, plates and screws, or a StealthFix. StealthFix is fully compatible with the LapiPrep system. Below, you see what most of the surgeons highlight is the versatile fixation of the StealthFix for various deformities, that also minimizes soft tissue irritation due to the low profile of the StealthFix. Going forward, we're on track with the KeriFlex launch in the U.S., and also the Distal Ulna Plate, which is a line extension. Very pleased about the enhancement of our digital offering, with adding the CMX Ankle. Looking forward to the launch of the CMX Orthognathic in the second half of this year. To come is also the CalcShift. That's the third NSI technologies that we're looking forward to. Also the CCS expansion in the metacarpal, which even more complements our offering in, in, in, in, in the hand segment. With the Foot Aptus, we're going to expand and complement our foot and ankle plate and screws portfolio, addressing indications in the mid and hindfoot deformity corrections. On the next slide, we are proud to support that we continue to build our momentum in the U.S. As we have heard, the internal growth in the first half of this year reached 21%. It was even before the IT attack, we were at the run rate of 27%. We have made strong improvements in all territories, with three out of the five areas in the U.S. are outperforming. We are all also on track in expanding our sales channels, where we focus on the top 20 states and also shifting towards larger distributors and distributors that are fully dedicated to trauma and extremities. We have gained a very good momentum in the lower extremities, with excitement and positive interest and feedback from our surgeons around the LapiPrep and also the StealthFix, and we will continue to increase our efforts in expanding sales force and training surgeons for those launches that will continue in the second half of this year. The KeriFlex and NX Nail from Field Orthopaedics complement our hand and wrist portfolio, have gained traction and contributes to the strong growth in the U.S. in the hand segment. A milestone has been achieved by our national accounts team, as we have signed a large national account multi-year agreement, with one of the top healthcare systems in the U.S., which grants us unrestricted access to more than 3,000 hospitals and ASCs as of July first. That means the entire portfolio, with all the constructs, have been pre-approved or listed as a full-fledged supplier with pre-approved pricing. We continue to expand and invest in our IBRA professional education offering, collaborating with fellowship centers across the U.S. Following the closure of the Exton office, we have now improved our cost basis for the U.S. organization, which now has been consolidated in our Warsaw office. We also have reasons to celebrate. In May this year, we have sold the 1 million APTUS Distal Radius 2.5 plate in May since its introduction. This is a clear milestone and some facts around it. That means the run rate of the distal radius plates is about every five minutes on a worldwide basis, one distal radius plate is currently sold. All plates are manufactured in Boston, and if we count and add the screws, we also have been producing 7 million screws only for the distal radius indication. It has become as one of the most researched and best documented implant systems in the industry, and has been the foundation for our success in the European and Australian market, with market shares of above 30%. It will remain the foundation that we see the potential of continue to expand and grow into other indications in the upper, as well as also in the lower extremities. In the opening comments, I mentioned that we have, and we're getting close now to the inauguration of the IBRA Training Center, the IBRA Institute here in Basel, which includes a very modern training lab and training centers for surgeons and OR staff, where we have now the entire competencies and infrastructure under one roof in Basel, from the idea to the development, manufacturing, until the training of, of our researchers. We have a full-fledged lab, where we also produce the pre-fractured specimens to expand and enhance the training experience of the surgeons, to basically bring in very close to the reality what they face in the OR. The institute is a key milestone for us as we see visiting surgeons, that we can show not only manufacturing, we can bring the, the surgeons together with our engineers, we can discuss about ideas, we can show and demonstrate our portfolio, and now we even have the ability and the infrastructure that we can take them into the lab, either train them or share some experiences on their new ideas together with our R&D engineers. That's for a great milestone that we're looking forward now to the formal inauguration on August 24th. With that, I would like to conclude the business outlook. It remains with the guidance. As I have mentioned, despite, despite the IT hack, we're very confident to rebuild and further enhance our sales momentum, and therefore, confirm the financial guidance for the full year, with internal sales growth in the range of 15%-18%, and an underlying EBITDA margin in the range of 13%-15%. With that, I would like to conclude, and would hand it over to Fabian for Q&A. Thank you, Christoph. Excellent. We'll now move seamlessly to the Q&A session. We had a few questions coming in. Just I wanted to remind you that you can ask your question by phone, or also in writing by clicking the Q&A button in the upper left navigation of your webcast screen. As usual, we will now first answer the question from the audio participants. We have re-reserved enough time for all the questions, so please limit your questions to two, and stay on the line or rejoin the queue afterwards. That makes it a bit easier for the management to answer all the questions. Operator, we have very experienced people on the conference call, but can you please remind the conference call participants of the technical details of the Q&A queue, please? Certainly. Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad to ask your question, and you may press star two to withdraw from the queue again. Thank you, Saskia. Can we now have, can you open the microphone of the first participant, please? Certainly. Our first question today comes from Christoph Gretler from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Thank you, Saskia. Good afternoon, Christoph, Dirk, and Fabian. Let me ask, you know, my first two questions. The first is, you know, just on, you know, APAC, you know. Could you maybe discuss, you know, your Japanese business, in particular, I think, you know, the upper extremities business and how that's been doing? The second question is just with respect to the gross margin, you know, you know, there was quite a bit of a drop, as you pointed out, you know. If I look into second half, you know, is it, you know, fair to assume, you know, the underlying gross margin, 77.7%, and then maybe add, you know, the production cost and variances, you know, and, you know, so that, you know, something like, you know, above 80%, you know, is a reasonable expectation? Maybe if you could discuss, you know, that, you know, and, and specify, you know, your expectation of improved gross margin for the second half. Thank you. Good afternoon, Christoph. Thanks for joining. Thank you for your questions. Let me, let me address the Asia Pacific, the Japanese business. Overall, overall, the setup that we have in Japan is currently, we are direct in the lower extremities. That's the local, the local team and the local affiliate. The upper extremities is within a distributorship, which is MES called, and there is a second distributor for the CMS business, which has started the activities about two years ago. Overall, we see very strong growth in the lower extremities, but it's still on a low level, nevertheless. The upper extremities business has been built by our distributor, which we don't see that much growth. I would say, I would say there is certainly more opportunities in the upper extremities in the Japanese market, and the distribution contract, together with MES, will expire, and then we will keep any option open, whether we're going to extend the contract or not. Sounds like, an opportunity. Thank you. Christoph, I, I will take the question on the gross margin with Dirk. Yes, you're right, a couple of factors which you raised. Question, what's the second half of the year? I would expect that some of the things which are shown here on the higher production cost and balances, the 2.9% to improve, let's say 1%, maybe slightly more. Of course, the costs which are related to the IT hack, which was the manufacturing interruption or the break, which we had for a couple of days, that that would also not recur. Having said that, let me guide you for 150 basis points up for the second half of the year, which gives you low to high 78, and then, probably sort of for a year, 78+. We will not be able to reach the 80% this year, as long as we have such a strong growth on carry, which we like, actually, also as long as we get the support from the third-party manufacturing business, which is good on a top-line basis, and of course, also on a EBIT and cash flow basis, unfortunately, has the negative third gross margin impact. 79% probably is the maximum for this year. Okay, very clear. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're moving on to our next question, which comes from Sandra Dietschi of Octavian. Please, go ahead. Yes, good afternoon, also from my side. I have a question on the contract with one of the GPOs in the U.S. You highlighted that you have signed such a contract recently. Can we expect more such contracts to be signed in the coming months? Maybe also, why is Medartis only now focusing on these GPOs? I think it would be very helpful if you, Christoph, could elaborate a bit on the importance of such agreement for Medartis and its U.S. momentum going forward. The second question for Dirk, again, on the margin. Given the robust EBITDA margin in the first half year, to explain the improvement of the gross margin in the second half, is it fair to say that the guidance of 13%-15% is rather cautious, or, are there any growth investments we should be aware of in the second half? Thank you. Okay, good afternoon, Sandra. Let me start with the GPO and the U.S. question. I think, yes, indeed, it's the first national contract that we have signed, that we have been able to sign. Basically, the contract includes now all the pricing, all the construct across the entire portfolio. Why now? Certainly, we have been so far playing with smaller contracts. I mean, it doesn't mean that we didn't have any contracts. I mean, with individual healthcare systems, we always had contracts, but we were, most of the time, we were playing more in the 20% rather than in the 80%. That meant in some areas, you start getting restrictions in terms of volume, that the surgeons were kind of limited of using Medartis implants as, as soon as they were approaching the 20, the 20% mark. With the expanded portfolio that we have, with the Upper and lower extremities, it was, it was about time to, to, to get into the larger, into the larger 80% segment of the healthcare systems, to become almost an unrestricted, not an almost, an unrestricted supplier. In terms of market access, that enormously helps, because also then going forward, onboarding new distributors, for example, you can always provide, you can provide contracts, which is basically a license to sell for those current distributors. There are multiple reasons to try to get more and more into international contracts, and with the portfolio growth that we have, now we can qualify much more, across the entire portfolio. It also is a question of onboarding capabilities. We have onboarded and started to build a national accounts team mid of last year, that had the time and the experience and also the relationships to negotiate and contract such larger deals. That's, that's one. The second one, is certainly the portfolio that helped for it. We continue to negotiate other bigger deals. I would expect that we may be able to sign one or two more for this year. That means, we will, we will more and more try to get into, into, the larger GPOs, which will then be like an umbrella. It's not a committed volume, but it's an umbrella agreement that we have, which helps in also in the onboarding of new distributors. I take the same question that was on the EBITDA margin, whether I'm too cautious of the 13%-15%. As you go to page 14, and you look at the very right, we are currently at 12.6. That's the starting point. We had a discussion whether we should confirm the 13%-15%. We do feel comfortable that we can do that because, as said, we, we expect a slight improvement of the gross margin, and also the IT costs, the IT hacking costs, are not expected to recur. Now, that being said, 13%-15% is probably a very fair assumption. If you ask me, of course, I'm always ambitious to get to the 15, but I would feel uncomfortable to guide you beyond the 15. ... Take a midpoint 14, and then everything else is, is, is a result of top line, which needs to come, and then the, the real, the effective improvement of the gross margin. Okay, very clear. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Up next, we have Dylan van Haaften from Stifel with our next question. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Good afternoon. Just two questions from my side. Just on this GPO contract, and what you're explaining about sort of this umbrella agreement, does that mean you'll be running with higher indirect sales going forward? How do you sort of expect that's also gonna have a knock-on impact on your gross margin? Would you also expect sort of CapEx to come up from these levels, given sort of these bigger contracts and this bigger growth, that opportunity that you're developing? That's my first question, and the second question would just be on Australia. Do you sense that there's still a catch-up mechanism in place there as sort of, surgical volumes were quite weak first half, last year and second half last year? Would we expect sort of double-digit volumes pulling through for the remainder of the year into next year as well? Thanks. Hi, Dylan. Thanks for dialing in as well. On the GPO, I think it has not an additional impact on the margin or whatsoever. I think it's you can understand it in the way of having a contract with the healthcare system, so that every single rep that walks into one of those hospitals or ASCs has a predefined and agreed upon price per construct. So that means the sales rep, whether it be a direct rep or an independent distributor rep, he can sell without going through an approval process or a value committee. So we're basically listed as a supplier, and once the surgeon wants to use one of the implants and systems, he can do it on without any price or economical restrictions. I think that is the benefit. The impact, the margins, the sales margin of the sales commission remains exactly the same. It's not impacted by the GPO contract. On Australia, the 10% price reduction was mandated and started in July 2022. There's another 5%, which was implemented in July 2023, and there will be another 5 percentage points reduction in July of next year. When we look at the overall business development on a volume basis, Australia remains strong, growing double digits, about 15% on a volume basis. We also see the Australian market now, after the lifting of the COVID restriction, is gaining and normalizing, getting back to a more normal caseload. Based on that, our, our forward-looking expectation for the Australian market is to continue to grow on a, on, on a double-digit volume base. Excellent. Thank you very much. Yeah. Just on that GPO contract, basically the balance of direct, indirect is expected to be the same in these sort of ASC centers, so, no changes? There is no changes. Also the, the expansion of, of our sales force is mainly executed through the onboarding of independent agents. We feel we can, we can onboard and expand our sales force much more efficiently and much faster by onboarding of independent distributors. Now we're striving towards getting more distributors, larger distributors, that normally have dedicated reps for upper and lower extremities, and also larger, larger distributors, but distributors that are dedicated to trauma and extremities and do not have any joint replacement lines carrying. Excellent. Thank you, guys. Okay. Thank you. We now take a follow-up question from Christoph Gretler, Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Thank you. Just, 1 or 2 follow-up questions. The first is just on market growth. Now, do you think, you know, kind of you had, you know, some extra growth, in the first half that, you know, it's worth calling out, or, is your market share kind of small enough that, you know, it doesn't really matter that much, you know? Because I guess now we have seen, particularly in, you know, some of the recon segments, you know, quite strong, market growth. Is this something, you know, kind of, you know, you consider, you know, when, you know, issuing your, your guidance for the second half or for the full year? That would be one question. The other, just a quick, check on TOUCH, you know. Is this U.S. launch now still, you know, on track for sometime 2024? Okay. Thank you for the follow-up. On the market growth, I think indeed, we see, in general, a more positive market, especially coming out of COVID and so on. The market growth per se, is not a significant factor in our guidance. I think we are still in most of the markets, in terms of market share, small enough that we project our growth mainly coming from market share gain. The exception is certainly the EMEA region, where we have strong market shares, especially in the upper extremities in Germany, but also U.K., France. That will, that will certainly have an impact on the, on, on, on the growth, or it's, it's still, it's still more favorable, in those regions. On the global level, the market growth and the market shares that we have is very minor. TOUCH? TOUCH, still on track with the FDA, FDA approval process in the U.S. We still expect a approval somewhere during the second half of next year, third quarter, end of third quarter. That's still, that's still the same, the same timeline that we look at. Thank you. Thank you. We have a follow-up from Sandra Dietschi of Octavian. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you. I have two more questions on NSI. The first is on the NSI products you have launched, and also the upcoming launch in the second half of this year. Based on these product introductions, is it reasonable to assume you can generate this year with these products a CHF single-digit million range revenue, next year in the CHF double-digit range? Are there any plans to launch these products also outside of the U.S.? The second question is on the third party, the NSI sales. Can you update us there? Is it still unclear when this business will fade out, or are there already kind of concrete plans? Thank you. Okay. Thanks for the follow-up, Sandra. On the NSI technologies, yes, we're still on track with the LapiPrep and the StealthFix. Those are the ones that we're currently in the launch and accelerate, and that's where we focus on in terms of search and education and conversion. The CalcShift is ready to get launched as well. The projection are still the same as we have communicated. I think the focus right now in the first phase is certainly to launch all those technologies in the U.S., build and expand the sales force. That's our priority. Eventually, we will also launch those technologies in the other markets, EMEA and certainly Asia Pacific, but it's not gonna be next year. The focus will now be on the full launch in the U.S. with all the capacity in terms of training, manufacturing. I think there was another question. Third party. Yes. Yeah, NSI say, Sandra, that's a tough one. We don't plan it, to be honest. We take this as an opportunistic element of the top line. We had some estimates which were slightly longer than, or lower than, what has come out in the first half of the year. I can't even tell you what exactly is the volume which we expect for the second half of the year. It's not strategic for us. What we do and what is our behavior or our strategy is to take this business as long as it generates some cash, what it does, and as long as we cannot fill all of the capacities which we have with our own products. Now you have a process over, I would say, 2, 3 years, where systematically we build up a production of our own products in Warsaw. We fill our capacities, it's in our hands to decide to what extent we want to keep that third-party manufacturing business or not. I would expect that over the next 2 years, it will fade out. I can't tell you whether 100% or whether it's gonna be 40% or 50%, at this point of time, I'm even glad that I have it because it gives me the top line, it gives me cash flow generation, and it fits my capacities and also absorbs some of the fixed costs, which I have in the Warsaw production. I'm, I'm actually even thankful for it. I know it's difficult to plan for you as it is for us. Fair enough. Thank you. Thank you. As a brief reminder, that is star one to ask a question on today's call. Perfect. Thank you, Saskia. I'm trying to bundle the questions a little bit because some of them, of the question have been answered already. There's a question coming from a telephone from a webcast participant. The person would like to know were all regions equally impacted by the hack? It's probably a question for you, you. The answer is no. And as a general answer, I could tell you that the closer the region is to headquarters, the lower is the impact. The more distance there is between headquarters, physical distance, and the region, the higher the impact was. Explaining that very, very quickly, when the hack happened, we were able to build up all the systems within shortest time for all of the European countries. They flew in, they came in here over the weekend, they worked, and actually, I think we were within four or five business days, we were fully operational again. When you have a country such as Australia or Japan, it's not that easy. Same also for the U.S., where some processes were just transferred from the former Nextremity into Warsaw, with new people, not that stable. The impact for the U.S. was probably almost a month, not 100% on top line, but I would say challenges on the procedure side. Whereas for Europe, it was a couple of days. In Asia, somewhere in between, we have a very, very experienced team in Australia. They, I would say, they, they were coping with it more or less in 2 weeks' time. Japan, a little bit behind, but Europe was very strong and came back into the business 4, 5 days later again. That's also then the impact on top line, I would attribute a little bit more to the U.S., little to EMEA, and a little bit also to Asia Pacific. Latin, not so much because they had relatively high inventory levels. Thank you, Dirk. Thank you for sharing. Just as to detail this out, the 27 runway going into the hack was based on the internal growth and the total, total growth, just to, just to make that crystal clear. The next question coming also from in written, is probably a question which is addressed with Christoph. Can you elaborate on the competitive landscape in the U.S. at the moment? Sure. We certainly compete directly with all the big ones that have a trauma or an extremities business, which is J&J, mainly DePuy Synthes, Zimmer Biomet, and Stryker. In the upper extremities, I would name Acumed and Skeletal Dynamics. Then we have Lower Extremity companies dedicated, like Paragon 28, Treace, especially in the hallux rigidus treatment, and probably Enovis or former DJO. Those are probably the key competitors for us in the U.S.. Thank you, Christoph, for your details. There's a question for Dirk. You mentioned the gross margin in H2 will improve, and you already elaborated a little bit on that. What are the main reasons for your optimism in the second half of the year? Main reason comes from the manufacturing side, where we also made the, in the, the decision that was really intentional to adjust our capacities for some meantime. Cash and also inventory management is one of our key KPIs. Our CEO looked at the, the, the inventory position, also the fulfillment rates, which are very, very strong. We made a decision to reduce a little bit the capacity utilization to improve inventory. That being said, it had a negative impact on the gross margin. Technically, these are balances which are coming through. I would not expect them to come through at the same level in the second half of the year. That's why I said earlier, one percentage point comes from there. IT hack, non-recurring, hopefully. We all hope another one, another 50 basis points. This is where I take my optimism of 150 basis points, 100-150 basis points up for the second half of the year. Okay, great. There is another question: What KPIs, key performance indicators, are you focusing on in the medium term? Would you like to answer that question? You can take it if you want. Well, it's, it's, it's, it's not rocket science. It's the traditional ones. We're living from top line. You know, we have a gross margin of 80%. If I'm not getting the top line, I have an issue. Top line is important. It's the market share, specifically in the U.S., and specifically, I would say, it's the conversion of new customers, especially the interesting customers, the efficiency of the independent sales agents, which we have, and also, of course, the growth and cross-selling from the customers which we already own. That's on the top line side. For me, typical CFO answer would be cash flow is the most important as well. That means it's not only about cost management, but more important even, it's about the efficiency which we have with the employed capital. It's not so much accounts receivable, but it's also the asset investment, which we do. It's also a, a evolutionary process that we drive the efficiency, and we put our capital that sits there, where we get the highest return with the customers which grow most and, and quickest. For me, this is the, the key driving factor also for our cash flow. I would say top line cash flow, these are the most important ones. Dirk, I'm sure everyone agrees on with you on that. There are no further questions on in the queue and also no written questions. I guess then, we can close this out for today. Before we terminate this webcast, let me draw your attention to our IR calendar, which is on Slide 26. We hope to meet you on any of these, in person, either on the roadshow or one of the listed conferences. Before I wish you a pleasant good day and goodbye, I'd like to hand over to Christoph Brönnimann, CEO, for his closing remarks. I would like to take, and thank you for the time and the interest dialing in on our H1 results presentation. Despite a very busy day, really appreciate and wish you a great rest of your day and a great week. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you. That concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.