Paul Keel
Analyst · Bank of America
Allen, thanks for the question. Yes, getting Spark profitable is an important milestone for us. It was 6 years in the making and grounded in a lot of really good work on both the cost and the growth front. So maybe I'll take the 2 parts of your question in turn. With respect to the margin part of your question, we said previously that we expect Spark margins to eventually reach fleet average. And based on the steady progression that we've seen now over the past many quarters, we continue to believe that's an appropriate objective. Maybe a bit more color on that. In addition to the consistent unit cost progress that we've spoken about previously, our margins are also helped by improvements that we're making in setup and design times as well as changes to the portfolio mix and the commercial efficiencies that come from providing, both a fixed and aligner solution to customers. So of course, we get scale economies from this, one sales force selling both solutions. But equally important, it's also, we think, a much more credible position from which to approach customers. The doctors, of course, know how to best treat patients. We simply provide a full portfolio to help them do that. Now in the same way, we also get broader efficiencies with DSOs. So in that case, we not only provide a full ortho portfolio, but we also provide complete implant consumables and diagnostics offerings as well. So that also helps on the economics. Now with respect to market share, Spark has outgrown the global aligner category every year and essentially every quarter since it launched. And even now that it's at a much larger scale, we mentioned it's approaching $300 million in sales, Spark still grew high teens in Q3 before deferral. And we think that's quite a bit better than the market, which we think was probably low single digits in Q3. And all that is because we feel we have a compelling competitive business here. Like the full portfolio I mentioned, we also have deep, in some cases, 50-plus year positions in key geographies around the world. And very important today, we have a global supply chain with flexible manufacturing on 3 continents. So as you can pick up from my voice, we're pretty excited about the future for this business.