On Tuesday, 13 May 2025, Align Technology (NASDAQ:ALGN) presented at the Bank of America 2025 Healthcare Conference, revealing an optimistic outlook driven by better-than-expected Q1 results. The company highlighted its strategic focus on innovation and market expansion, while addressing challenges like tariffs. Align’s commitment to personalized treatment and AI-driven solutions positions it well for future growth.
Key Takeaways
- Align Technology reported stronger-than-anticipated Q1 results, fueled by growth across geographies and demographics.
- Innovation in digital scanning, software, and 3D printing remains a core focus, with new products like the Invisalign Palatal Expander.
- The company projects 5-15% growth from 2026-2028 and 15%+ growth from 2029 onwards, supported by innovation and emerging market expansion.
- The USMCA protects Align from major tariff impacts, except for a $1 million monthly cost related to iTero scanners from Israel.
- Align aims to enhance doctor support through clinical pathways and educational events, with over 500 live events planned.
Financial Results
- Align Technology’s Q1 results exceeded expectations, although specific financial figures were not disclosed.
- Growth was broad-based, encompassing ortho and GP, as well as teen and adult demographics across international regions.
- The company’s long-range plan projects growth of 5-15% from 2026-2028 and 15%+ from 2029, driven by innovation and market expansion.
Operational Updates
- The development of the Invisalign Palatal Expander targets children aged 6-7, while the MAOB addresses Class II malocclusion in teenagers.
- The Lumina scanner received positive feedback for its speed, accuracy, and integration with Align’s Oral Health Suite and AXI.
- DirectFab technology is in the pilot phase for retainers and occlusal blocks, with expected margin contributions post-2027.
Future Outlook
- Align focuses on global adoption and utilization through innovation and portfolio expansion, targeting emerging markets.
- DirectFab technology promises new appliance designs with improved efficacy and faster treatment times.
- Stability in the US market is maintained through customer support and clinical pathways, with a strong emphasis on doctor growth programs.
Q&A Highlights
- Align’s growth projections from 2026-2028 do not rely on macroeconomic improvements.
- The Lumina scanner enhances aligner sales and is expected to increase adoption in GP practices.
- Tariff impacts are limited due to USMCA, with a notable exception for iTero scanners from Israel.
Readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for a detailed understanding of Align Technology’s strategic plans and insights shared at the conference.
Full transcript - Bank of America 2025 Healthcare Conference:
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Thanks for joining us. My name is Mike Ryskin. I’m on the Bank of America Life Science Tools and Diagnostics team. And for next session, I’m excited to host Align Technology. We’re joined by Frank Gwynn, EVP and managing director of the Americas region, and we also have Shirley Stacy from Investor Relations on board.
Frank, Shirley, thanks for being here.
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: Thanks for
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: having us. Having us.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Maybe just to kick things off, sort of high level initial question. You know, you reported 1Q results recently, you know, better than expected, steady result to start the year. If could talk about sort of the key moving pieces of the quarter, how that played out relative to expectations and how things played out.
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: Yeah. I think, you know, the breadth of it was great because, you know, both ortho, GP, you know, growth and regionally as well. And then, you know, you look at both teen and adult grew. So, you know, it was a good combination of things that drove good quarterly Q1 results.
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: Broad based in terms of international as well, right? So across all the regions.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Okay. And then the other major update was you had your Analyst Day last week, I think a week ago today. So first Analyst Day in a number of years, provided a lot of updates. Maybe you could just talk about, you know, what you thought were the key takeaways from that and what the reception that has been.
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: Yeah. No, it was good, actually. I mean, we try to do investor activities every year, so usually at one of our orthodontic or GP summits. But this is the first time I think we’ve been back in New York for a while. But it was good.
It was a pretty broad based update across, coming off of earnings that allowed us to talk about innovation across the board, whether you’re talking about our digital scanning and software or three d printing. And so it allowed us to bring in the technology teams and talk about from a we think about the front end of the system, our scanning technology with Illumina launch and now both ortho and restorative software on that platform, which is we think really critical to kind of digitizing the orthodontic practice. In terms of software and treatment planning, we spend a fair amount of time talking about both clinical opportunity from an orthodontic and from a GP perspective and what those customers are looking for in terms of solutions. A lot of innovation focused on our treatment planning and the tools that we’re bringing to market in ClinCheck Signature, which is very, you know, kind of personalized treatment planning. The ability through Invisalign personalized plans and FlexRx and other aspects of allowing the doctors to have more control, if you will, but a lot of automation leveraging AI and machine learning, and our very large database of patient data.
And then from a kind of global perspective around how those tools are coming to market through the channels you heard from each one of the regional leaders, including Frank, talked about a lot of the go to market opportunities and the growth programs. And then finally, of course, from an operations and manufacturing perspective, how we’re continuing to really drive global operations and manufacturing for our existing three d printing, which is an indirect process today, right? We produce a million aligners every single day around the world. And how we’re through the acquisition of Cubicure, And we showed actually, I think, some really great video of the innovation around how we’re looking at three d printing direct fabrication of appliances and going to market to scale that, but processes continuing for some time. And then, of course, Joe John and Joe kind of brought it all together in terms of what that looks like from a midterm to a longer term look at our model if if, happy to dive in anywhere you like.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Yeah. Of course. A lot there. I wanna dive in all those ones. Maybe I’ll pick up on the on the last point you just, made, Shirley, the the new LRP, the the new growth profile.
First update you’ve given, first change you made to the LRP in a number of years. Now sort of, you know, 2025 guide is what it is. You’re talking about ’26 to ’28 being in that five to 15% range and then 15% plus in 2029 and beyond. Can you talk us through at a high level what underpins that? And then especially if you compare that to what’s been going on in the market over the last three to five years.
So, like, where is the acceleration coming from? What are the various factors driving that?
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: I think, you know, Shirley hit it before too. It’s the innovations that have come into the market. I think we showed a roadmap of what’s coming next. And, you know, the way I would look at the way Joe framed it even in the three decades of this company, right? You know, starting it in the first ten years, figuring out how to move teeth with plastic, identifying, you know, needing a new polymer and approach and scaling, you know, manufacturing, treatment planning.
And then now you’re into this, you know, touchless place that we’re moving into from a digital orthodontics perspective. So, you know, the underpinnings in there are the innovations, right? We’ve expanded our capabilities for, let’s say, growing kids and teen, right? The launch of the Invisalign Palatal Expander, which is, you know, custom made appliance, removable, you know, has an option to replace those fixed appliances that have been used for probably centuries. So it gets us into that six to seven year old category.
We’ve had first for quite some time for mixed dentition and growing kids, can do dental expansion. And then MAOB, which is the occlusal block, which is a common thing used for class two, which is roughly thirty five to forty percent of malocclusion in teenagers. Those teenagers represent seventy five percent of the starts in The Americas. Right? So roughly eight million orthodontic starts per year, seventy to seventy five percent of them are teen and forty percent of those teenagers show up with a class two malocclusion.
So having something, you know, for the doctors to use for that is really critical. And then obviously, you know, the things that are coming with DirectFab are we’re piloting right now are three d Vibera, which is for growing kids, fully customizable appliance, and, you know, and the advent of, you know, what we’re working through on scaling the direct fab and having both the indirect and direct fab as options as we go to the market and putting the ultimate level of control in the customer’s hands and their decision making on the best ways they can treat their patients. So I think those, you know, obviously, Lumina is a big part of this. And then there’s other enablers that are in there as well, like virtual care, creating a high level of efficiency at the practice. So you can do a, you know, twelve to eighteen month treatment plan and have minimal visits to the practice because you’re tracking as they’re changing their aligners as they go.
So it’s just that seamlessness across all the innovations and getting implementation done correctly at the practice level.
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: Yeah, and then hopefully what came through also is the product and the innovation is really critical, but also it’s about expansion into emerging markets, existing and emerging markets. And so those products and technologies that Frank’s talking about are important for us to expand, you know, in every demographic, in every geography, you need a portfolio, a pretty broad portfolio of products for kids and teens and adults in different price points. And so hopefully that came through.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Okay. Yep. And, I wanna follow-up on a lot of that innovation, but first, just, on the on the LRP. The the other question we had, so that came up was the the range for the next couple of years, the 5 to fifteen. Mhmm.
I think there were some questions on how much does macro matter or not matter for that. So could you just talk about sort of what your expectation is or what the underlying assumption is for just the broader market?
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: Yeah. The underlying market. Yeah. And and hopefully so when when John showed that one slide that shows kind of the current 2025 and then the what you call maybe a near term ’26 to ’28 and then ’29 and beyond, I think he was pretty clear that we’re focused on, you know, what we can do to drive adoption and utilization globally with or without the market, meaning we’re not assuming any change from this point. Right?
So what we have is what we get. And hopefully, I think folks have seen, at least more recently, the resilience of the business to really kind of drive execution and adoption. I think ’29 and beyond, if you looked at the way he was talking about how you build up the of the growth drivers, that is assuming at some point post ’29, there starts to be some impact from the underlying market, but that’s not the expectation in the near term.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Okay. Okay. And then let’s maybe let’s dig into some of that innovation. Things like, you know, maybe let’s start with occlusal blocks in the body advancement. Frank, you know, maybe to you, if we think about what that could do to teen growth and what that could do for for teen market expansion, especially if you look at something like The Americas and like The US, which is a little bit more of an advanced market or just sort of further along in in aligner penetration, do you think that’s something that could sort of unlock the next level of growth in those markets?
Is that something that’s been holding back growth?
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: Yeah. I mean, we’re very early, right? We just launched. So, you know, ideally, you know, we’re innovating to address a need in the market. Primarily, it’s driven by doctor feedback, right?
It always comes back saying, If you could, would you add this? Can you do that? So, you know, building the occlusal block, which is very unique because it’s a solid format as opposed to the hollow ones that, you know, sometimes are used in other clear aligners that crush because your jaw is very strong. So having something solid, you know, we believe it addresses a need in the market, and it’s really based on customer feedback. So it’s still early, but we’re, you know, we’re feeling very positive about the launches.
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: It’s a feedback. And it’s been in pilot for a fair amount of time. Yes. Customer feedback has been really, really good. And
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: then similarly on Lumina and the restorative versus ortho workflows. What’s been the feedback over the
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: last couple months as you’ve expanded that? It’s been it’s been really good. You know, it it comes from interesting places too. Right? So what what you see primarily, doctors are excited about it, right?
The speed, the size of the wand, the field of view, the accuracy of the image, all of the restorative workflows opened up. But when you hear from labs that come back and ask, where did this image come from? This is amazing. That’s pretty telling to me. You know, the labs that work with not only, you know, analog type of things that come from practices like impressions and pores, but they see a ton of scan data.
And so, you know, we’re really getting some great positive feedback from the labs as well. Highly complex click cases, all on four type stuff, implants with high level of accuracy, great color, you know. So they’re we’re really getting great feedback there.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: We’ve always thought about, you know, it’s not a true razor razor blade model between iTero and the aligner, but it is sort of symbiotic or synergistic in that sense where it should drive increased adoption and utilization over time. Do you think Lumina, you know, again, continues that trajectory and takes that to the next level?
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: Yeah. You know, you think about what happens in a GP practice. Right? That’s a very hygiene driven practice. You know, you come in every six months, like, you know, your insurance has to get your cleaning.
Ideally, they’re doing oral health scans. A lot of the doctors in the GP space are using the scanner as another diagnostic tool beyond x rays. And so as you’re scanning patients, whether it’s every six months or once a year, you’re keeping a very close eye through the Align Oral Health Suite on, you know, your permanent, you know, dentition, your teeth, your soft tissue, occlusion, how are you biting. So if you’re hitting too hard, you’re inevitably going to have oral health issues. So really getting that runway to scanning often, getting that oral health component in place, all the diagnostics that come with that, also adding in AXI, which is our X-ray Insights.
So, you really have this full package including CBCT, and then you have this, you know, this oral health report that the patient leaves with. So they may not start Invisalign that day, but they are now very much aware of what is happening in their mouth and how they can address it through orthodontic treatment and fixing their bite and occlusion. And then secondarily, the impact will have less removal of permanent dentition, right? I think Jelco shared this, the hardest component in your body is your enamel on your teeth. So save that, protect it as much as possible, get your teeth in the right position and do minimally invasive restorative.
On the ortho side, it’s great because, you know, I think you probably saw on Investor Day, you’ve got three years of pressure on starts in the orthodontic space, which has never happened in the history of it being measured. So, you know, maybe a little lower foot traffic in exams, but the primary focus is convert. If you’re getting the bats, you’ve got to convert to the highest level. So utilizing, you know, the tools that come with Illumina, like, you know, Outcome Simulator Pro and the smile video, I think we demoed this in the cafe at Investor Day, where you can actually see what your teeth you know, you’re fixing what your current view is of your mouth and your bite and your teeth. If you just did orthodontics, what it would look like.
And then if you did post orthodontic restorative work, those are the things that are really helping to and a video with it where you’re speaking with what your teeth would look like after. Those are really great conversion tools that the Lumina lends itself to both channels. So, yeah, I think, you know, there’s an opportunity there. Okay.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: And then I want to touch on DirectFab as well. So you’ve talked about it for some time. You mentioned Cubicure. Could you remind us, you know, like you said, I think it’s still in relatively early stages of implementation now, but how should we think about timing of rolling out? Because we know what the end plan is, but just sort of what the roadmap will look like.
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: Yeah. I think we really want to focus on both our existing indirect, kind processes for SLA and, you know, producing a million aligners a day. We really see when you think about what Frank just talked about, you know, our ability to do touchless, can check. You know, Joe talked about 20% this year of our cases being touchless, right? So coming through using our software and our tools to allow that.
And then if you think about the combination of our existing manufacturing process, that’s we think a pretty competitive differentiator for us. So don’t anticipate that that, you know, is something that we’re moving away from. We will leverage that, you know, competitively. The opportunity, well, with Direct Fab is a really good one we think to scale. And there was a couple of slides in our presentations in both Srini’s presentation and Emery where they showed examples of the products that we’re looking to move to direct fab.
And the first one Frank just referenced is the retainer that’s in pilot right now with Cubicure. Then over time, how do we move other appliances that are really optimized for direct fab? And so think about MAOB, the occlusal block that Frank just talked about in terms of that design and how that could be optimized for that technology. So as we scale, what John talked about is kind of post ’27 is when we start to see, you know, some contribution, positive contribution on margins
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: those products. And in terms of the impact of the model, know, talk about margins, COGS component is pretty straightforward. Is there a benefit from DirectFab to volume growth? Or I mean, I guess it would be in terms of what you can make with DirectFab that maybe you can’t do with, traditional three d printing? Like, is there
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: Yeah. There were you know, there are some design there are some new appliances that we haven’t even really talked about yet that would be optimized for the design freedom you get from direct fabrication. So that’s certainly an opportunity that, you know, as we kind of get through milestones, we certainly want to talk to those. We’re probably not going to signal everything just yet, but yeah, I mean, you should anticipate, I mean, one of the beauties aside from the fact that you get rid of the molds, which we do think is important over time, but really it’s the design freedom and it’s the capability to bring new innovation, we think, to market in terms of, you know, better efficacy and faster treatment times and a whole host of other things we think.
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: Okay. Yeah, you know, and at doctor discretion too, right? So, you know, with Direct Fab you could have variable thickness on on a single aligner on the lower or the upper, however they determine they’d like to treat, which is very difficult to do in a, you know, vacuum form indirect type scenario. So it just creates a tremendous amount of opportunity for the doctor to pick and choose how they would like to treat a case with clear aligners. Okay.
And just another degree of freedom. Just customization.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Yeah. Customization. Yep. Frank, I wanna spend a good amount of time talking about America specifically given given your role there. Mhmm.
So, I mean, maybe at a high level, if we could talk about sort of The United States versus sort of the LatAm, Mexico, Canada markets. Just starting with The US, what have you seen over the last couple quarters? How’s how has that market evolved in you know, between both ortho and GP, independent of the innovation we talked about? So what do you think what are your thoughts for the rest of the year there?
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: Yeah. You know, I think what we’ve said over the last two quarters is that we’ve seen stability from our perspective. Look. There’s obviously a ton of uncertainty going on in the in the macro market. There may have been new news I missed today even.
You know? Who knows? But, you know, we’ve seen stability, submitter base, utilization. We, you know, shared at Investor Day, you know, we’ve got a really nice mix of by channel GP and ortho. We, you know, see really doctors diving in into the new technology and innovations and starting to use it.
So, you know, early getting early adopters that start driving utilization as well. And, you know, the things that we’re really focused on, it may sound simple, but it’s really surrounding the customer in every aspect of the journey. And we do this through the use of what we call clinical pathways or growth programs. You know, these programs are uniquely designed by doctor to help them move from what their current state of their business is to the future state. And in some of those instances, maybe I want to treat more complex cases or I’d like to go, you know, down into the growing children category and treat that at a younger age in phase one, and then really designing these clinical pathways that are anchored in clinical education.
I’d say that’s probably the thing I would say I talked about it. It’s a foundational component in any healthcare business. You really have to focus on the doctors and the peer to peer and community building is critical. And that is all anchored on education. So we’ll do in The Americas and pretty heavy up in The US over 500 live education events that are, you know, some of them are smaller, 25 to 50 doctors you know, in treatment planning workshops.
Some of it’s like buttonology about how do you get the most out of your ClinCheck setups, how do you set up your FlexRx and your templates, you’re getting your ClinCheck back in minutes with LiveUpdate. You’re basically sending it right in the manufacturing. And then other ones are really like on the GP side called CDI. It’s comprehensive dentistry. How do you implement the fully digitized workflow from scanner to design to ortho pre restorative ortho, leveraging OrthoCAD, connection to labs, you know, all of those things.
How do you actually implement a fully digitized practice? And we also do the same thing on the ortho universe too. So, you know, anywhere from 200 to 300 doctors attending maybe larger regional events. And so we’ve seen great attendance, really great engagement, and doctors wanting and willing to learn more and apply it. And that’s where our focus is in The US.
Okay.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: And then from a competitive landscape perspective, again, kind of let’s stick with The US Mhmm. You’ve seen some changes here too over the last couple quarters, last couple years, some exits, especially. So is that an opportunity to pick up some incremental shares? So how have you seen that part of the market evolve?
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: Yeah. I mean, it’s there may be some dormant opportunity out there, if you will, because if you’re talking about the exits of DTC, you know, and I think the beauty in that is, you know, our portfolio has such breadth to it. So DSP is a great example. It’s our subscription plan, and it includes both retention and what we call touch up, so up to 14 stage cases. So a lot of those, you know, folks that are out there that may have been attracted by the DTC can be certainly treated doctor directed in the practice with products like that.
So it’s, you know, minimal tooth movement. You know, somebody who has occlusion and a bite they want to fix is a much more comprehensive case. If they want to straighten their Social six, you don’t need a, you know, a comprehensive case to do that. So, yeah, I think there’s opportunity, and the portfolio is designed to address all of those things. Okay.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Any questions from the audience? Want us to jump in? Alright. We’ll keep going. And then I wanted to ask about other parts of The Americas,
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: you wanna talk about LATAM, what’s happening outside The United States. Sure. You know, Canada is quite, you know, similar to US, some nuance there as well. It’s more of a GP driven business model up there. So you have a lot of GP orthos is what we call them.
They’re fairly deep in the curve with treating orthodontic at a GP level, great ortho community there. So a lot of similarities there. And Latin America, you know, you have some unique it’s a unique environment. And that they, you know, I was joking before that, you know, that culture, they’ll buy a t shirt and pay it on equal payments over twelve months for a t shirt. So, you know, you’ve got to approach the market with affordability options as well so that patients can get started.
But, you know, there’s a fair amount of orthos and general dentists in Latin America. And what’s unique there is that there’s a lot of multidisciplinary type practices where it may be a GP owned and led practice, but the specialties are working within the practice. So it could have an ortho, perio, oral surgeon, you know, whatever the case may be. So we’ve reoriented the way we go to market and approach to ensure that we’re capturing the multidisciplinary option as well. Lumina has been great for that too because that scanner can be used in any one of those specialties or disciplines.
And then not to beat a dead horse here, but education is key. It’s critical in those markets.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Can you talk about sort of if you think about Brazil, other parts of LatAm, which of those markets are most exciting to you from a growth opportunity and a
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: Yeah.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Sort of accretive to total company growth?
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: Yeah. I think, you know, Brazil is a great market, right, great population, highly aesthetic market as well. So, you know, even when you look at our consumer work down there, it’s different than what you would see in North America. It’s got some aesthetics to it, you know, improve yourself type scenarios, right, be your best self type things, which, you know, it works in Brazil. So obviously, opportunity.
We’ve been in business down there for quite some time, and our leader down there does a great job. You know, Mexico, unique opportunity as well. We’re in Cala also. And so, you know, each market is unique from each other. And so really making sure that we’re closest to the customer, identifying any of the problems to solve that they have for conversion.
And so we you know, we’re we’re we’re highly focused on those markets, and they’re each really good opportunities for us. So It’s still far behind The US in terms of sort of where you are in the evolution of
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: that market, adoption of technology.
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: Yeah. Yeah. It’s it what how long have we been open down there?
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: Eight years. Actually for many years, right? About eighty nine years. So more of an emerging market from that perspective, but still a good contributor to the business.
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: Yeah. And strong submitter base too, primarily ortho and and Cala. But, you know, those those practices are different. So, you know, those are much smaller practices, almost like EMEA, Europe actually. You know, you may have an ortho in a practice that does a hundred starts a year, which is very common in Brazil, let’s say, where, you know, average in The US or North America could be two seventy five to 300.
They’re just it’s just a different, you know, practice design, but there’s a lot more orthos down there too. So but so, yeah, I think, you know, they’re contributing. There’s a growth opportunity there for sure. And, you know, I think the team is, you know, highly focused on, you know, working with the right customers at the right time And then same thing enrolling in education pathways.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Okay. Alright. We’ve got a couple minutes left. I want to hit a couple items kind of rapid fire. One was tariffs.
There was a lot of concern on this topic earlier in the year given the the Mexico manufacturing base. But I think what you commented on the on the 1Q call was that, you know, USMCA protects you from a lot of that. And, you know, really, the only tariff impact is iTero Mhmm. Coming out of Israel and and very manageable on a cost basis, you know, in terms of total company. Is there any risk of that changing?
Is there anything in your sort of that you see in the horizon where that could reverse where, you know, Mexico tariffs could again come into play, or is that do you feel like that’s pretty safe?
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: Well, not that we’re aware of. Mean, if if things were to change, from a tariff situation, certainly, I mean, things can change. But right now, based on everything we know, no. I mean, that’s the exposure we’ve got is about a million dollars a month for iTero coming in from Israel.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Okay.
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: And we’re in China for China, right? So we have treatment planning in China, we have manufacturing in China, and any kind of marginal cost associated with some things from a supply perspective that we might import we think we can manage.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: And between Mexico and Poland and China, like you said, you’re developing more of a in a region for region. Right. And that was the direction you were moving in anyway, long before
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: the horizon. Exactly. We’ve been in Poland and we’ve been in China for a long time.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Yeah. Okay. So no change from that perspective. Okay. There’s no questions in the audience.
I’ll go to my customary closing questions sort of, what’s most misunderstood or underappreciated about Align? Underappreciated about Align?
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: Yeah. I would say, you know, and I actually had the benefit of leaving for two and a half years and got to hear from customers, not as an Align person, which was always surprising to me. But we are all for the doctor, right? All of our twenty million cases were because the doctor trusted Align and Invisalign to get the outcomes and treat their patient. And so, yeah, we are really excited about driving consumer awareness and brand awareness and demand into the practices.
But it really is about the doctor, everything, and all the things that we design and do. There’s feedback from the doctor on ways to improve, how to be easier to do business with, all of those things. So I would say it’s probably my own personal insight from having been out in the wild for two and a half years and hearing from customers like, why didn’t you tell me this when I was here the first time? But, you know, it really is framing that the doctor is the hero. You know, if the doctor trusts us and feels confident in using our appliance and our workflow, that’s exactly what we’re focused on doing.
Okay. And I
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: remember that was a little bit of a point of contention years ago when sort of the, you know, the the move between ortho and GP and some of the, the consumer work, it was, you know but seems like it’s been a focal point of Joe’s to address that over the years and
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: Absolutely. Messages resonating. Yeah. And, you know, when you think about it, you know, the GP referral is still really important for the ortho. So the greatest thing about having digital and Invisalign with iTero is the ability to collaborate.
So, you know, if that, like I said, you know, in the practice, the hygienist is scanning every patient, you’re identifying a lot of opportunity for treatment for the ortho as well. So that’s the way the motion is supposed to work. And, you know, we we make that as clear as possible. Okay. Great.
On that note, that’s all the time
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: we have for today. Thanks so much. Thank you. Frank. Appreciate it.
Thank Thanks, everyone.
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: Thank you.
Frank Gwynn, EVP and Managing Director, Americas, Align Technology: Thank you. Appreciate it. Wow. Of course.
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: Did a double take there. Sorry. How are you?
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Good. I’m good. Try to
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: balance everything. I appreciate that very much. I think it was good. You.
Alright. Awesome. We’ll catch up with you later?
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Yes. Yes. Let me know
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: if there’s any follow Yeah.
Mike Ryskin, Analyst, Bank of America: Same to you. If there’s anything else Okay.
Shirley Stacy, Investor Relations, Align Technology: From other before we head out. We’ll see you next time.
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