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Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Quarter Three 2014 Stratasys Earnings Conference call. My name is Mark and I'm your operator for today's call. (Operator Instructions) And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Shane Glenn, Vice President of Investor Relations for Stratasys. Go ahead please.
SG
Shane Glenn
Management
Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our third quarter financial results. On the call with us today are David Reis, CEO; Erez Simha, CFO and COO of Stratasys. A reminder that access to today's call, including the prepared slide presentation, is available online at the web address provided in our press release. In addition, a replay of today's call, including access to the slide presentation, will also be available, and can be accessed through the Investor Section of our website. A reminder that certain information included or incorporated in this presentation may be deemed to be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements are often characterized by the use of forward-looking terminologies such as may, will, expect, anticipate, estimate, continue, believe, should, intend, project or other similar words, but are not the only way these statements are identified. These forward-looking statements may include, but are not limited to, statements relating to the company's objectives, plans and strategies, statements that contain projections of results of operations or financial condition, including, with respect to the MakerBot, Solid Concepts, Harvest Technologies and GrabCAD acquisitions, and all statements, other than statements of historical facts, that address activities, events or developments that the company intends, expects, projects, believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties. The company has based these forward-looking statements on assumptions and assessments made by its management in light of their experience and their perception of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other factors they believe to…
DR
David Reis
Management
Thank you, Shane, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining today's call. We are very pleased with our third quarter results, which include strong topline revenue growth, including an impressive organic revenue growth of 35%. We continue to observe positive sales momentum from a broad range of products and applications, including a significant expansion in manufacturing application as well as another impressive contribution from MakerBot. In addition, the strong demand we'll continue to observe for our high-performance systems in the period is contributing for favorable product mix, which is having a positive impact on our margins. We believe our third quarter performance provides additional validation for the rationale behind our strategic initiatives and acquisitions. During the third quarter, we closed on the acquisitions of Solid Concepts, Harvest Technologies, GrabCAD and HAFNER'S. We believe these acquisitions will expand our ability to address wider spectrum of markets vertical application and technology solutions. We are focusing on serving our growing customer base and executing our integration plans. In addition, we're on aggressive path to position the company for long-term growth through incremental strategic investment in our channel and corporate infrastructure as well as through new product development and additional acquisitions. I'll return later in the call to provide you more detail on these developments and our strategy, but first I would like to turn the call over to our COO and CFO, Erez Simha, who will provide detail on our financial results. Erez?
ES
Erez Simha
Management
Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. As David mentioned in his opening remarks, we are very pleased with our third quarter performance. Financial highlights include total revenue for the third quarter increased by 62% over last year to $203.6 million. We generated impressive year-over-year organic revenue growth of 35%, driven by strong demand for our products and services. MakerBot branded products and services revenue was also impressive, increasing by over 80% when compared to the pro forma revenue that MakerBot generated during the third quarter of 2013. Our gross margin came in at a strong 58.4% for the quarter, impressive when you consider the lower gross margin contribution of recent acquisitions. Non-GAAP net income for the third quarter increased by 50% over the last year to $30.1 million or $0.58 per diluted share. Cash flow used for operations was $11 million, driven by one-time employee bonuses and retention payments related to the Solid Concepts and Harvest Technologies acquisitions. Product revenue in the third quarter increased by 48% to $160.2 million as compared to $108.3 million for the same period last year. Within product revenue, system revenue increased by 59% in the third quarter over the same period last year, driven in large part by MakerBot's impressive contribution to the quarter. Note that MakerBot became an organic revenue source as of August 15 midway for the period. System revenue growth, excluding the non-organic portion of MakerBot was also impressive, growing about 41% over the last year. We continue to observe strong growth across a wide range of products, driven by ongoing adoption of 3D printing technology for a broad range of applications from prototypes to direct digital manufacturing. A few notable area of strength included the continued sales in high-end Fortus systems, driven by increased demand for manufacturing applications, strong…
SG
Shane Glenn
Management
Thank you, Erez. As previously communicated, the recent acquisition of GrabCAD, which was closed on September, currently provides no incremental revenue and includes an ongoing development costs that are expected to negatively impact the fourth quarter by $0.03 to $0.05 per share. Stratasys provides the following information regarding the company's projected revenue and net income for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2014. Revenue guidance remains at $750 million to $770 million. Reflecting the recent acquisition of GrabCAD, non-GAAP net income guidance was adjusted to $115 million to $120 million or $2.21 to $2.31 per diluted share versus our previous guidance of $117 million to $122 million or $2.25 to $2.35 per diluted share. GAAP guidance was updated to a net loss of $31.6 million to $24.4 million or a loss of $0.63 to $0.49 per basic share. Non-GAAP earnings guidance excludes $80.6 million to $81.1 million of projected amortization of intangible assets, $29.4 million to $29.9 million of share-based compensation expense, $14.6 million of impairment charges, $66.7 million to $68.7 million in non-recurring expenses related to acquisitions and includes $46.9 million to $47.9 million in tax expenses related to non-GAAP adjustments. The appropriate reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures are provided in a table in the press release and a table that provides itemized details on non-GAAP financial measures. Stratasys provided the following additional information regarding the company's performance and strategic plans. Operating expenses will expand materially in 2014 compared to 2013, driven by significant investments to support MakerBot product development and sales expansion, other investments in sales and marketing to drive future market adoption, and increased R&D investments to fund technology innovation and new product development. Growth in operating expenses includes significant investments to support the integration and alignment of the recent acquisitions of Solid Concepts and Harvest Technologies, as well as the inclusion significant development expenses associated with the acquisition of GrabCAD. Capital expenditures are projected at $50 million to $60 million for 2014 and $160 million to $200 million for 2015, which includes significant investments to support future growth. Additionally, Stratasys reiterated its long-term operating model as provided on the following slide. Now I'd like to turn the call back over to David Reis who will provide you with a more detailed strategic overview. David?
DR
David Reis
Management
Thank you, Shane. We are recognizing the results of focused strategies that's capitalizing on many exciting growth opportunities. We began the fourth quarter with significant positive momentum, as our markets continued to grow and opportunities developed at an exciting rate. We remain focused on our strategic priorities and will pursue leadership in every area in which we operate, while investing aggressively to capture future growth and deliver shareholder value. We remain focused on those objectives. One of the fastest growing segments within our industry is direct digital manufacturing and end-use parts production. Our parts service strategy supported our core strategic imperatives of expanding our DDM expertise as well as leading the market and an introduction of vertical market solutions. Our recent acquisition of Solid Concepts and Harvest Technologies have helped us to grow our DDM and vertical market capabilities. Since closing these acquisitions in the third quarter, we've been focused on the post-merger integration process for the newly acquired companies with RedEye, with a team consisting of leaders from across the combined organizations. The integration will be an ongoing process over the next 18 months. Our plan is to combine the sales, application, marketing, business development, manufacturing functions into one unified group. The rationale for our parts service initiative remains the same. First is a new offering will be a growing and profitable business supporting our strategic imperatives around DDM and vertical market applications. Also early in the process, we're observing from positive trends from the combination as we have begun to shift over fulfillment to maximize capacity utilization as well as make better use of our geographical reach and combined technology expertise. Second, we believe Stratasys will have opportunities for synergistic selling of systems and services across our larger combined customer base. To be clear, we're in the early…
OP
Operator
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Please stand by for your first question, which comes from the line of John Baliotti of Janney Capital Markets.
JM
John Baliotti - Janney Capital Markets
Analyst
David or Erez, just based on the comments and the revised numbers that we have, it looks like the increased expenses for 2014 are discrete events, the M&A, the 11 new products. But, David, given your comments and the fact that you left the long-term guidance intact, is it fair to expect that you have built in a path to a greater efficiency and scale of these portfolio additions?
ES
Erez Simha
Management
When you look at what happened to Stratasys this quarter and year-to-date, we're growing extremely fast, 35% organic growth with and without MakerBot. It's related with higher than what we planned and what we expected to grow. There're plenty of opportunities on the table in the market that we can capture. And those opportunities require investments. The effective tax rate is a bit lower than what we estimated. We leveraged the opportunity to invest more and capture more opportunities. And don't forget that the tax structure is part of our unique business model and they allow us to invest more and capture more opportunities in order to grow faster. The fruit of those investments, you cannot see in the financial statement, the box after we put after we generate a stream of recurring revenue, which is extremely profitable in the future of consumables and services that you don't see today in the financial statement. And I think the ROI there is extremely, extremely fast.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Troy Jensen of Piper.
TP
Troy Jensen - Piper
Analyst
I guess I want to follow up to John's question a little bit. Just on the spending side, so I think the reason it sucks down today and the concerns a lot of new investors have is with respect to operating margin leverage. So if you look at this quarter, you got a nice revenue beat, but your operating margins came in below my model and the EPS upside really came from taxes. So can you just talk on when do you think the spending will slow down and when you slow more than the growth rate of the revenues, when can we start to see leverage and when do we hit this 18% to 23% range?
ES
Erez Simha
Management
(inaudible) behind the financial statement when we added MakerBot and we added service bureau businesses, those businesses impact on the combined operating margin of the company. And leave for a moment aside the fact that we choose to invest a little bit more. The core business of Stratasys generating extremely high profitable margins, as it used to do, we are adding business models that are a little bit different that maybe the dramatic result is lower operating margin still does not have any impact on total stability of the core business and also to diversify the businesses which are hereditary, but carry different business model. I think that the investment that is part of our strategy to try and grow as fast as possible and capture all the opportunities that are on the table today. And as we box it, we're generating future extremely high stream of revenue, which is profitable.
DR
David Reis
Management
I think that when we said it also during our opening slides, the acquisition strategy is very, very focused. Not all the acquisitions that we've done in the later part of the year were planned at the beginning of the year. Now each acquisition like this requires investment in order to integrate it correctly into Stratasys and in the future enjoy the synergies. I want to repeat what Erez said. The core business of Stratasys did have improved margins compared to previous quarters. So what you see is really the result of acquisition. And as I said earlier, I think the acquisitions are extremely focused, are serving the strategy the way we published it, which I think is unique. And therefore, we have increased expenses in the short and medium term to final this PMI of (inaudible).
TP
Troy Jensen - Piper
Analyst
About the new products launch yesterday, did any of them come out of Skunkworks? I know there's still seven-odd new technologies in the pipeline.
DR
David Reis
Management
I prefer not to answer this question, Troy. I think we came out with many, many new very innovative products. Again, I think we're talking about the last two quarters, probably all together over 10 new products and materials, which are in places regardless of their origin.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Ken Wong of Citigroup.
KC
Ken Wong - Citigroup
Analyst
Services gross margins were up, were obviously impacted by the acquisitions. Just wondering when should we expect you guys to be able to ramp those gross margins back to the mid-40% that we saw the last couple of quarters?
ES
Erez Simha
Management
Services gross margin, this is a mix between the parts business, which obviously is now taking a larger part of the equation end of business, and the traditional service business that you saw in previous quarters. Maybe the traditional service business is generating same margin as it used to generate in previous quarters. But again, having parts business, which carry a little bit of lower margin, the result is consolidated average gross margin as you see in Q3. I think it will take time to drive margins up. It requires integration activity, which we take a few quarters to try and leverage the synergies between the two companies. It's not a one-quarter, not even two or three quarters story. But we do see and we do think that we would be able to leverage those margins up in the future.
DR
David Reis
Management
I think we said also in the presentation that we expect the PMI process, so the service bureaus to take 18 months. Now if you go back to the rationale which was presented in the last quarter and the previous quarter why we went ahead and made those transactions, it also relies on the fact that we do strongly believe that over time, we'll be able to generate synergies between the parts business, the hardware sales, our strategic account activity. Now in order to get to it, we need first of all to integrate Solid Concepts, Harvest with RedEye, which is stage one. And then we're going to go ahead and try and explore those synergies. And as I said, this will take up to 18 months.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Amit Daryanani of RBC Capital Markets.
AM
Amit Daryanani - RBC Capital Markets
Analyst
I have two questions as well. Maybe first to start off with regarding the MakerBot portfolio, which seems to be part of the issue in the margins. Is there a focus, is there a potential to improve MakerBot margins over the next one to two years? And if so, what are the levers that would you help you improve the MakerBot margins, given the fact you do have good growth there?
DR
David Reis
Management
I think that over time, it is our intention to improve the MakerBot margin. I think the business such as MakerBot, which is relatively compared to the core Stratasys is high volume, we should expect over time to create improved margin for improved manufacturing processes. I think that we're going to improve our offering in a way that will allow us to generate better margins.
ES
Erez Simha
Management
And again, it's not in the short term.
AM
Amit Daryanani - RBC Capital Markets
Analyst
Maybe I don't understand. How do you get that? Is it going to be more services? Are you going to try to make it a close to materials loop? If you could maybe talk about what are the potential levers to help the margins?
DR
David Reis
Management
Just to give you an example, we introduced a new offering for service, for example, for MakerBot customers, which is adopted nicely by those customers. This is improving our overall margin. We are adding product elements, which is sold with the printers, with the consumables. The overall offering over time will improve its margin.
AM
Amit Daryanani - RBC Capital Markets
Analyst
The GrabCAD dilution that you talked about in Q4, $0.03 to $0.05, does that sustain through 2015? Could it be '16 and dilutive in 2015? Or are there offsets as you're looking at hopefully to reduce the dilution? Any help on that would be helpful and thanks.
ES
Erez Simha
Management
We didn't discuss it in 2015 guidance. The nature of the acquisition is almost all of it is R&D type. But when we will guide about 2015, we would also discuss GrabCAD.
DR
David Reis
Management
The GrabCAD, which is a little maybe remote from the EPS effect, I think that the GrabCAD is a great company. What we got with GrabCAD is a leading team of software professionals, which we consider to be the top of the industry coming with extremely strong community with 1.5 million users that I think today all of you can appreciate the huge value that Thingiverse gave to MakerBot and we are adding another very strong community to the Stratasys family. So from the perspective of GrabCAD, yes, it's affecting EPS, but we're bringing on board the team which at the end of the day supports our strategy of increasing 3D printing accessibility, improving customer intimacy, basically the ability to create collaboration tools that will improve and encourage the use of 3D printing. So it's really a strategic acquisition and yes, it has in the short to medium term effect on EPS.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Wamsi Mohan of Merrill Lynch.
WL
Wamsi Mohan - Merrill Lynch
Analyst
You beat the quarter solidly here, but you're not increasing your full year topline, indicating some deceleration from very strong organic growth rates. So two parts. Is this market related or product transition related or just some conservatism on your part? And the actual organic growth rate, which is so much higher than the rest of the market and the other larger player in the market, perhaps you could comment about that? And quick one for Erez as well, the increase in CapEx seems quite significant. Can you give us some more color about these 2015 CapEx plans and also how you intend to fund it?
DR
David Reis
Management
We said in the presentation that we entered Q4 with good momentum. On one hand, it's a very exciting quarter. We are placing and upgrading the maturity of our offering in one quarter, including all the Connex Eden lines, both of the Fortus lines. We entered into the quarter with good momentum.
ES
Erez Simha
Management
When you grow 35% organically year-over-year, you have to plan ahead both manufacturing capacity and infrastructure. And what you see there is mainly around infrastructure, manufacturing capacity and manufacturing equipment that we have to build up in order to fulfill our plan for the next three to four years. Those investments by nature are made in advance and you read later on the utilization during the next three to four years. And we see 2015 as a step year for us to invest on facilities and manufacturing capacity in order to make sure that the company has whatever it requires to fulfill our needs in 2016, '17 and '18.
WL
Wamsi Mohan - Merrill Lynch
Analyst
How do you intend to fund it?
ES
Erez Simha
Management
I did not decide it yet.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Patrick Newton of Stifel.
PS
Patrick Newton - Stifel
Analyst
One clarification in case I missed it, Erez, did you provide RedEye revenue or collective service bureau revenue in the quarter?
ES
Erez Simha
Management
No, you didn't miss it. We didn't provide. RedEye today is part of the parts business. We report it as one unit.
PS
Patrick Newton - Stifel
Analyst
Can you quantify that at all just on a sequential or year-over-year basis just to give us an idea of how much of a contribution Harvest and Solid Concepts was in the quarter?
ES
Erez Simha
Management
It's very difficult. We just started two months ago. A lot of the activities are already integrated. Go-to-market sales is under head. We're already doing manufacturing, load balancing between the different physical locations. So basically standalone reporting is not available.
PS
Patrick Newton - Stifel
Analyst
And then on the gross margin side, you stated strong demand for high-performance systems that drove the product gross margin. Can you give us a visibility into these main trends, and should we view the product gross margin as representing peak levels or is there still upside? And then on the service gross margin side, I think definitely below our expectations. But can you help us maybe provide a reasonable gross margin range for this business now that you higher service bureau revenue post the Harvest and Solid Concepts acquisitions?
ES
Erez Simha
Management
I would look at the gross margin and not try to break it down between the product and the service. And I think if you ahead at least for the short term, it should not stay at the same level. But you see today, the same level, it was last quarter. And so the service gross margin, it will take us time to bring it up to a level that the core service business of Stratasys used to be. Not a quarter, it's not two quarters, not three quarters. As David said, it's a frame of six quarters looking ahead and then we'll try to integrate the entire business into our core business. As for the product, I think that assumption would be that product gross margin will stay at the level that you see today in Q3 and you saw it today for those products.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Ananda Baruah of Brean Capital.
AC
Ananda Baruah - Brean Capital
Analyst
One two-part question for both David and Erez. Beginning with operating margins, I guess OpEx investment, given the conversation, the dialogue around increased M&A, new product cadence and invested to grow those new products, should we have an expectation for operating margins to expand in '15? It sounds like you're seeing up another investment-heavy year. So just want to understand that context. And I guess, Erez, in that regard, there also was in February/March mention of a reflexive view of tax rate in the context of your investment cadence. So how should we think about tax rate going forward as well?
ES
Erez Simha
Management
I think that 2015 is really too early to discuss. We're just in the middle of process of entering 2015 and we will guide the market when the process is done, finished. And we have good understanding of 2015 plan, good plan in place. As far as 2014 and the effective tax rate, the effective tax rate is one of the most difficult part to forecast. It's actually based on the regional taxable income and many more components that are difficult to focus and to manage. I think that a unique part of our business model is the low effective tax rate that allows to invest more, while maintaining stability of the entire business. And looking into Q4, I think that effective tax rate in Q4 will be below the lower range of the long-term model that we provided to the market.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Sherri Scribner of Deutsche Bank.
SB
Sherri Scribner - Deutsche Bank
Analyst
I noticed that your units were down sequentially. And now that you've had MakerBot for more than a year, I wanted to get a sense of what you think typical seasonality is going to be for your shipments as we move forward.
DR
David Reis
Management
I think it's more a matter of mix and it's a matter of mix of the MakerBot units that were more high-end MakerBot units sold this quarter compared to previous one. Don't forget that in previous quarters, the Z18 was not available commercially and was not in the market. I wouldn't take any conclusion out of the number of units that you see, the change in number of units that you see in Q3.
SB
Sherri Scribner - Deutsche Bank
Analyst
Are you seeing any seasonality in that business? Would June typically be strong and would you expect December to be particularly strong? Just trying to understand the seasonality.
DR
David Reis
Management
Usually Q3 is a little bit slower due to the vacation's time in schools and universities, off-season. So usually Q3 is slow compared to, for example, Q2 or Q4. I think also in the US, Q3 as a seasonal quarter is not as good as Q4.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Jonathan Shaffer of Credit Suisse.
JS
Jonathan Shaffer - Credit Suisse
Analyst
I was just wondering if you might be able to give a little bit of color around the MakerBot growth in the quarter. I know you had a couple of large product introductions, including the Z18 and the Mini. And I was just wondering what kind of customer appetite you're seeing for the Z18 in particular.
DR
David Reis
Management
Again, we don't disclose the breakdown between the different product lines. But I think it was very visible the fact that we did grow MakerBot sales 80% Q-over-Q. I can show you that we see very good acceptance to the Z18, result indicating the exact number of units. The 80% was based on a pro forma basis when you look at the year-over-year.
JS
Jonathan Shaffer - Credit Suisse
Analyst
I just meant more underlying appetite, no specific numbers. Is the Z18 being well received?
DR
David Reis
Management
The answer is yes, very well received.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Paul Coster of JPMorgan.
PJ
Paul Coster - JPMorgan
Analyst
I just want to go to your comments on customer intimacy in the context of the service and parts business. Are you starting to see any examples of you placing your capabilities inside the supply chain of customers and/or customers placing discrete operational units inside your own facilities? And do you expect that to grow in the future, a virtue of manufacturing capability essentially?
DR
David Reis
Management
I said earlier what we're very focused in the next few months is first of all to integrate the RedEye with Harvest and Solid Concepts. This is task number one. We need to unify the sales force, manufacturing capabilities, recording systems. There's a lot of work that has to be done there. When this is done, we're going to go to the next stage, which has to do with exploring the synergies between the parts selling entity and the hardware and consumables selling entities. We did not change our mind and we think that there are local synergies, but we did not start to explore them at this point of time.
PJ
Paul Coster - JPMorgan
Analyst
My second question is to do with R&D. You see, one of your potential competitor has come out with a sort of hybrid solution, which is combining two types of print engines. Is this something we should also expect of Stratasys in the future, not that specific configuration, but nonetheless combinations of print engines in one solution?
DR
David Reis
Management
Unfortunately, I cannot disclose our roadmap. What I can say is that we've demonstrated very nicely this quarter and previous quarters that we are accelerating products to market and we have all the intention and it's part of our strategic imperative to do it also in the coming quarters and years. So you should expect to see more and faster introductions to market. I cannot discuss the technologies and combinations and so on.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Jason North of Jefferies.
JJ
Jason North - Jefferies
Analyst
Could you discuss the ramp in CapEx for 2015? Is that mainly due to Solid Concepts or are there drivers in there? And then also, how does that relate to your new mix for your geographic footprint? And with the big currency moves we've seen, what does that mean for your cost basis for next year?
ES
Erez Simha
Management
It's mainly around the business which is not the [ph] quad business, but the core business of Stratasys or the business of Stratasys without the bulk business. And again, I said it in previous quarter, it's around the investment in infrastructure and manufacture capacity and manufacturing equipment in order to make sure that we have enough capacity and enough infrastructure and IT infrastructure to serve us and take us as of 2015 for the next three to four years. Those investments usually are being done in steps, meaning you don't build infrastructure and manufacturing capacity year-over-year. You do it once every three to four years. And I don't think it will have a significant impact on the cost basis of the company.
JJ
Jason North - Jefferies
Analyst
Do you all see the impacts for the recent currency moves in terms of your margin profile for next year?
ES
Erez Simha
Management
No, nothing.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Holden Lewis of Oppenheimer.
HO
Holden Lewis - Oppenheimer
Analyst
First, you said yourself that you have to put more CapEx out there because of the rate of growth in the markets. So I'm kind of curious, in light of your 25% organic growth rate, is that that you're continuing to ramp the CapEx suggest that at least for the foreseeable future that 25% is going to be a little bit low compared to the current rate of 35%? And then the second question relates to your sort of refresh of your products. Can you talk a little bit about in light of the Hewlett-Packard release, did these new products come with better speed, fine features? In other words, is it sort of cutting into what Hewlett-Packard states that they will have?
ES
Erez Simha
Management
Regardless of what today growth rate that we expect and we didn't provide any direction about our expectation for growth for 2015 or '16, the fact is that year-to-date, we grew 35% organically. If you add to that the amount of inorganic growth, the number is impressive. And those numbers require investment in both infrastructure and manufacturing capacity looking three to four years ahead. And we have to plan our investment as such that we will be ready in the next couple of years to fulfill the demand that we feel we'll see.
DR
David Reis
Management
We came out with, I think, very impressive new products to the market in the past quarter and we just announced yesterday more products. Each of them has unique characteristics. I'm not going to go through all of them. Some of them are increasing speed. Some of them are increasing capabilities, material availability, improved reliability. Nevertheless, going back to the HP question, as I said publicly before, we have quite a lot of innovation in our focus in different parts of the company and we feel very confident that we can deal with the HP challenge. And we would be waiting when HP is going to reach the markets.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Peter Christiansen of UBS.
PU
Peter Christiansen - UBS
Analyst
This is Peter in for Steve Milunovich. Just following up on the HP introduction last week, I know it's early, but has there been any feedback from any of your top customers and do you get the sense or is there any fear that HP's announcement could lock up spending next year as we wait for their product to be introduced?
DR
David Reis
Management
We did not get such response on the markets. Second, HP announcement, I think, is an important announcement. It's kind of thing that all of talked about additive manufacturing and the potential in the market. Specifically, what was announced is technology. And from my perspective, I'm not sure and I don't think we have enough information on it exactly, what is the product which is going to result from this technology. I could also add that our markets have large a variety of requirements and our customers have very large a variety of demand from us. And I don't think that a single technology would be able to answer all those demands. So to put all of it together, I think HP joining the market is good news and Stratasys is going to be ready and we're ready right before for this event.
PU
Peter Christiansen - UBS
Analyst
Can you just discuss some of the nature of some of the impairment charges that you took in the quarter?
ES
Erez Simha
Management
The nature is related to one of the product line that we acquired in the MakerBot transaction.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from the line of James Ricchiuti of Needham & Company.
James Ricchiuti - Needham & Company: Just a question on the integration of the parts businesses. 18 months fairly long in integration. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about milestones along the way and how that might translate to improving profitability on the service business.
DR
David Reis
Management
We divided into two parts. Like I said, stage one is merging RedEye, Solid Concepts and Harvest into one operational entity. This will take, I will say, two to three quarters and should result in a more efficient activity of the sales force, better customer access and some efficiencies in manufacturing across, I think, seven facilities that we have now. After this is done, we're going to get to the second stage, which will be the synergies between the different parts of Stratasys and the service bureau activity, which will result in improvements in the margins at this time. But again, stage one is about two to three quarters and then we go to stage two.
James Ricchiuti - Needham & Company: Erez, I wonder if you could talk, was the organic growth that you saw in the quarter uniform across your geographic regions, just in light of concerns people have had about Europe?
ES
Erez Simha
Management
I think that we saw an extremely high growth in Asia Pacific. Europe is doing extremely well. I didn't see any issues that make us concerned about any kind of influence on our business.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Scott Schmitz of Morgan Stanley.
SS
Scott Schmitz - Morgan Stanley
Analyst
Just a question on the consumables line. You talked about some education and some investments that are driving the consumables growth. Does the growth rate maintain at the same level here in the mid to low-30%s or is there an acceleration that you expect or deceleration on the back of some of these investments?
DR
David Reis
Management
I think that the current growth is impressive and we're working extremely hard to keep it as it is.
SS
Scott Schmitz - Morgan Stanley
Analyst
Just on the linearity in the quarter, the DSOs are up. I think you attributed to the services business. But any comments on how linearity played out during the quarter and whether you expect DSOs to come back down or does that stay elevated with the services impact?
ES
Erez Simha
Management
The DSO was very similar to previous quarter. The impact of adding the service bureau resulted in DSO, as you see there. I think that looking forward, we will see same level of DSO.
OP
Operator
Operator
That concludes the question-and-answer session for today. So I would now like to hand the call back to the CEO, David Reis. Go ahead please.
DR
David Reis
Management
Thank you for joining our call today. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Good bye. Thank you very much.