Siemens Healthineers Stock

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Siemens Healthineers Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to the safe harbor statement on Page 2 of the Siemens Healthineers presentation. This conference call may include forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the company's current expectations and certain assumptions and are, therefore, subject to certain risks and uncertainties.

At this time, I would like to turn the call over to your host today, Mr. Marc Koebernick, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome to our Q3 earnings call for fiscal 2026. I'd like to thank all of you for joining us today. This morning at 7:00 a.m., we published our Q3 2026 results. All related materials for today's results call and release are available on the IR section of the Siemens Healthineers web page.

Our CEO, Bernd Montag; and CFO, Jochen Schmitz, will be taking you through today's presentation as usual. After the presentations, we will have a Q&A session.

As this has been working out nicely in the past quarters, we kindly ask that all participants limit themselves to 1 question each with the option to get back into the queue for a follow-up.

Additionally, please note that a full transcript and recording of today's call will be made available on our Investor Relations web page shortly after the session ends.

Again, thank you for being here. And now, I'll turn it over to our CEO, Bernd Montag.

Yes. Thanks, Marc, and also a warm welcome from my side. Let me start with a brief look at the key takeaways for today's call. This quarter, we had an outstanding equipment book-to-bill of 1.27, driven by our product strength and supported by new value partnerships. The latter includes 2 new sizable value partnerships with highly ranked health care institutions in the U.S., clearly underlining our market-leading position. But even excluding all value partnerships, our equipment book-to-bill was strong at about 1.17 in Q3, undoubtedly making up for the software -- softness we saw in Q2.

Operationally, our synergetic core of Imaging and Precision Therapy performed solidly, growing 5% in Q3. While Precision Therapy had a very strong growth with 9% this quarter, the Imaging growth was soft on tough comps of 12% in the prior year quarter and saw some revenue shifts into the next quarter. This shift will only be temporary, and we expect a clear acceleration in Q4 to get to decent mid-single-digit growth in fiscal year '26 in the Imaging segment as guided in November last year. However, Diagnostics is still challenged by the structural market rebasing in China and revenue dilution from our legacy platforms. This does not come as a total surprise, but the expected slowdown of the decline for Q3 has not materialized in the Diagnostics business.

When it comes to profitability, the reported excellent margin level was boosted by tariff refunds that we received in Q3. Excluding tariffs, we saw a decent underlying margin level despite headwinds like FX and inflation. As a consequence of the continued topline weakness in Diagnostics, and due to the tariff refunds, we update our outlook for fiscal 2026. We are lowering the revenue outlook range from 4.5% to 5% growth to now 3.5% to 4%. In addition, we raised the lower end and upper end of the EPS outlook range by EUR 0.15, which is exactly the impact of tariff refunds received in Q3. This shows that despite the lower revenue growth, the earnings are on track.

Now let me briefly touch on 2 topics relevant for shaping our company of the future. Just this week, we are showing great developments at ADLM, the biggest trade show in the Diagnostics space with very promising customer feedback paving the way for future growth. Also, let me share a brief update on the upcoming deconsolidation by Siemens. This deconsolidation is the final step in a journey that started with our legal separation 10 years ago. We are well advanced with our preparations for the spin and in very constructive discussions with Siemens AG. We are on track with our refinancing preparations as well as the discussions regarding remaining shared services and IT infrastructure.

Having said that, now over to our latest value partnerships. We are very proud to announce that we have entered 2 large partnerships with highly renowned institutions in the U.S. Those partnerships are in total very sizable, altogether amounting to several hundred million euros in terms of equipment order intake.

Let me start on the left-hand side of the chart. We are further strengthening our 35-year-long relationship with Cleveland Clinic, one of the leading health care systems in the U.S. We are moving to the next level of cooperation with a new 10-year strategic alliance. For Cleveland Clinic, we will not only be the provider of multiple imaging and therapeutic technologies, but also jointly develop a state-of-the-art theranostics cancer treatment program.

We also signed a multiyear value partnership with Vanderbilt Health, a nationally recognized top-tier academic medical center. In this partnership, we will also serve as the provider of advanced technology for diagnostic imaging and radiation oncology. In addition, this close collaboration will empower health care innovation through scalable AI uses in radiology, personalized medicine and workflow automation. In essence, both partnerships underscore 2 things: first, our unmatched relevance as a holistic partner for hospitals and health care systems; and second, the growing need for our unique capabilities of mastering patient twinning, precision therapy and health care AI.

We are reinforcing this position by continuously innovating in each capability in patient training, in precision therapy and in health care AI. And the growth dynamics of our latest innovations are a proof of that. We are gaining market share in CT based on our unique fleet of photon-counting CTs now accounting for roughly 30% of our total CT equipment order volume. We have increased market shares of CT in the U.S. to levels we are used to from MRI.

Another example is our DryCool technology in MR. This innovation now accounts for half of the units ordered in MR. It broadens the market for various use cases based on reduced total cost of ownership and a smaller footprint.

With regards to the other half, we have a clear commitment to significantly expand the reach of DryCool technology in the midterm. Our radiopharmaceuticals business is also gaining further traction in the U.S. The business delivers double-digit growth rates and is surpassing the USD 1 billion mark this year. Due to our broad distribution network and manufacturing capabilities, we are highly relevant for medical centers, but also for the IP holders.

The next step is to drive this growth also in Europe. We have just announced a new 8x radiopharmacy, the first in the U.K., delivering output at 8x the capacity of a single radiopharma facility today. In Precision Therapy, our all-new angiography portfolio is now delivering the expected acceleration in revenue growth following FDA approval. It covers all clinical needs in interventional radiology, cardiology and neuro interventions and is powered by OPTIQ AI, delivering a new level of image quality and reducing x-ray dose.

Varian's position as a strong growth engine in Healthineers is unchanged. Key here is the continuous innovation momentum. The new platform, which will be launched at ASTRO, is expected to further contribute to this momentum. Health care AI and the ability to scale this on a global level is another strong capability of ours and is highly relevant for our customers.

Our Syngo.CT Coronary Cockpit has just received FDA approval. This AI-powered application helps our customers to bring critical CT information into the cath lab. The cockpit is designed to automatically segment and label coronaries. It visualizes and quantifies plaque types for the whole coronary tree or individual lesions. This makes treatment better and faster.

And finally, we have strong traction for AI tools for radiation therapy planning. We can enhance our large installed base easily with tools like auto contouring of organs at risk. This enables dosimetrists and radiation oncologists to focus on review and fine-tuning, resulting in faster radiation treatment planning and higher patient throughput.

To sum it up, we continue to strengthen our unique capabilities, fostering our leading market positions across modalities. But also, our Diagnostics business has important innovations to showcase. At this year's ADLM, the biggest trade show in this space, Diagnostics launched Atellica Forte, an evolution of our proven Atellica solution chemistry and immunoassay platform.

The Atellica Forte series represents meaningful innovation, reliability and progress while also reinforcing continuity, confidence and investment protection across the Atellica Systems portfolio. It comes with a new digital architecture, the integration of AI agents with new productivity features and expands patients' access to care with diverse sample types from venous blood to urine and even fecal samples, and now, with innovative, low-volume sampling options and integrated capillary workflows.

Atellica Forte can run 24 assays with CE-marked capillary claims, including a comprehensive metabolic panel using as little as a finger stick of blood and an industry's best. Adding capillary capability helps Core Lab scale testing offerings easily and using existing infrastructure. This offers clinical labs greater patient reach and access to more testing volume without requiring expensive health care specialists. However, we are not only upgrading our analyzer, we are also focusing on clinical relevance by expanding our competitive diagnostics menu in the area of brain health.

Our blood-based Alzheimer's research assays and a CE-marked NfL assay for multiple sclerosis now under FDA review. We are building a comprehensive biomarker portfolio to help advance earlier detection, monitoring and understanding of neurological diseases. With the updated Atellica platform and the great set of brain health research assays, the Diagnostics team is clearly differentiating from peers and improving its competitiveness.

Now, let me briefly summarize the quarter before Jochen will run you through the financials in more depth. The revenue growth picture is broadly unchanged compared to the second quarter. The synergetic core is performing well, especially having in mind strong comps in the prior year quarter, while Diagnostics suffers from the market rebasing in China and from revenue dilution from our legacy platforms.

In terms of comparing quarters, the equipment book-to-bill in Q2 was clearly a weak spot. We committed to this recovery in Q3, and I'm very happy that it did more than that. The outstanding equipment book-to-bill of 1.27 is a documentation of our continued strength in the market. The 5% growth in the synergetic core was driven by a strong Precision Therapy quarter, which itself saw the strong swing back to growth of Advanced Therapies as flagged.

Imaging posted softer growth this quarter. However, this is not a fundamental topic, but a temporary topic of comps and shifts. The tariff refund supported a very high profitability this quarter. Excluding tariffs, we had a decent margin level despite low absolute conversion and year-over-year headwinds from FX and inflation. The contribution from tariff refunds was 490 basis points in Imaging and 350 basis points in Precision Therapy, respectively.

In Diagnostics, the continued year-over-year decline was expected and well flagged. The extent of the decline, however, higher than expected. Nevertheless, Diagnostics achieved sequential margin improvement, quite decent, especially considering the missing conversion.

Jochen will give -- will now guide you through the financials. And with this, over to you.

Yes. Thank you, Bernd, and good morning. Let us start with the financial performance of the Imaging segment in Q3. Imaging posted soft growth this quarter due to tough comps of 12% in the prior year quarter and due to some revenue shifts into Q4. Consequently, we expect a clear acceleration of the Imaging growth in Q4. I will give you more color on the sequential acceleration of the Imaging growth later in the call. The Imaging margin benefited from tariff refunds in Q3. Before refunds, the Imaging margin was at 21.6%, below a very strong prior year quarter with 23.7% margin. Last year's margin was additionally lifted by the shift of a government grant last year from Q4 to Q3. Considering the low absolute conversion from softer growth in this quarter, the Imaging margin shows a decent profitability level in Q3.

Now, over to Precision Therapy. Our Precision Therapy segment showed growth in all its businesses, Varian Advanced Therapies and also ultrasound, led obviously by Advanced Therapies. As expected, Advanced Therapies showed strong momentum due to the launch of the entire angio platforms, which started to ramp up throughout Q3. On the bottom line, the Precision Therapy margin benefited also from tariff refunds. Before tariff refund, the Q3 margin was at 14.1%.

Looking back, similar to Imaging, we saw very strong margins in the prior year quarter based on a very favorable mix. Year-over-year, foreign exchange was an additional headwind, yet the Precision Therapy margin declined only slightly after the strong prior year quarter due to conversion from strong growth.

And now, let's complete the segment run-through with Diagnostics. In Diagnostics, in Q3, we saw a continuation of the year-over-year revenue and margin decline. Due to the structural market rebasing in China and the revenue dilution from the tailing off of our legacy platforms, especially in North America, where the installed base of our legacy is particularly large.

Looking at the bottom line, prior year's strong margin of 9.2% benefited from a positive one-off from the release of pension liabilities related to prior year periods. Excluding the positive one-off, the year-over-year margin decline is still material. It was driven by negative conversion from the significant revenue decline and additionally by headwind from foreign exchange. While margin ex refunds of tariffs of 3% is still low in Q3, we saw slight sequential margin improvement as laid out last quarter.

Let us now have a look at how this all adds up to the group numbers. Let's start with the top line. Revenue growth this quarter was against tough comps of 7.6%, which obviously is also visible in certain regions. Americas and Asia Pacific were going against very strong comps, especially in the Americas of 14%. EMEA returned to growth after being flattish on a high absolute level in the fiscal year. So EMEA was the growth driver in the region this quarter.

China was down by 10% this quarter. On the one hand, Diagnostics in China continues to decline due to the structural market rebasing in China. And on the other hand, the synergetic core in China declined against very tough comps of mid-teens growth in the prior year quarter. In absolute terms, the revenue in the synergetic core is over the year sequentially flat, in line with our assessment that the Chinese equipment market is currently muted, yet relatively stable at a low level.

Now, let's have a look at the earnings momentum in Q3. Earnings this quarter benefited from the tariff refunds. Excluding the refunds, we saw decent profitability of 15.4% despite soft growth in the quarter and despite ongoing headwinds from foreign exchange and first impacts from inflation in the supply chain.

In the year-over-year comparison, next to the tough comps in revenue, we also had very good segment margins in the prior year quarter. In Imaging and Varian from very good mix, and Imaging and Diagnostics from positive one-offs in the prior year.

Finally, the valuation of share-based payments linked to Siemens AG shares had a negative year-over-year effect on this quarter. However, this quarter is the very last time we see an effect from this as we have changed the mechanism now.

On EPS, there are 2 significant distortions in the year-over-year view. First, the refunds impacted this quarter by around EUR 0.15 positive. Second, the positive impact from equity income in last year's Q3 of around EUR 0.05. Highlight cash in absolute terms amounting to over EUR 1 billion, also benefiting from the tariff refunds. The cash conversion rate was very good with 1.12, driven by strong cash collection and not by the refunds.

The tariff refunds have a cash conversion rate of, so to say, only 1 based on the cash-based accounting treatment of the matter. This means the cash conversion rate of 1.12 was even diluted by the tariff refunds. Consequently, we reduced the net debt compared to Q2 by around EUR 800 million to around EUR 12 billion and reduced leverage from 3.1x in Q2 to 2.8x in Q3.

Growth in Q3 was slower than anticipated, primarily to the continued decline of diagnostics, but also due to softer growth in Imaging. In Imaging, we had already anticipated and flagged softer imaging growth due to the very tough comps in Imaging with 12% in the prior year quarter. What we did not anticipate was that, for example, the site readiness in Q3 for installations in the field did not keep up with the very high factory output in Q3, driven by the very high demand for our DryCool portfolio. This is only a temporary topic. Hence, we expect revenue to shift from Q3 into Q4.

Additionally, we expect very good growth momentum in CT. In Q3, growth accretion from photon-counting was a bit muted due to a very tough comps. In last year's Q3, the 2 new photon-counting CTs, Prime and Pro, caused a step change in revenue after the FDA approval. Now, in Q4 this year, these 2 photon-counting CT platforms are also available in China. This is just one driver of many for the accretion to growth from our photon-counting CT business to continue.

Together with continued strong momentum in Advanced Therapies, we expect growth in the synergetic core to clearly accelerate in Q4 compared to Q3. Exceptional growth in our procedure business, our continuously nicely growing service business and the strong order book backing our equipment business are the building blocks for the expected revenue acceleration in Q4.

In Diagnostics, the rebasing of the Chinese market and the revenue dilution driven by the decline in legacy platforms continues. What did not materialize this quarter was a relapse of the OEM volume, particularly out of China. Also, the year-over-year decline in the legacy platforms continues. Sequentially so, the quarter of this fiscal year were on a stable yet low level in terms of absolute revenue, and we expect this level to slightly increase only in Q4. Hence, we expect a mid-single-digit percentage decline also in Q4, similar to what we have seen so far this fiscal year.

Despite the weak year for the Diagnostics business, the group is on track for our underlying earnings growth this fiscal year. On the left side, slightly faded, you see the same earnings per share bridge from Q2, which is unchanged. Operational improvement in earnings per share is on track despite the continued weakness from diagnostics, and the headwind from foreign exchange and tariffs are as expected, so all as expected.

Inflation in the supply chain, notable from memory chips, raw materials and logistics started to come in with around EUR 0.01 headwind only in Q3, and we expect the P&L impacts from inflation to intensify, obviously, in Q4. With this, our assumption of around EUR 0.05 headwind in the second half from inflation in the supply chain is also unchanged. The only change in our 2026 earnings per share bridge is the tariff refunds, which are roughly equivalent to EUR 0.15 EPS. Therefore, we raised our EPS guidance for fiscal year 2026 by exactly the amount of the tariff refunds.

And this brings me to the next slide, the outlook slide. We update our outlook for fiscal year 2026. We lowered the revenue growth guide to 3.5% to 4%, primarily due to Diagnostics revenue not recovering in the second half of this fiscal year. As outlined before, the slower-than-expected revenue performance in Diagnostics is due to the rebasing of the Chinese market and the revenue dilution of the decline in legacy platforms.

For adjusted earnings per share, we raised the guide to be between EUR 2.35 and EUR 2.45. So the EPS range is raised by the tariff refunds, which amount to around EUR 0.15 in EPS. Thereby, the underlying EPS range remains unchanged due to the fact that the synergetic core is well on track. The downgrade in the Diagnostics revenue does not have a material impact on earnings due to the currently low profitability in Diagnostics.

As outlined before, we expect the tax rate to be close to 23% coming from the initial assumption of 24% to 26%. In financial income, net, we expect around minus EUR 330 million in fiscal year 2026, including a one-off tailwind from interest for the tariff refund.

Let me also update you with our latest view on Q4. As outlined before, we expect a clear acceleration of revenue growth in the synergetic core with Imaging accelerating into the higher single digits and Precision Therapy continuing growth in the higher single digits, maybe not fully at the 9% level of the current quarter.

In Diagnostics, we expect a continuous decline at a mid-single-digit percentage level also in Q4. On margins, we expect an Imaging sequential margin expansion compared to the Q3 margin ex refunds from the accelerated growth. In Precision Therapy, year-over-year margin expansion will be tough against the very high prior year quarter of 17%, but we expect a good sequential improvement with the 14% margin ex tariff refunds from Q3 this quarter.

In Diagnostics, we continue to expect a significant year-over-year margin decline, at least sequentially flat compared to the Q3 margin ex refunds. Consequently, we expect for the full year, the Diagnostic margin ex refunds to approach the full year assumption from below, which is a mid-triple-digit basis points decline.

Now that we have updated you for fiscal year 2026 and our upcoming Q4, let me now share some of our current expectations regarding already known impacts for the next fiscal year 2027. As we come closer to fiscal year's end and being in the midst of our budget planning phase for '27, we want to provide you with some thoughts on the 2027 earnings per share drivers.

Baseline for 2027 is our 2026 adjusted EPS guide without the tariff refund, i.e., a midpoint of EUR 2.25 as the baseline in 2026. On our last Capital Markets Day, we committed to double-digit EPS growth year-over-year over the midterm. We stated that we will be mitigating the EUR 400 million tariff impact by 2028. We're seeing positive contributions starting in 2027. The mitigation measures, as indicated, will not ramp up in a straight line. The EUR 400 million mitigation will be somewhat back-end loaded.

Now what changed since the Capital Market Day is that additional inflation in the supply chain became a material macroeconomic headwind, especially in memory chips and certain raw materials and also in logistic costs. Currently, we would assume that the inflation headwind in fiscal year '27 will be roughly offset by the mitigation ramp for tariffs in 2027.

While we are at the topic of headwinds in 2027, let me point out some other more technical effects that we already know today. The tax rate this fiscal year is expected to be closer to 23% coming from our initial assumption of 24% to 26%. We do not expect this low level to be sustainable, so we expect a normalization towards the normal tax rate of 24% to 26%.

In financial income, net, we previously pointed to minus EUR 340 million in fiscal year 2026. With the tariff refund, we also received a refund for interest, so we now expect around minus EUR 330 million for this year. From this 2026 level, we see 3 main effects next year. The refinancing at higher rates that we did in March 2026 will annualize next year. Early next year, another loan is due to be refinanced at higher rates. The higher financing costs from higher rates will be partly be offset by a decreasing loan volume from organic deleveraging.

In total, we would currently expect financial income net to decrease, meaning becoming more negative by a mid- to high double-digit million euro number next year from the basis of the minus EUR 330 million this year. The refinancing is expected a normal course of business. This is not related to the deconsolidation by Siemens AG. As said, we do not expect a material impact from the deconsolidation on our financial income net. And from what we know now, this also holds for fiscal year 2027.

What we see next year related to the deconsolidation by Siemens AG are other recurring separation costs. We pointed to a mid-double-digit million number for this topic with the deconsolidation happening earliest in April next year, the cost will not reach the full fiscal year level in the next year.

And with this, back to you, Marc.

Yes. Thank you, Jochen. Let's go to the Q&A. [Operator Instructions] And for transparency reason, I will just kind of now give you the order of appearance of the first 3 callers. First, I have Graham, then I have Veronika, and then, I have Hassan on the line. So let me now first go to Graham Doyle from UBS.

Jochen, just to the slide you ran through there on Slide 15, where you're plotting the sort of EPS path for 2027. Is it fair to kind of contextualize that and say, with all the information you have today in terms of inflation and the macro that you consider this to be a kind of a prudent or conservative view in terms of what you can deliver? And maybe just push that slightly further, are we looking at that chart and thinking mid-single-digit EPS growth from the sort of clean base is a sensible starting point for next year?

Yes, Graham, thanks for your question. I mean, obviously, we try to be as transparent as we can based on the current planning status we are in. And therefore, we provide this slide. When I look at it, I think this is, I would say, a very complete picture based on what we know today. That is always, I would say, the disclaimer. We don't know what we don't know. And I would see it the following, if you really want to base it out, I would say, we start with EUR 2.25 as the baseline for 2026. And I would consider us to be in the position to show net-net of all the effects, growth from the EUR 2.25. How much we need to see as we walk our way through the planning phase. This is really, I would say, base, base baseline. So we expect from today growth to the EUR 2.25, how much is difficult to say, and I see this as a prudent assessment.

So over to Veronika. Veronika, the floor is yours.

I'm going to just follow up on that fiscal '27 bridge, if that's okay, Jochen. I think one of the things that comes up a lot in discussions is obviously still the question of the separation costs, in particular, the branding fee. I'm just curious if you can share some preliminary thoughts on whether that's included in that bridge that you've presented. And then, obviously, also as you work towards the diagnostic separation, any costs related to that? Is that included in that bridge as well? So if you can give us some color on those 2 items, that would be super helpful.

Yes. Obviously, both topics were not mentioned. That is a signal on the bridge. When we talk about the separation cost from Siemens, we talk about recurring costs in the ballpark of EUR 50 million -- well, mid-double digit, EUR 50 million. This does obviously not include any branding fees. And based on the current assumptions and the discussions we have with Siemens, which are very constructive, we don't expect to have a branding fee in the coming years, just to say this clearly.

On the separation cost for -- potential separation costs for Diagnostics, they are not built into that bridge because if and when they would occur, we would also adjust for them because that is -- that would be then a portfolio measure. And I think that, as we also adjust potential gains and losses from portfolio transactions, we also like to say they relate -- adjust the related cost of it. So, therefore, it is not in, but would be adjusted.

That's very clear. And can I just quickly check. On my math, it's EUR 0.05 from tax, EUR 0.05 from the net interest expense and EUR 0.02 to EUR 0.03 from separation. So the headwind sort of EUR 0.10 to EUR 0.15 seem reasonable to you, or I guess, EUR 0.15 maybe?

Say that again. Sorry, it was difficult to hear at the beginning.

I was just double checking my math. So from what you said, it's about EUR 0.05 headwind from the tax rate, EUR 0.05 headwind from the higher interest expense and somewhere less than EUR 0.05 headwind from the separation. So I was just kind of trying to quantify that, is it a fair assumption...

It makes a lot of sense. I think these are meaningful. Yes, absolutely.

So next one would be Hassan from Barclays.

Another follow-up on the helpful bridge. Can you quantify the impact from inflation as it relates to tungsten and memory costs into FY '27 at current spots? And if the lower end that you're pointing to of what I think we're interpreting as mid-single digit, whether that assumes any deterioration in inflation from here? And then, what drives the acceleration beyond '27 back to double-digit and beyond given the midterms?

On the tungsten side, I think that is also a volatile topic. And we have seen it peaking to 6x, I would say, the prices, and they came down again to, I don't know, 2 to 3x the pricing. We need to see what it does. That's more -- maybe also more the reason why I would say this bridging item is also a bit fading because we don't know exactly, and we need to -- before we go out with a concrete guide, we need to take every second we get in additional information about the future to quantify that more clearly, just to say this thing.

The question is on memory chips, we expect to see this topic on an ongoing basis now for this year, '26 and '27. Question is how long will that last and will then create additional year-over-year effects? From our standpoint at some point in time that should be over because, otherwise, you can make also so much money with that stuff that people will start using their capacity also for this. You could at least argue like this. Therefore, when this starts to normalizing, and again, then we should not have this headwind anymore on a year-over-year basis. And then, we should see, I would say, the operational or the underlying profitability improvement in the business showing up as the net EPS growth. That's why we feel still good about our midterm ambition. But again, we don't know what we don't know.

Is that clear, Hassan?

It is.

Okay. Then next 3 people on the line would be first, Julien Dormois, then Julien Ouaddour and then Oliver Reinberg. So I'm starting with Julien from Jefferies.

Probably more of a high-level question, and you obviously signed 2 high-profile partnerships this quarter, but we also had some mixed messages, I would say, from hospitals in the U.S. about procedure trends and that sort of stuff. So just curious how your conversations are going with U.S. hospitals these days. Do they seem a little bit cautious for the second half and maybe for 2027? And the question would also extend to Europe. We start to hear a bit more about potential health care reforms also hitting hospitals at some stage. So just curious how your conversations are going with your customers.

Thank you, Julien. I mean, first message is certainly that when health systems like Vanderbilt and Cleveland Clinic commit to such substantial partnerships. It shows that they feel very comfortable with where health care is going and how central the piece, the role of imaging of interventional techniques of radiation oncology in cancer treatment are and to what extent what we do helps them to make their systems more efficient also. The debate is also very much about how can we support them doing more with less, how to live in a world with staff shortage, in a world also where it's clear that productivity is, to some extent, even if that is not a very medical term, is the name of the game. And that is why also the demand for our equipment is so robust because, I mean, you came from the procedure angle. The other angle is the productivity angle, which is needed. And our systems help to exactly make a system deliver high-quality care in the most efficient way.

When it comes to procedures in terms of in terms of direct -- how much imaging is there and/or how much radiation oncology is being done, we continue to see very good growth, and also, when you talk to these institutions. And we also see as -- and to some extent, when looking at the businesses we have, which are procedure-related directly because, otherwise, we are more in that investment type of situation. When you look at the procedure-dependent businesses we have, which is PETNET and also the ultrasound catheter business, they deliver, as you know, quite significant growth. So we are very positive that the momentum or the momentum sounds so temporary, but then the continued growth and demand for our solutions in the U.S. remains. And the topic of productivity is also what more and more governs the discussion in Europe and which is a good topic for us.

So moving over to the next Julien from Bank of America.

Bernd, I just wanted to come back on the comments you made about the CT market share in the U.S. now matching your MRI level. I mean, I only know your global market share, 35% for CT and 50% for MRI. Does it mean that you increase CT share to 50% in the U.S. already? And do you expect the same kind of development in other regions as well?

Okay. Thank you for the question, and maybe we were really a little bit mysterious. I think you are guessing not very wrong. And why this is a topic? I mean, we have -- I mean, when it comes to the U.S. market, the -- when we look at our market share Olympics, MR stands out traditionally and followed by molecular imaging and CT. Why CT now has a boost is basically the following aspect here that -- I mean, we had the discussion now and then that the spread of price points in CT is the most pronounced. There is a factor of 10 between entry-level and the high-end photon-counting CT.

And being a clear market -- super strong market share is basically only possible when you really, really have super strong differentiation across the entire product line, which is the case in MR, where it's from the nature of the technology a bit easier. While in CT, it is a testament to what extent our unique position in the high end with the photon-counting CT, the new opportunities we open up to what extent this is changing the CT market. And that is why we have now even in that -- from that point of view, sometimes more of a street fight in the CT space now also significantly uplifted our market share because of the rollout and all the excitement and market resonance in more and more segments for photon-counting CT.

Great. Thanks. And moving over to Oli Reinberg from Kepler.

I just wanted to discuss a bit more in detail the kind of imaging performance. I mean, Q3 was softer. You don't see any kind of change to the full-year guide. Can you just give us a bit of a feeling like how significant has been this kind of shift from Q3 into Q4? And also, what is your visibility on the kind of Q4 performance? And probably will you allow any kind of chance for sneak preview on next year? Can you just talk about the pull and pushes that we have to consider when thinking about imaging growth for '27?

Yes, Oli, thanks for the question. I think it's a justifiable question fully. And first of all, when we talked about the Q3 at the end of Q2 when we announced Q2, we said we were referring to the tough comps. We were also in the podcast referring to a mid-single digit and deliberately said 4% to 6%. It was clear that this will be not necessarily a quarter where we can think about the 6% we have shown in the first 2 quarters. That was clear.

And then, when you look at the shift, I mean, we ended up now with about 2.5% growth in Imaging. I think, it was 2.3% to be precise. And this is 1.5% below 4%. And that is maybe also what you could envision as the shift. So 1.5% is EUR 75 million or a bit more, EUR 75 million to EUR 80 million. So it's a big number, but also not a big number considering, so to say, the big numbers of imaging in general.

And again, looking back to what we -- how we guided Imaging for the year, we said mid-single digit. And then, I got a bit pushed on is that really 4% to -- does it really entail a 4%? And then, I think we clarified and said decent mid-single digit and said, okay, that means it's 5% plus. That's what we said, and we feel well on track to get there. And I think I don't see necessarily a change in the growth trajectory for Imaging also in the coming years, full stop.

The next 3 in the line would be then David Adlington, Aisyah and Hugo. So David Adlington from JPMorgan.

Maybe I thought I'll give you the opportunity to touch on China and what you're seeing there, both on the Diagnostics side, but also Imaging given the latest discussions around centralized procurement.

Yes. Thank you, David. I mean, I dissect it into the 2 segments here. I mean, in Diagnostics, it is -- we go through this rebasing, and it is a bit of a different topic for -- also when you look at how and when competitors have been hit by this because it goes with the sequence of introduction of reimbursement changes/introduction of volume-based procurement depending on certain test types. So this is why we are seeing the current development and also why we are cautious when it comes to the next quarter. But at some point, I mean, we have any call rebasing we are approaching this new base.

And if you look at the numbers, I mean, compared to 2 years ago, for us, and that's not different to other competitors, the market volume in China is about down by about 40% or so. And this is now then at some point the level it will slowly start to stabilize and then with procedure growth as additional tailwind coming. But it also means -- and I think that is also an important topic, when assessing the importance and materiality of Chinese developments for the overall company that now the China revenue is in the 10% or so range for the company in total, probably below that in Diagnostics, which also means that changes in China are also, let's say, a bit of "diluted" with the now lower importance and ratio of that market to the overall revenue.

When it comes to imaging, I mean, I want to, first of all, really distinguish between the terms volume-based procurement and central bidding, which is a very different mechanism. And sometimes I'm a little bit nervous whether people kind of look at, here's VBP and now you will see VBP in a capital good type of business. I mean, what we are seeing in China is a refinement of the centralized bidding policies, which very often is a provincial central bidding. What -- it's not a surprise for us. It is a topic we have -- we are very well prepared for. And there are also some positive aspects are in there because there is a better balance between quality and price while driving the expansion of the central biddings, there is also the fear of a destructive price war, which led to "weird companies" winning some tenders in some of the provinces.

And then also the topic that in a business like ours, one cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach like in a pharma industry or for certain diagnostic tests. So we will see the amount of central biddings increase and the percentage of those markets slowly and steadily, but we also believe that we are well prepared for it, and we have changed our go-to-market, and again, a balanced topic, there is also an advantage of being more direct in this topic because the whole topic of having to work with business partners and so on and so on is in this purchasing theme on a provincial level, not as necessary anymore. I hope this helps a little bit.

Thanks, David. Moving on to Aisyah from Morgan Stanley.

Thanks for providing the color on the Imaging growth outlook for, I guess, 2027. I would love to know the equipment order growth for the quarter, how that trended and the mix between Imaging and Precision therapy? And if you could provide a similar outlook on the Varian business for 2027 given the new innovation coming into that portfolio?

First of all, on the -- let me start with the order growth. I mean, as you know, we don't talk about the growth number, not directly, but with a book-to-bill of 1.27. You can envision that this was also a very good order growth quarter. And we -- and as you can see, we don't talk about the growth number independent, if it's not good or good. So it's not that we don't want it because we don't feel that this is a good indicator or really the quarter number is not a good indicator of what the markets do because it's to a certain extent always also a bit disturbed by large deals by certain dynamics. And we also don't want to push this topic too aggressively, also internally not to not create, I would say, behaviors which we don't want ultimately.

But just as a general explanation, when we look at the book-to-bill ratio, I think it was as normal a bit more pronounced from a book-to-bill ratio, a bit more pronounced towards Precision Therapy than to Imaging. But Imaging was also well above 1.1, well above 1.1 in it. So a very good Imaging quarter. Also book-to-bill had a very strong Precision Therapy quarter.

You asked about Varian prediction for next fiscal year, and also, I would say, the new platform or new treatment system or treatment technology or whatever we bring to market. I think, in general, we see Varian as -- and I think Bernd even used the word in his speech as a growth engine or so, something like this in -- for Siemens Healthineers. And I believe that this will also stay intact in the coming years. So we expect Varian to be able to grow in the high single digits in general, based on a very solid set of products, very stable service business, a nice addition from a smaller procedure-based business in Interventional Oncology. And this combination, supported by new platform, where we have high hopes for and high expectations, should be, I would say, a good testament to that this being stable on a high single-digit level.

Yes. Maybe to add on because I think we have quite well substantiated hopes when it comes to this new -- I mean, what Jochen said, new platform/new treatment because it's actually that is the exciting aspect of it that it is not just a new system and -- but something which will change also the role radiation therapy can play in treatment of important cancer types.

And yes, this platform will also contribute to the top line. But we will, of course, also see that in a situation like this, it takes also a little bit of time until the whole production is ramped up. So we pretty much know how many systems we can deliver. And that will definitely be less than the market demand on the one hand. But on the other hand, we have a very, very good order backlog and good order momentum, and we'll then have the further ramp-up of the new system with new opportunities for radiation therapies in the years to come.

So then we move on to, I think, probably the last call because we're almost on time. So Hugo from Exane.

Just wrapping up on the China and 2027 topic, following up on Graham's question earlier on what's reflected in that 2027 EPS bridge based on what you know or not at the moment. Have you reflected centralized procurement programs for imaging in your 2027 assumptions?

Should I start? Okay. First of all, the announcement we saw, and we were very clear about this also to the market, we saw a few weeks ago was -- I would say, was fully anticipated by us. Actually, our anticipation for this year was that the central bidding in Imaging would accelerate quicker than it did because obviously, the government was still organizing it well, and therefore, it took a bit longer. Therefore, the percentage of orders, which go via central bidding was lower than our initial assumption. And everything which is mentioned in the announcement, which came out is not a surprise. Maybe only, I would say, the particular statement of that it is -- that they want to find the right balance between -- I say it now in easy words, between quality and price is a good -- is a positive, let me phrase it, because that was not necessarily assumed that this will show up in an official announcement, which I think is a positive.

Therefore, we have baked into our plans for next year the central bidding as laid out there. So that's not a surprise. And I think we will also not deviate when we go out with a concrete guide for next year. We will not bank our guide based on a recovery in China, which we have not seen clear signals for. So we will keep that strategy in place. That does not mean that we deviate also from our general assumption that over the midterm, we should see this market come back to more mid-single-digit growth rates over time. But maybe not next year as long as we have not seen a shift here, okay?

Good. Well, that brings us to the end of our call today. And I'm totally aware there were a few people more in the queue. We'll make sure that either the team gets back to you quickly or you get a premium spot on Monday's sell-side breakfast for your question. So just to close it up and get your heads to some events coming up, we'll be at ASTRO and we'll be facilitating investor meetings as far as we have slots. And also, obviously, at RSNA in December, we will be there and facilitating management meetings and booth tours. So if you want to take part in this, either go via a broker of your choice who's already there or directly to us, and we will try and make it happen. And beyond that, of course, we have our IR program coming up with virtual roadshows and some conference participations in September. Hope to see you then or hear you. Bye-bye. Stay safe.

That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. A recording of this conference call will be available on the Investor Relations section of the Siemens Healthineers website.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Siemens Healthineers conference call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to the safe harbor statement on Page 2 of the Siemens Healthineers presentation. This conference call may include forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the company's current expectations and certain assumptions and are, therefore, subject to certain risks and uncertainties.

At this time, I would like to turn the call over to your host today, Mr. Marc Koebernick, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome to our Q2 earnings call for fiscal 2026. I'd like to thank each of you for joining us today. This morning at 7:00 a.m., we published our Q2 2026 results. All related materials for today's results release are available on the IR section of the Siemens Healthineers web page. In a moment, we'll hear directly from our CEO, Bernd Montag; and our CFO, Jochen Schmitz. And after their presentations, as usual, we have a Q&A session. As we have only 1 hour scheduled for this call and in order to ensure everyone gets the opportunity to engage [Operator Instructions] Additionally, please note that a full transcript and recording of today's call will be made available on our Investor Relations web page shortly after the session ends. Again, thank you for being here.

And now I'll turn the word over to our CEO, Bernd Montag.

Yes. Thanks, Marc, and also a warm welcome from my side. Let me start with a brief look at the key takeaways of today's call. Firstly, the synergetic core of our portfolio with Imaging and Precision Therapy continues to show strong underlying operational performance and is fully on track after the first half of fiscal 2026, especially in light of substantial headwinds from tariffs and FX. However, Diagnostics continues to face the structural market rebasing in China, substantially impacting its growth and margin in the first half, partially reflecting this temporary harsh dip in Diagnostics growth and also reflecting the more inflationary macroeconomic and the geopolitical environment, we update our outlook for fiscal 2026.

But now let me focus on fundamental decisions shaping the future of our company. We continue to create further optionality for the future pathway of diagnostics by preparing the carve-out of this business. Also, we are implementing a carefully prepared comprehensive generational change in our leadership team, paving the way for the next phase of Healthineers. And finally, as you might already know, Siemens announced last month that our spin-off from Siemens will be put to vote by the shareholders of both companies at the next regular general meetings in early 2027. While this may not be as quick as could be hoped for, it finally makes the time line concrete. The upcoming deconsolidation of Siemens Healthineers from Siemens marks a new phase in the evolution of our company. Shareholders of both companies will decide on the direct spin-off at the respective upcoming ordinary AGMs early 2027.

We are very well on track with our preparations for the spin-off. For example, we have our banking consortium for debt refinancing in place. Also, in terms of managing the liquidity even triggered by the spin, we are very well set up. The 2 banks involved in the post-Q2 roadshow activity for us this quarter will be the ones to stay in touch with when the spin takes place. In November last year, at our CMD, we announced that our Diagnostics business will have its own strategy and own setup. Hence, preparing to carve out the Diagnostics division is the logical step to create full flexibility for a wide range of possible development path. This group-wide project has been kicked off now, and Jochen will accompany the carve-out process.

For Diagnostics, this quarter is a bit of a perfect storm in terms of the China headwinds peaking plus intended transformation effects taking a toll at the same time. Nevertheless, we are convinced that the business will improve its performance in the second half of the year and return to a positive growth trajectory thereafter. And finally, we are announcing a well-prepared, comprehensive generational change at the Healthineers leadership team. We bring highly talented employees to the forefront to ensure our continued success while at the same time doubling down on health care AI. Our highly deserving colleagues are making way. Andre Hartung, the previous Head of Diagnostic Imaging; Carsten Bertram, the previous Head of the Advanced Therapies business; Bernd Ohnesorge, the previous Head of the EMEA region; and Peter Schardt, the previous Chief Technology Officer.

For decades, Andre, Carsten, Bernd and Peter have made significant contributions to expanding our leading market position and to global health care through pioneering technological developments, through being role model shaping our culture as well as through building trusting relationships with our customers and scientific collaboration partners. The next generation of leaders brings a rich diversity of perspectives and experiences. They will build on what we have achieved so far while bringing in new perspectives and challenging established paradigms to serve patients and customers even better and to make us even more successful. I look forward to each one of them.

Starting from the left, Andreas Schneck will take over as Head of Diagnostic Imaging. Andreas has been Head of Magnetic Resonance, the biggest business within the Imaging segment, and he is a dedicated Healthineer with nearly 2 decades of experience. He has held multiple leadership roles across the company and brings international experience, including leading the MRI business in Shenzhen, China. Philipp Fischer will become Head of Advanced Therapies. Philipp is a trained physician and combines medical, scientific and business expertise. Since joining Siemens Healthineers in 2009, he has held several leadership roles in the cardiovascular domain and has been responsible for the computer tomography business line since 2019, where he has been instrumental to the very successful launch and ramp of the photon counting business.

Sonja Wehsely will take over responsibility for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. She joined us nearly a decade ago after a distinguished career in politics and public health care in Austria. With Central Eastern Europe and Central Asia, she currently leads one of the largest and most complex zones in EMEA overseeing business activities in 30 countries. And finally, Martin Stumpe will become our new Chief Technology Officer. Martin has deep expertise in software development and AI in the health care space and has been with leading technology-driven companies, including Danaher, NASA, Google and Tempus Labs. He will significantly contribute to increasing our impact and leadership in healthcare AI, an essential connector to our strategic strength in patient training and precision therapy.

To sum it up, we are strengthening our frontline leadership with top talent to sustain success and deepen our focus on health care AI.

Now let me briefly summarize the quarter before Jochen will run you through the financials in more depth. Similar to Q1, the synergetic part of our portfolio, Imaging and Precision Therapy is performing very well. Fundamentals are fully intact. Strong 6% growth. Equipment order book continues to grow with a book-to-bill of 1.02, being slightly lower than an average quarter is just the result of phasing between quarters, and we expect a significant stronger number in Q3. And strong underlying operational margin expansion stood against the FX and tariff headwinds of around 200 basis points. As flagged in our last call, Q2 was expected to be especially difficult for Diagnostics, particularly when looking at the year-on-year comparison. Indeed, we recorded a revenue decline of 6% as the Diagnostic business in China is challenged by a structural market rebasing against a comparably strong growth in China last year.

Having said that, now over to you, Jochen.

Thank you, Bernd. Now let me share some color on our financial performance in Q2, starting with the Imaging segment. Let me point out the 3 main drivers in Imaging revenue growth of 6.1%. The ongoing high growth of our Photon Counting CT and our radiopharmaceutical business and significant growth in our MRI business this quarter. We see good momentum in MRI, where nearly half of our worldwide deliveries are dry cool magnets, which need only 0.7 liters of helium, and we see the share of dry cool technology increasing as we speak. Imaging's adjusted EBIT margin of 22.4% is a result of decent operational margin expansion. Taking out prior year's quarter's positive special items of around 50 basis points and this year's headwind of around 200 basis points from tariffs and foreign exchange leads to an operational margin expansion of around 40 bps.

Now over to our segment Precision Therapy. Precision Therapy posted decent growth of 4.7% against a tougher comp of 9% growth in the prior year quarter. Varian has significantly contributed to this with 7.5% growth, accounting to a strong Varian first half comparable revenue growth rate of 8.3%. Excluding the headwinds from foreign exchange and tariffs, we saw a strong operational margin expansion in Q2. The expansion of around 150 basis points year-over-year was driven also by a favorable business mix. This amounts to an outstanding operational margin expansion in the first half of around 300 basis points year-over-year. And now let's complete the segment run-through with Diagnostics.

Diagnostics revenue and margin decline continued in Q2 due to the structural market rebasing in China. As we have discussed, volume-based procurement and reimbursement reductions continue to be a major headwind in China. This led to muted demand and was another drag also on the Q2 revenue line on top of volume-based procurement. Additionally, the year-over-year revenue decline in Q2 was more pronounced due to tougher comps. In the prior year quarter, Diagnostics China still grew in the mid-single digits percent. The significant revenue decline led to a significant negative conversion missing in the EBIT line. As Bernd mentioned beforehand, Diagnostic is facing a bit of the perfect storm with significant challenges in China, while at the same time, Diagnostics is in the midst of its transformation, which is also muting growth due to the tailing off of our legacy business in the Core Lab.

However, the transformation to one platform in the core lab and the structural market rebasing in China are temporary in nature. What will remain and is relevant for the midterm is the ongoing growth of the Atellica franchise. Atellica continues to grow in the mid-teens and has meanwhile reached a revenue share of more than 70% of our Core Lab revenue in the last quarter. And now to conclude, let's have a look at the group. Let's start with the top line. The Americas continue with strong growth and EMEA returned to growth after being flattish on a high level in the last quarters. China revenue decline was just due to diagnostic market rebasing. Excluding Diagnostic, China revenue was flat year-over-year, in line with our China assumptions for Imaging and Precision Therapy. On earnings, the biggest year-over-year headwinds were again foreign exchange and tariffs of around 200 basis points. Taking these headwinds out, the adjusted EBIT margin was flat year-over-year and adjusted EPS was up by 16%.

The major drivers for the composition of the strong operational earnings growth in Q2 were a strong operational performance by the Synergetic core, compensating for weak diagnostic earnings contribution and a year-over-year favorable financial income and tax rate. Finally, there was a strong free cash flow with a decent cash conversion rate of 0.81 in Q2. In Q2, we also booked a reversal of an intangible asset impairment in our Precision Therapy segment of around EUR 40 million, which obviously did not have a cash impact and no impact on adjusted EBIT as it was adjusted. So the cash conversion rate without this impairment reversal would have been around 0.85.

Now let's have a look at the first half earnings performance and what to assume for full fiscal year 2026. On the left-hand side, you see the adjusted EPS bridge from fiscal year 2025 to 2026. There are no changes to our initial assumptions on foreign exchange and tariffs, all came in more or less as expected. The year-over-year foreign exchange headwind as per first half now stands at EUR 0.11 of roughly EUR 0.15 for the full year. In the second half, the foreign exchange headwind on EPS will become less material as we're going against an already weaker dollar in the prior year period. And regarding tariff headwind, the majority of the year-over-year headwind came in, in the first half. In half year 2, tariffs are already partially in the comparables. Bear in mind that we leave our tariff assumption unchanged due to the ongoing uncertainty in this field. While we are impacted slightly less under the currently imposed Section 122 at this time, no meaningful estimate is possible regarding the outcome of the proceedings for Section 232, neither in terms of impact nor in timing.

We are also not including any assumptions around potential refunds from the U.S. IEEPA tariffs in adjusted EBIT if they would materialize. The only change to our initial assumption is that we now include additional inflation in the supply chain of around EUR 0.05. Therein, the main inflation drivers are memory chips, raw materials and logistic costs, the latter due to the current crisis in the Middle East. This moves the midpoint of our EPS range from formerly EUR 2.30 to now EUR 2.25. Let me remind you that the last time we incurred additional inflation in the years after the pandemic we were able to mitigate these headwinds completely over time. After the pandemic, when the world was hit by an inflationary shock, we focused on our economic equation, driving pricing excellence, converting our market share gains into economies of scale and driving continuous cost productivity.

Regarding pricing, back then, this was the first time since over a decade that we turned from price erosion to price accretion, and we did this very successfully. We were able to mitigate these headwinds completely over time. Now today, we are still actively managing pricing and have already implemented a cost program this year, all in order to mitigate an assumed EUR 400 million headwind from tariffs latest by the end of fiscal year 2028. So today, we are well prepared to counteract further potential headwinds from an inflationary environment as our muscles are trained and we are already in the gym, so to say.

Back to the EPS bridge. Our operational performance of around 10% underlying earnings improvement in fiscal year 2026 remains unchanged. And we are well on track, already EUR 0.18 on the envisioned EUR 0.25 operational improvement materialized with the end of Q2. This is due to the strong performance of our synergetic core, the segments, Imaging and Precision Therapy and due to the favorable tax rate and financial income net. The latter, tax and financial income roughly offset the weak Diagnostic earnings performance in the first half. We update our outlook for fiscal year 2026. We now expect revenue growth of 4.5% to 5%. The update of the revenue growth is solely due to the structural rebasing of the diagnostic market in China.

For adjusted earnings per share, we now expect to be between EUR 2.20 and EUR 2.30. As pointed out at my commentaries on the EPS bridge, we now consider EUR 0.05 additional inflation in the supply chain, which moves the midpoint from formerly EUR 2.30 to now EUR 2.25. What is not considered are potential refunds for the U.S. IEEPA tariffs. For Diagnostics, due to the structural rebasing of the diagnostic market in China, we now expect in revenue a low to mid-single-digit percent decline year-over-year and a mid-triple-digit basis points margin decline year-over-year. The lower than initially expected growth in margin performance in Diagnostics, we expect to be roughly offset by a year-over-year more favorable financial income net and lower tax expenses than initially assumed. Based on first half actuals of minus EUR 155 million, we now expect around minus EUR 340 million of financial income net for the full fiscal year. For the tax rate, also based on first half actuals where we saw positive special items in Q2, we now expect around 24% for the full year. This is on prior year's level.

Let me also update you with our latest view on Q3. As said before, and this is important, the equipment book-to-bill this quarter was slightly lower than an average quarter and is just the result of phasing between quarters. Consequently, we expect, again, a much stronger equipment book-to-bill in Q3 than in Q2, as also highlighted by Bernd beforehand. And this is backed up by a strong funnel. We expect revenue growth for the group in Q3 to be above our updated outlook range of 4.5% to 5%, more in the range between 5% and 6%. In this segment, this assumes Imaging to grow mid-single digit in line with the assumption for the year and Precision Therapy to accelerate growth in Q3, particularly in our Advanced Therapy business. For Diagnostics, we expect a year-over-year revenue decline also in Q3, but less than the 5% decline in the first half. Half of that decline would be a good ballpark for Q3.

Before we speak about margins, let me quickly comment on the 2 major nonoperational headwinds this fiscal year, foreign exchange and tariffs. In the segments, we expect similar foreign exchange headwinds on margins as in Q2. We see the year-over-year translation headwind easing in Q3 compared to Q2 as we will be going against an already weaker U.S. dollar from prior year. On the margin, the year-over-year headwind as in Q2 persists because the hedging is rolling off. On tariffs, we do not expect a material impact year-over-year. Taking this into account, we expect a year-over-year margin decline in Imaging and Precision Therapy due to the foreign exchange and the aforementioned additional cost inflation. For the Diagnostic margin, we expect a similar year-over-year margin decline as in Q2 of around 5 percentage points contraction against a very tough comp from prior year. Remember, more than 9% margin last year in Q3. Sequentially, we expect an improvement in margins due to recovering top line in absolute terms and further cost reductions from the transformation program.

Now that we have updated you for our fiscal year 2026 and our upcoming Q3, let me now share some of our current expectations regarding impact after this fiscal year from the deconsolidation from Siemens. Our preparations for the deconsolidation are progressing for some time now, and we are ready with regard to refinancing and separating the few remaining services we still source at arm's length from Siemens AG. Regarding refinancing, we can reiterate our statement from our Capital Market Day last November that we do not expect a material impact from refinancing in the outer years.

This means that after the deconsolidation, we continue to expect financial income net to be in the ballpark of our initial assumptions for fiscal year 2026 of minus EUR 420 million to minus EUR 380 million. This also holds true in the current interest rate environment with somewhat higher interest rate compared to the time of our initial assumption. Compared to the current lower assumption for this year of around minus EUR 340 million financial income net, this would be, of course, a decrease in financial income net in the outer years post deconsolidation but with a manageable impact on EPS in the low to mid-single-digit euro cents.

Also, let me point out that once we unwind our foreign exchange derivatives and repay our mainly low interest U.S. dollar loans premature, we receive a cash compensation for the positive market values of the derivatives and the U.S. dollar loans that provides additional deleveraging opportunity. For example, if interest in the U.S. increases, the low interest U.S. dollar loans become more valuable, which increases the cash settlement and thereby the deleveraging opportunity. Of course, this is not fully insurance against increasing interest rates, but it is something that works in our favor if we need to deal with higher interest rates than today. And separation costs for the remaining services from Siemens AG like resetting some IT contracts, we assume to be in the ballpark of mid-double-digit million euros. So also a very manageable impact. Any onetime costs from the separation, we expect to be adjusted in EBIT and EPS.

And this -- with this, I hand back to you, Marc.

Thank you, Jochen. So let's go to the Q&A and not waste any time. [Operator Instructions]

We kick it off directly with Graham Doyle from UBS.

Just on inflation. So you've obviously made quite good progress this year on the tariff side of things, and you can see that in the Imaging margin. Just looking at inflation, it doesn't look like a massive headwind. But how much visibility do you have looking into next year to sort of think about mitigating pretty much all of what you see today? But just be good to get a sense of that as we think about modeling that.

Thanks for the question, Graham. And I would love to have a crystal ball to see what the world will do in next year. But from what we currently see and if we would assume that things stay as they are, I would say that this will be a manageable topic going forward. This is how I would see it. So far, we don't expect to see real shortages, which will hold up delivery schedules. We don't see this currently. I think the raw material prices are a topic, but not a huge topic. As you know, we are not a mass producer. We don't have a massive impact from raw materials in play. I would say this is a topic, I think, to be matched. Logistics is obviously very much dependent on also on the Middle East situation. Nobody can predict how that goes and you see how the markets react. But I would say, in the current environment, I think this is also -- if that stays, I think that will also be manageable going forward.

And lastly, I think as I mentioned in my short remarks to the quarter is that we are already fully lined up to counteract with price management. We have started what we call a Lean for Growth program for additional productivity, which we could also, if need be accelerate again. So therefore, I feel that we are better prepared than in the last inflation. And maybe remind you, the biggest topic, which was also a bit a delayed topic, which came from the inflationary topic were also personnel costs as a, so to say, second-tier consequence. And therefore, we also need to observe what all those topics really do to the overall inflationary environment, which is still really in the crystal ball, which I don't have.

That's really helpful. If you get that crystal ball, just I could use it.

So moving on to the next one on the line that would be Veronika Dubajova from Citi.

I'm going to sort of ask a 2-parter, but I would say, given the reduction in the Diagnostics margin outlook in the short term, just curious how you feel about that towards mid-teens expectation for the business in the long term? And I guess also just given that change in that Diagnostics dynamics, curious whether you have thoughts on the midterm guidance and to what extent there might be incremental pressure either from diagnostics or from the inflationary backdrop on it that we should be sort of reflecting upon as we think about that double-digit EPS growth guide that you've given for the midterm?

And then if I can just ask a quick clarification, Jochen, on your comment around the separation cost, does that also include the branding license? Or is that still a discussion that's ongoing?

Yes. Thanks, Veronika, for this, I would say, one plus one question. I'll start with Diagnostics. I think we still are on a track to get to our mid-teens margins in the midterm for Diagnostics. This is still the ambition we have. And obviously, when you look at the current margin environment, that seems to be a steep curve, and it is a steep curve. But we expect, as I also highlighted, also a clear improvement already in the second half, not a year-over-year improvement, but a sequential improvement. So one other topic, which I think will be a key driver going forward is also not only China, it's also the broad performance of our core lab solutions in the entire world also in the U.S. market.

As we highlighted, we are currently in the midst of a fundamental -- one fundamental, I would say, transformational move with regard to legacy platforms. We take the Vista platform out of the U.S. market. It's a tough undertaking currently. And we do not benefit currently headwind -- tailwind-wise from the significant contribution from the U.S. market in this regard, which is a profitable market. Therefore, we have high hopes and high expectations to turn this around and then benefit from the very successful Atellica platform going forward.

And on the inflationary topic, I think, as I said, that is crystal ball watching. We will do our best to counteract. I think we are -- most likely we will have a faster start than last time because that was really, I would say, a pivotal moment in the business. I believe that is also something what the entire market is better prepared for. Therefore, it will happen. And I think the double-digit EPS growth as the fundamental ambition for the midterm stays in place.

Yes. Veronika, and to your interesting or clarifying question regarding the brand, and I know that this moves many people and among your colleagues also I mean this is, of course, a discussion which one needs to have with a lot of care when it's about the brand, and we are in really very, very good discussions with Siemens here. But let me maybe say so much. I mean it is -- we are in a very good position or a situation, I would say, that we have built over the last years, basically since IPO and even a little bit before, a Siemens Healthineers identity. And when you look at the logo, there is a petrol part, there is an orange part. We have a different design language when you look at our products. So there's a lot of orange.

So we have many options here. And so what I can rest assured -- what I can assure you is that there will be no surprise with a significant profitability impact because in the end, I mean, what I'm trying to say here is there is an opportunity to leave things as they are if it financially is attractive. And otherwise, we have built very consequently also an alternative. And you could argue that in the long, long, long run, it maybe also makes sense when companies who do something totally different also have different names. But -- so this was a little bit of an insight into the ongoing extremely constructive discussions. And I want to, let's say, especially take away the fear of a sudden material change in costs.

So moving on to the next one on the Julien Ouaddour from Bank of America.

I hope you can hear me okay. So my question will be on Diagnostics. It seems you're moving forward for a complete payout of the business. So should we just believe that it means you -- I mean you don't believe you're the right owner for these assets and you have thought about a partial pathway for the separation. I know in the past, we talked about spin-off, potential disposals. So have you -- let's say, have you got specific ideas or even have you already taken interest from personal buyers? And also, if you can comment about the potential time line for that, that would be super helpful.

Yes, Julien, maybe let's take a step back and look at the overall strategy and the path we are on here. And as you might recall, I mean, at the Capital Market Day, we said after this successful first half of the transformation program of the Diagnostics business. Now it's time for it to have its own strategy and own setup. And now what Diagnostics is doing is basically 3 things. It's on the one hand, it's continuing the transformation program, including the completion of the transition to Atellica, which is now, I think, in the range of 70% already of the Core Lab business. It continues to grow by 20%. Second topic is weathering this 4- to 6-quarter transition phase in the Chinese market, which is weighing on that overall positive trajectory of especially the bottom line. And thirdly, in addition to the verticalization, which we have so far done of the business internally, also build all the functional setup and also think about how to create legal entities for this business so that it can operate as a completely stand-alone business.

And then it is a question, I mean, whether we are the best owner. I think to some extent, we have answered that Siemens Healthineers is -- we call it a business with 2 cores. We now after the Capital Market Day, the language has maybe a little bit changed, but it's, in essence, the same topic. We speak about the synergetic core and the separate path for diagnostics, which means that we can be an owner of this business, but we don't have to be an owner of this business. And in the end, and here, I want to be extremely clear, the shareholders of Siemens Healthineers own diagnostics. So this is not a source of funds for us. So when we do something with this business, it will be in the interest of the shareholders and it will be used so that shareholders are benefiting from it, and we will not use this as some kind of a source of funds for other ideas.

Good. Thanks, Julien. Moving on to David Adlington would be from JPMorgan as next person on the line.

I'll be a bit cheeky so one -- maybe one housekeeping. So maybe first on China, obviously [indiscernible] flat ex diagnostics. Just wondered if you think you're maintaining share there and how you think about potentially increased local competition. And then just a housekeeping one. I just wondered when you think diagnostics will be stripped out of the reporting as discontinued operations.

Okay. I mean, David, if I understood correctly, you are asking about China ex-diagnostics in terms of market share, correct?

Yes. Correct.

Yes. So here, we are -- we continue to see a positive development in terms of market share. I mean, to give you a feeling, I mean, and I think we have been also pretty transparent about this, I think, during the Capital Market Day, for example. In China, our market share is not at the same level as it is globally. And -- but we have been continuously not only defending our market share in China, but have a slight positive track record over the last quarters. To give you a rough feeling, I mean, while maybe our market share in the -- globally, which means also including China, but globally is more in the range, if you take imaging as an example, and you saw it in the Capital Market Day is in the range of between -- in the mid- to high 30s. It's maybe about 10 percentage points lower in China, but holding up. But we see -- and it's also, I think what everybody knows that when we look at the bucket of the others that we see a shift towards more local competitors while especially, let's say, the subcritical multinationals are losing ground.

And with regard to accounting treatment of the diagnostic business, I mean the rules are relatively clear. You can only account for business as discontinued operations if it is very certain that you will close something with the business and the business will, so say, leave your portfolio of businesses if and when it is very clear to get this done within 12 months. We are not at this point in time yet.

Thanks, David. Next one on the queue would be Hassan from Barclays.

Could you please comment on the U.S. market where revenue growth has decelerated a little in Q2, albeit on a very strong quarter from last year. How are you thinking about the rest of the year in revenue growth terms, but also orders based on recent customer conversations given a slightly softer book-to-bill in fiscal Q2?

Yes, Hassan, there is no particular new development in the U.S. We are very happy with the development. There's no big change in customer behavior. I mean we see a lot of -- I mean, in the end, I mean, procedure growth-driven demand. I mean we see, as you know, and I don't want to do the classic elevator, but is simply true. I mean what we do is center stage for health care. And imaging and radiation therapy, advanced therapies are profitable businesses for our customers, but not only this, I mean they are core for making sure that patients end up in your health system. So they are an essential topic and not something you just decide discretionary to invest in or not. So it's just a center stage of what is -- what modern health care is. And we see in addition, the build-out of additional ambulatory sites, alternative sites of care and so on, bring technology or bring capabilities, health care capabilities to where the patients are as opposed to the other way around. So all these trends are intact.

Part of the -- not a little bit, let's say, lower book-to-bill in this quarter has been that we haven't -- we basically, in this quarter didn't have some of the really big enterprise services or long-term contracts. We are, on the other hand, we have some good visibility of larger contracts in the funnel, which also shows, on the one hand, why we are confidently speaking about a much better book-to-bill in Q3 and also for the future growth in the U.S. revenue or continued growth in U.S. revenue.

And Hassan, maybe on that growth rate, I think when you think about 7% based on a 15% or something like growth in the year before, I think these are super tough comps. So I think it's -- as Bernd said, the market is very attractive. It's working very fine for us there, and we are very happy with what we see in the U.S. market. It's more a reflection of the very tough comps.

Good. Moving on to Hugo. We have still a lot of people in the queue. I almost doubt that we will make it. But anyway, Hugo, go ahead, please.

I just have a quick clarification on the recurring separation costs and on the time line to get back to financial income post the consolidation in the EUR 420 million to EUR 380 million. It wasn't clear to me, Jochen, based on your comment, whether you will get back within this range as soon as the deconsolidation happens after a grace period or at a later stage, given you also mentioned the need for deleveraging over time.

Hugo, first of all, we need to get to the -- to all those points, and then we need to see what the interest rates are at this point in time. This is all assumption based. Based on current interest rate environment, we gave you, so to say, a flooring. And the flooring is we expect us not to get above this range of minus EUR 420 million to minus EUR 380 million -- in no year, yes, exactly based on. And therefore, most likely, depending also on the structure, there could also be a certain period of time where we might even below this could also be because depending on how you structure it with a bridge and then the question is how long do you have the bridge, and this is also depending on the interest rate environment. I think for what -- I would say the intention of the presentation at Capital Market Day and the reiteration of now is to give you a flooring of what to be expected, and that's what we did. And it's -- but I can't tell you exactly how that will be because we also need to -- are also depending to find an optimized way within an existing interest rate environment, which we don't know yet how that will be then.

Moving on to Aisyah from Morgan Stanley.

My question is on Diagnostics. So I appreciate the comments on the China decline in the quarter. But I noticed for Diagnostics ex China, you called out a decline in Americas and a flat EMEA, which compared to the prior year quarter was also a decline in Americas and flat EMEA. So is there a broader deterioration in the market growth here in your view? Or is there more competitive headwinds ex Atellica?

Aisyah, I'm not sure that where we pointed this out. I said we have not seen significant tailwind from the Americas market. I think there is no breakdown, I would say, in general in the numbers. Without China, we are flattish in the quarter. And we don't see any market deterioration neither in Europe nor in the U.S. market. And also when you look at other announcements of peers and also customers, in particular, the U.S. market seems to be healthy.

Good. So thanks, Aisyah. Moving on to Julien from Jefferies.

It actually relates to the MR franchise. I think you indicated in your prepared remarks that close to half of your machines currently sold are dry cool as we speak. So interesting in the context of what's happening in the world, obviously. So how do you see things evolving in that segment? Could we go to a fully helium-free fleet in the coming years? And also curious whether that comes with a significant mix benefit on your side as well would be helpful.

Yes. Thank you, Julien. I mean there is a clear strategy to switch to a completely DryCool as we call it, based product portfolio. I think we even had a slide on this on the Capital Market Day as far as I know. So -- by -- in the end, I mean, the idea is here to have that combination of this helium-free -- I coin helium-free technology plus all the benefits of AI-powered imagery construction, which also means significantly getting to better diagnostic quality on the same hardware. So that it is a topic where the customer benefits with lower life cycle costs. But on the other hand, both the topics, so this kind of physical AI, if you wish, plus the DryCool technology on the helium side also significantly helps us to reduce our COGS.

Thanks, Julien. Moving on to Richard from Goldman Sachs.

Just one for me and a follow-up on China Diagnostics, please. I'd be interested to know a bit more about what the update -- what scenarios for China Diagnostics, the updated guidance captures. Is this a mark-to-market for the changes in the market that resulted from VBP and DRG and you assume it's sort of stable and maybe gets better from here? Or does it also take a view on further potential policy headwinds and maybe changes to market share dynamics in China Diagnostics post VBP?

Richard, the assumption on China for this fiscal year is based on what we know today. I think that is primarily driven by the expectations on volume-based procurement and DRG changes. And -- this is not also not such a fast-turning business in this regard. Therefore, this is based on this, and then we will take it from there. Our assumption on the Chinese market is and there are also, I would say, certain indications for this that we will reach in the near future, a new baseline from which I would say, also growth in the market will kick in again. But this is nothing which helps us really in this fiscal year, really. What you have to have in mind is that we saw -- we started to see significant decline in China last year, starting with Q3. That means our comps are getting significantly easier in the second half. And that's also what will drive, I would say, a lower revenue decline in the second half in Diagnostics relative to the first half.

Okay. Thanks, Richard. Moving on to the next person on the line. It would be Ed Day from Redburn.

On memory chips, can you just remind us roughly what the proportion of your COGS is for memory and perhaps the extent to which that has changed over the last 12 to 18 months?

To be honest, I don't know the number. It cannot be -- it's not a huge number of our COGS. It is a number, but it's not a huge number. And the prices have significantly increased. And because -- and that maybe underscores that this is not a huge number. But if it significantly increased, even a small absolute amount has an impact. The memory chip is in the EUR 0.05, the biggest line item, so to say. That I can say, but I don't know the number out of my head. It's not a huge number, anything...

But we can dig into it.

Yes.

Good. Thanks Ed. Then the next one would be Falko from Deutsche Bank.

Given how important it is to start the next fiscal year with sensible consensus expectations, and I just saw that consensus expects 16% adjusted EPS growth for fiscal '27, which looks pretty ambitious. Can you give us your very early ballpark view on this and where you think a more reasonable starting point could be?

Reasonable starting point. I think I'm not sure what you mean with this, but I would say it's EUR 2.25 is, so to say, the starting point for the calculation because that's what we currently guide for as a midpoint of the range of EUR 2.20 to EUR 2.30. I'm not sure if you asked that. And then I think our midterm guidance of double-digit EPS growth is still the best guess we have. So I can't -- I would not be in the position now, at least not meaningful in the position now to give you any other guide in this direction.

Moving on to Natalia from RBC.

It's on Precision Therapy as you're expecting acceleration in Q3. Firstly, on the Advanced Therapies portfolio launch, are you able to give any color on your progress and any feedback to date? And then regarding the upcoming Varian launch in September, are you seeing any impact on order timing or customer decision-making ahead of that?

So on the IT side, there is very good to great, actually, so I'm mainly not known for speaking too much in superlatives, but it's a very, very encouraging customer feedback, especially the -- I mean, what stands out is the AI-powered almost, again, physical AI-powered boost in diagnostic quality in real-time imaging, which is either makes the unseeable seeable or lowers extra dose to patient and operator, plus customers love the improvement of workflow. So we are here very positive and that this will then soon also help not only in orders, but also on the revenue side when we can deliver in full capacity. On the very large, we are very, very well on track. And so far, since people understand that this is almost an additional opportunity. So it's not like this is making my existing equipment outdated. This is almost like a photon counting CT coming on top in terms of the capabilities. We also don't have the topic which maybe you had in mind, potentially whether people are holding back orders in order to wait for this. So we will see, I think, here the best of all worlds.

Then moving on to Susannah from Bernstein.

I just have a follow-up on the progression in the China diagnostics business. You noted that the comps start to get easier from Q3. I guess maybe could you give us a sense of what percentage of diagnostic sales China contributed in H1 last year versus H2?

So okay, Jochen looks at me with a question mark, and you say -- so take it. I mean I give you -- this is a rough, rough, rough, rough estimate. So I would estimate that traditionally, China which for the group is more in the, whatever, 12% range or so of revenue contribution. In Diagnostics, it always has been slightly lower, yes. So think of something in the range from 8% to 10%. And now roughly think about this becoming only 4% to 5%. And what is -- what is bad about it is that this is happening within the course of one of such a short amount of time. But what is good about it and don't look at that at that level, it becomes then also the contribution from China is also less material and future volatility cannot even good -- I mean, will not happen at the same order of magnitude, but the denominator isn't also there anymore. So the importance of the Chinese business in the overall diagnostics top line will shrink together with the revenue.

Thanks, Susannah. As announced at the beginning of the call, we are a bit tight on time. So the hour is over. Thanks for the good questions and the discipline mostly in the number of questions. And yes, well, anyway, we're looking forward to seeing you in the next days and weeks at conferences and road shows. We are at a lot of conferences. We are going to be virtually on the road next week and physically in the U.S. So if you want to catch us, I'm sure you'll get an opportunity. Beyond that, we also have our podcast coming up again. By the way, at least if I understood my communications colleagues, we have a good chance of maybe putting this even on Spotify, so that it will be a more decent delivery into your mobile devices in the future. So hopefully, that helps your comfort in terms of consuming this product.

Yes, that's it for me. Have a nice day, and see you soon. Stay safe and healthy. Bye-bye.

That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. A recording of this conference call will be available on the Investor Relations section of the Siemens Healthineers website.

Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders and Chairman of the Supervisory Board, I hereby open the 2026 Annual Shareholders Meeting of the Siemens Healthineers AG and assume the chairmanship in accordance with the Articles of Association. On behalf of the Supervisory Board and the Managing Board, I warmly welcome all shareholders and their proxies as well as all current and former employees of Siemens Healthineers. I am particularly pleased that so many of you have joined today, thereby, of course, expressing your commitment to Siemens Healthineers AG. I would also like to welcome the representatives of the media and all other viewers. A very warm welcome to all of you. On stage at today's AGM at [indiscernible] one in Munich. I welcome all members of the management board, Dr. Bernhard Montag, Dr. Jochen Schmitz, Ms. Darleen Caron and Ms. Elisabeth Staudinger-Leibrecht. They are all members of the management board. Furthermore from the Supervisory Board, we have Mr. [indiscernible] Heinz strive here on stage, who I have asked to represent me as Chairman of the meeting in accordance with Article of Association in the event of my absence.

Last but not least, notary public, Dr. Robert Walt is here today to take the notarial minutes. Other members of the provisory Board are also present today with the instruction of Mr. Dow Wilson and are participating from the meeting room in the very same building here. Mr. Dow Wilson is participating in alignment with me according to Paragraph 14, Paragraph 7 of the Article Association via audio and video broadcast from Salt Lake City in the United States of America.

Also present here in the room are the -- is the proxy appointed by Siemens Healthineers AG, Ms. Stephanie Fernandez [indiscernible] and the proxy appointed by the company, Mr. Christian Schulz. For the sake of clarity, I will refer to both of them collectively as the proxies in conducting today's virtual AGM, we are particularly concerned with protecting your rights as shareholders. Therefore, provide you with information on how to exercise your rights as the Annual Shareholders' Meeting progress. The entire annual shareholders meeting will be broadcast live in audio and video for our shareholders and their proxy via the shareholder portal as well as for the very first time for the interested public on our website. The link to the website is now displayed on your screen.

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The notary, Dr. [indiscernible] will receive any objections and complaints them directly via the shareholder portal.

Ladies and gentlemen, following the report of the Managing Board I will announce the attendance. The list of participants is already available on the shareholder portal for the shareholders' participation -- participating electronically and their proxies and will be continuously updated until the end of the ASM. Finally, I would like to point out that no stenographic record of the entire ASM will be recorded or taken. Both audio and video recordings of this ASM and its broadcast are not permitted. Now before we move on to the agenda, I would like to note that today's ASM was convened in due form and time by publication of the notice of the meeting in the Federal gazette on December 17, 2025. Siemens Healthineers AG did not receive any requests to supplement the agenda in the run up of today's ASM. [Foreign Language] However, [indiscernible] counter motions on agenda item 3 and 6. These were, of course, uploaded on our website [indiscernible] in accordance with paragraph 167 of the Stock Corporation Act, these countermotions have now been officially filed. Countermotions are null and void if the agenda items of the management for agenda item 3 and 6 are actually passed with the required majority. Due to the fact that the countermotions submitted are targeting the management's proposals may not be approved, you can simply vote no. And with that, the countermotions will also be void.

You also received, of course, all of this information on the documents -- all of the information also is provided on the agenda. I would, therefore, believe that -- we can move on an item 1. Agenda item 1 concerns the presentation of the adopted annual financial statement in the approved consolidated financial statements as well as the combined management report for Siemens Healthineers AG and the group as of September 30, 2025, as well as the Supervisory Board report for fiscal 2025. The Supervisory Board has approved the annual financial statements and consolidated financial statements prepared by the Managing Board, the annual financial statements are thus adopted.

A resolution on the agenda item 1 is not required. The agenda item 2. The resolution on the appropriation of the unappropriated net income of Siemens Healthineers AG. I would like to point out the following: As Siemens Healthineers AG has transferred additional shares to employees as part of employee share programs. The number of no-par value shares entitled to dividends for fiscal 2025 has changed as announced the following amendment resolution proposal, we therefore we put to the vote. The Managing Board and a Supervisory Board proposed that the net income of Siemens Healthineers AG for fiscal 2025 the amount of [ EUR 2,040,048,698.40 ] be appropriated as follows: a dividend of EUR 1 per dividend bearing no par value share for the fiscal 2025, EUR 1,117,816,392.00 be used. The profit carryforward are EUR 922,232,306.48. The adjusted proposal for the appropriation of profits will be published on our website. Ladies and gentlemen, fiscal 2025 was another successful year for Siemens Healthineers. Your company, dear shareholders, once again, setting off very ambitious goals and as in the past 8 years, has achieved them.

Despite difficult conditions, Siemens Healthineers has once again proven itself to be a stable and responsible partner for its customers and their patients, for you, shareholders for its employees and for the societies in which Siemens Healthineers operate around the globe. Revenues rose on a comparable basis by 5.9% to EUR 23.4 billion with adjusted EBIT of EUR 3.9 billion. Based on these strong results in fiscal 2025, the company is raising its dividend proposal by [ EUR 5.21 ] per share. This repeated business success is all the more commendable given that the geopolitical and the macroeconomic environment remained very challenging. And unfortunately, still the consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic had a longer-lasting impact than originally assumed. Inflation disrupted supply chains, reduce procurement from China, import tariffs and currency fluctuations have significantly clouded the economic environment for many companies.

The Managing Board has once again successfully steered Siemens Healthineers through these major global challenges. I'm therefore delighted that Dr. Bernhard Montag and Dr. Jochen Schmitz already in March 2025, agreed to the extent that their terms of office ahead of schedule until the end of February 2031. This was preceded by a unanimous decision by the supervisory board. The entire Healthineers team has therefore minimized the impact of the crises on its business and closely related to this, of course, on global health care.

You, dear Healthineers, have once again shown the world that you can hope to millions of patients and their families and take away their fears every single day. On behalf of the Supervisory Board, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all 74,000 employees for the special achievement.

Ladies and gentlemen, the end of the successful fiscal year 2025 also marked the scheduled and successful completion of the new ambition strategy phase. The ambition -- the new ambition set it on. I think the name is in the title. Siemens Healthineers has set itself ambitious goals for the fiscal year 2022 to 2025. It is no exaggeration says that Siemens Healthineers has become an even more relevant company in many ways during the new ambition strategy phase. So in first the company demonstrated its enormous capabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, literally during the pandemic, it became a global leader in cancer therapy through its merger with the U.S. company Varian. Additionally Siemens Healthineers defined a very ambitious sustainability program during the new ambition phase and has raised its target year after year.

Now in this context, I would like to draw your attention to the new sustainability report, which complies with the requirements of European standards for sustainability reporting and the EU taxonomy regulation and can be found from Page 41 of our 2025 annual report onwards.

It is also referred to the website now displayed on your screen, where you will be able to find the German and English version of the report. Ladies and gentlemen, in November of 2025, the Healthineers management team presented the next phase of the company's development. This phase is seems elevating health globally or elevating for short. Essentially, this phase is about raising health care worldwide to a new level, elevating follows on from a new ambition and build on the successes. Dr. Montag will go into more detail about the elevating phase, which is set to run through fiscal 2030 in just a brief moment.

Almost simultaneously with the start of the elevation phase, Siemens AG announced its intention to divest its majority stake in Siemens Healthineers from currently around 67% and reduce it its financial stake in the medium term to a pure financial investment. To this end, Siemens AG plans to transfer approximately 30% in Siemens Healthineers shares to Siemens AG shareholders prefer by way of a direct spin-off. As a result, Siemens Healthineers would no longer be part of the Siemens Group. The advantages of the plant's transaction for both companies would be [ fluid ], in particular, greater scope for strategic development and significantly greater transparency and reduce complexity for the capital market. In addition, the spin-off would multiply the shareholder base of Siemens Healthineers without requiring the sale of the transferred shares on the stock market. Planted transaction, of course, subject to final regulatory approvals and the approval of the Board and annual shareholders meetings of Siemens AG and Siemens Healthineers AG.

Ladies and gentlemen, both the plant transaction as well as the new elevating strategy phase served to further develop and secure the future of Siemens Healthineers as a leading global medical technology company. On behalf of the Supervisory Board, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all of you and our shareholders for your continued trust in this fantastic company. I would like to [indiscernible] in gratitude to all of my colleagues on the advisory board for our continued great work and excellent collaboration.

Each and every single one of us is deeply committed to the future of Siemens Healthineers. And it is a personal honor and pleasure for me to share those Board. Thank you very, very much for your trust put in me.

I will now move on to the Supervisory Board to report, ladies and gentlemen. The Supervisory Board fulfilled its duties in fiscal 2025 in accordance with the law, the articles of association and the rules of procedure. It has 6 regular meetings. In addition 1 resolution was passed by in [indiscernible]. The subjects of our [indiscernible] discussion where the net assets, financial position and results of operations, the strategic process of the company's sustainability issues, personnel matters relating to the Managing Board and the long-term succession planning of the Managing Board. We are also focused on developing the medium term corporate strategy with the process of realigning the company and its individual business unit strategically for the 2026 fiscal year becoming increasingly important over the course of the financial year.

Particular attention was paid to the topics identified for the new strategy phase as well as to China and the development of the global value chain. Other topics included geopolitical challenges and activities related to talent development for executives, including long-term succession planning for the Managing Board. We also approved the construction of a new magnetic resonance factory in Oxford, which falls within the remit of the [indiscernible] recession and dealt with the reelection and contract extension of Dr. Bernhard Montag as CEO; and Dr. Jochen Schmitz as CFO.

Let's now turn to our work in the committee during the past fiscal year. In order to form our task efficiently, we have established 7 committees, which are particularly prepare the resolutions and topics to be dealt with us in -- the plenary session of the Supervisory Board. These are the Executive Committee, the Audit Committee, the Strategy Innovation and Sustainability Committee, the Compensation Committee, the Nomination Committee, the committee for transactions with the [indiscernible] transactions and the mediation committee. The main topic of discussion in the executive committee of the supervisory board as well as [indiscernible] included corporate governance issues, including a self-evaluation of the Supervisory Board, the reappointment of Dr. Bernhard Montag and Dr. Jochen Schmitz and the extension of their Managing Board -- the service contracts as well as the long-term succession planning for the management board.

The Presidium also dealt with changes in various management functions within the company and the replacement of committee members. Compensation Committee commissioned appropriateness reviews for the compensation of the managing and Supervisory Board compensation and develop proposals for the supervisory report regarding the compensation of the managing board. It reviewed compliancy with regards to requirements for share ownership by the Managing Board and dealt with the achievement of targets by and set forth -- setting for the Managing Board. The Audit Committee discussed the annual financial statements and consolidated financial statements and the management report as well as the half yearly financial report and the quarterly reports with the Managing Board and the external auditor and recommended that the Supervisory board proposed PwC to the ISM as the auditor of the annual financial statement and consolidated financial statement for the 2025 financial year and prepare the recommendation for the Supervisory Board precautionary proposal to the ASM to elect PwC as auditor of the sustainability report. The quality of the audit was also assessed.

The Audit Committee further dealt extensively with accounting and accounting processes, the internal control system and the risk management system, the activities of internal audit of the internal part -- internal audit department, compliance reports and legal disputes. The committee also dealt with CSRD implementation and the double materiality analysis carried out by the company as part of its sustainability report. The strategy, innovation and sustainability Committee discusses the company's innovation and sustainability strategy.

In addition to the progress report on strategy implementation in relation to the individual business areas and on sustainability development within the company, the committee also addressed the double materiality analysis that was carried out. The Strategy, Innovation and Sustainability Committee also discussed topics of current importance, such as the integration of the radiopharmaceutical business for diagnostic molecular imaging of advanced accelerator applications molecular imaging as the Diagnostics business unit, the application in areas of a use of digitalization and artificial intelligence in diagnostic imaging and selected key topics of the new corporate strategy, with focus on neurodegenerative diseases.

Other items on the agenda included measures requiring approval in connection with the construction of the Photon Counting CT sensor factory in [indiscernible] time and the divestment of a stake in the company [indiscernible] and its venture capital portfolio. The Nomination Committee dealt with the long-term succession planning for the Supervisory Board. The committee for transactions with related parties, the RPC did not hold any meetings during the reporting period as there was no objective reason for this. The mediation committee was also not [indiscernible] respective committee chairperson reported to this advisory Board regularly and in a timely manner. The Managing Board informed the supervisory board regularly, promptly and comprehensively about all significant events and involved in directly at an early stage. The Supervisory Board regularly advised the managing board and continuously monitor its managing activities. The auditor reviewed the annual financial statements and consolidated financial statements as well as the combined management report and issued an unqualified opinion.

The auditor then reported on this in detail to the Supervisory Board. After conducting its own thorough review, The Supervisory Board concurred with the results of the audit and approved the annual financial statements and consolidated financial statements. The Managing Board and Supervisory Board have prepared the compensation report of Siemens Healthineers AG for fiscal 2025 and are submitting it to today's ASM for approval.

The sustainability report for fiscal 2025 and disclosures on the EU economy in the combined management report for the Siemens Healthineers AG and the group for fiscal 2025 as well as the auditors related notes were also received, reviewed -- and reviewed by the Audit Committee and the Supervisory Board at their meetings on November 25, 2025.

Ladies and gentlemen, you will find a more comprehensive reports on this supervisory board starting on Page 222 of the 2025 annual report. Before we now move on to the other items on the agenda, I would now like to hand over to the Chairman of the Managing Board, Dr. Bernhard Montag. Thank you very much for your attention.

[Presentation]

2026 will be special significance for our company. 2026 marks the beginning of our new strategic phase, elevating health globally. By this phrase, we wish to make our contribution to raising health care worldwide to a new level. That is a lot [indiscernible] goal, but we have the technologies, the expertise and above all, the best team to achieve that. Secondly, following a possible deconsolidation from Siemens AG, we want to be an attractive investment for more over than ever before. 2026 will be a special year, and we're looking forward to it. And with that, I too would like to send a warm welcome to you to our 2026 Annual Shareholders meeting.

Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, we are not go into more detail on the past fiscal year and our strategy. Let me begin by briefly taking store. Where have we come from?

We saw our IPO in 2018. That's a unique opportunity. Unique Because as part of the Siemens Group at the time, we could already look back on a long successful history for us. And now we have the chance to reinvent ourselves like a start-up.

The Healthineers team successfully seized that unique opportunity. Today, we are the global leader in the imaging and precision therapy segment. 90% of the world's leading hospitals work with our systems. We are directly represented in more than 70 countries over 700,000 of our systems used worldwide. And most importantly, people benefiting from them more than 3 billion times last year alone. We are the undisputed leader in technology and innovation. Research and development is our life plan for not a cost factor. We invest around EUR 2 billion in this field, and we are, therefore, continuously increasing our lead.

Recent examples include a photon conducting [indiscernible] scanners, [indiscernible] helium-free magnetic resins imaging scanners, gone dynamically developing field of theranostics and our leading position in artificial intelligence in the clinical environment, Healthcare IA. And I'll come back to that in a moment.

Since going public, we've not gained significant market share, but also further developed our profile from our partner under the specialists and the department level to a partner within the management level, the so-called C-level of large health care organizations wants to shape the future.

Currently, more than 200 major customers have committed to us for the long term through value partnerships we call it. The order books have a volume of EUR 6 billion. In 2025 alone, orders with a cumulative term of 360 years were added. Perhaps the most impressive example to date is the partnership to improve cancer screening and treatment for the 5 million residents of the Canadian province of Alberta.

This value partnership worth CAD 800 million and running for 8 years underscores the fact that Siemens Healthineers is now much more than a supplier of leading technology. We are the partner of choice when it comes to designing entire health care systems. Ladies and gentlemen almost 5 years ago, we completed the merger with Varian, a truly transformative move for both companies.

As part of our organization, Varian is able to significantly expand its innovation leadership and to benefit greatly from our international presence and C-level access. In just 5 years, Varian has increased its market share by 10 percentage points to more than 60%. Siemens Healthineers as a whole has become an even more holistic partner for other businesses, they've been able to learn a lot from absolutely exemplary focus of our Varian colleagues on patient benefit. Today, 5 years after the merger of the 2 companies, we can say that this is a success story for Varian, for Siemens Healthineers and above all, for millions of patients around the world.

In recent years, we've also worked and we've shown one of the patients here in the film. You can see how in [indiscernible] patients are ringing the bells now because the cancer therapy has been completed successfully. In recent years, we've also worked successful on leveraging internal synergies and we don't see any focusing on independence and concentration, imaging and precision therapy, supported by artificial intelligence from the highly synergistic core of our company. The Diagnostics division, on the other hand, has few synergies with the other segments. As you know, Diagnostics is underground a phase of transformation. And our colleagues are doing a very good job.

Next step now is consistently to pursue our own diagnostic strategy. And based on that, to develop our own structure, about to complete this look back by saying it, we have achieved financial targets almost every year since our IPO, and a period marked by a pandemic, significant supply chain problems and [indiscernible] sharp rise in global inflation and increasing geopolitical tensions. That is no mean feat. All these achievements also played a role in Moody's rating agency's assessment.

As you may have read, Moody's gave us some A3 credit rating and a strong investment-grade rating in December. We also achieved our goals in the past fiscal year 2025. Year-on-year sales rose strongly by 5.99%. The adjusted EBIT increased to EUR 3.9 billion at EUR 2.39, adjusted undiluted earnings per share were significantly higher than in the previous year. Year-on-year, the EBIT margin rose to 16.5%, which is 80 basis points up on the previous year despite increased trade tariffs. And the very good equipment book-to-bill ratio of 1.14 means that our high order backlog has increased still further. In addition to the financial targets, we've also achieved our sustainability goals.

I'd like to highlight 1 example particular, we've reduced greenhouse gas emissions from our own operations by 49% since 2019. And in 2025, we were the first time ranked among the 25 best employees worldwide by Fortune World's Best Workplace. In Germany, we're even the best workplace in a group of companies with more than 5,000 employees. Ladies and gentlemen, against the backdrop of geopolitical upheavals and in particular special tariffs, the performance of the Healthineers team is truly remarkable. I'd like to access my heartfelt thanks to my 74,000 colleagues around the world for this. All in all, I believe we can be very satisfied with what we've achieved over the past year. I'm aware of the fact that you would like to know further details today on when and how of the deconsolidation.

However, I would like first to note that both the structure of the deconsolidation and the timetable for it will be determined primarily by Siemens AG as our current majority shareholder. It's also that we should play a decisive role in shaping that process of Siemens AG besides [indiscernible] spinoff option communicated. We shall play a significant role in implementation, that is providing you with detailed information at the subsequent shareholders' meeting when we shall ask for approval. As soon as we have final clarity about the when and how the deconsolidation of uncertainties that are currently weighing on the share price will also be eliminated. Some of the developments of recent years. At this point, let me briefly reflect on what distinguishes us as team Healthineers and drives us on. Why is this important?

Because it's the character of this team that made our achievements possible in the first place and which will carry us through the special year of 2026 and into the next phase of the company. The Healthineers team is characterized by a particular aspiration, the aspiration to do justice to the 3 components of the term medical technology business. That was [indiscernible] technology and business in an excellent manner in each case. Business in the sense of the economics of health care systems are regulated differently in each country and needs to be understood. Such a complex task can only be accomplished by listening carefully by being curious and willing to learn every day and by approaching customers to a certain level of modesty and great respect as they ultimately dedicate the entire professional lives to helping others.

For medical professionals, their work is not a job, but a life's work. And for most healthineers, it's the same. They don't see it as a job, but there's a life work to improve health care for 8 billion people. We are pioneers and engineers of health care in short, healthineers. Today, 74,000 people identify themselves for this mission. They enjoy working here, and they remain loyal to the company for a long time, many even their entire professional lives because they see that their work makes a difference. And they see what their work achieves because I see that the company values not their commitment, but also the personality and feedback, and this gives rise to trust and the high level of identification. And it also results in our company's outstanding global ranking as a great place to work when our employees evaluate the workplace.

Shareholders, the next phase of our company's strategy is entitled and is [indiscernible] what we refer to as a service character, so which I'd like to enter in more detail. and explain what we intend to do in the years ahead. We worked out the next strategy for our company, which is entitled Elevating Health globally. The [indiscernible] same as Healthineers has developed, what I like to call our 2 superpowers, the first superpower is the interplay of the triangle of patients [indiscernible] precision therapy, and health care AI, exactly what is needed to compact the world's most threatening diseases.

Our second superpower teams in the countries who understand how to cover our broad portfolio. I think globally, and it remain locally anchored. We're going to speak to clinical departments on an equal footing while also masked in the language of hospital executives and large health care providers. This puts us in an excellent position to address the challenges of our customers worldwide, mainly efficiency, clinical excellence and improved access to health care. Globally so-called [indiscernible] diseases such as dementia, stone-hard taken cancer are on the rise.

In the meantime, 3/4 of all deaths are now attributable to noncommunicable diseases. Neurodegenerative diseases, 1 in 9 people over the age of 65 worldwide has Alzheimer's disease. Cardiovascular diseases caused more than 20 million deaths a year and around 12 million people suffer a stroke every year. More than half of them die as a result.

More than 20 million people worldwide, developed cancer each year. By 2040, that number will rise to more than 30 million. These are precisely the diseases that we address, and we have strategically aligned abilities to combat what distinguishes these non-communical diseases from infectious disease. Well put it simply, infectious diseases often have a one-size-fits-all approach. There is 1 vaccine for prevention and not even someone falls ill, the treatment is usually clear and [indiscernible]. In the case of bacterial infections, for example, is often antibiotics. In contrast to that, there's no such thing as a typical stroke. Every stroke is different. And there's no such thing as typical cancer, non-cemenical diseases are patient-specific. Accordingly, health care systems all over the world are faced with the enormous task of finding a personalized streaming paths for a rapidly increasing number of disease, while at the same time, getting to a shortage of skilled workers and limited budgets. Our special skills are essential tackling this task.

Patients training which means the most accurate description possible of the individual patient. Decision therapy i.e. the most individual treatment possible for each individual based on precisely that information and healthcare AI to multiply medical knowledge to automate processes and to reduce errors with our strength in imaging. We have the ability to detect diseases at an early and earlier stage [indiscernible] others cardiovascular diseases or cancer, we can diagnose the disease, select the appropriate therapy, simulate the therapy and to create a treatment plan. That is exactly what's happening on the left-hand side of the triangle.

On the right-hand side, you can see precision therapy. Here, technology makes the difference in enabling personalized care. That's, for example, what we do at Varian. Imagine a robotic controlled precisely beam that destroys the tumor based on imaging information or minimally invasive treatments in the [indiscernible] where we increasedly collaborating with companies such as Surgical, Boston Scientific Stryker and Medtronic, who's increasingly miniaturized devices can often only be used in close conjunction with our technologies. This is how these 2 parties are trying to work together. But just as important is personalization on a large scale. And here, it's crucial to use AI specialized for the health care sector, healthcare AI to accelerate processes significantly to bridge the gap between diagnosis and therapy to reduce errors and to leave the burden on medical professionals.

Just a few examples. Firstly, Alzheimer's. We are the market leader in procedures that visualize metabolic process of the body, i.e. PET, CT and MR PET. We're also the market leader in the manufacturing and distribution of radiopharmaceuticals.

If something suddenly happens on the right-hand side of the triangle and the disease-modifying therapy for Alzheimer's becomes available, then the left-hand side also becomes important. Diagnosis, here we can detect amyloid plaque burden and decide the patient has Alzheimer's, and whether he is eligible for a disease-modifying therapy. often is the case of innovative Alzheimer's treatments, a single imaging session is not sufficient in [indiscernible] have us before multiple times to monitor the therapy and [indiscernible] side effects such as microbleeding in the brain.

The next example. Photon Counting CT. I hope many of you share our enthusiasm for this technology under the clinical side of it. There are already 900 scientists in publication, and we've received all. We've received orders with around EUR 1 billion to date. Why is this relevant to our triangle? Here you can see that coronary arteries of a healthy patient Coronary heart disease is a silent killer. It often begins unnoticed and it's only detected when it's already very late or too late.

Photon Counting CT has the potential to become the method of choice for early detection and screening for this disease. Here in this image, you can see no block, no lesions, no classification, no risk. In the past, conventional CT could not accurately assess the progression of this disease. Photon Counting now provides crystal clear images. In many cases, this can replace an interventional diagnostics with the cardiac catheter. And if therapy is necessary, Photon Counting CT made it possible in effect to create a detailed map of the coronary arteries and process it with AI. So the physician then take the next step to provide the best possible care for this particular patient.

A similar is [indiscernible] strokes. We have developed a CT scanner fits into ambulance and still produce hospital quality images. This allows the necessary diagnosis to be made immediately to determine the type of stroke and to transmit all the information directly to hospital. Their procedures such as the physical removal of the blood clot can be performed immediately guided by imaging. This procedure known as thrombectomy achieves significant better results of traditional treatment with blood thinners. This is because value on time is lost before the blood thinner takes effect during which time the area of the brain that is not receiving blood suffers further damage.

Last group of diseases is cancer. Here our goal is to establish magnetic resonance imaging for the early detection of prostate cancer. The AI supported rapid measurement sequence is used here, take only about 1.5 minutes and enable a very early and reliable diagnosis, which is so precise that in many cases, tissue sampling is not even necessary and the next step, MRI is used and this is a great advantage when you're the market leader in MRI and health care, AI and radiation therapy under one roof. It is used directly for therapy plan.

Other fields that we advance in the field of oncology is known as theranostics. With our strength in diagnostics, molecular imaging, radiopharmaceuticals and variance IT systems for treatment planning. We are already in an excellent position.

One last example from practice, a patient with oligometastatic disease by multiple metastasis in the brain. In the past, the entire brain was [indiscernible] in such cases with considerable side effects later, it was necessary determined manually, which parts of the brain should be spared. Today, i.e., [indiscernible] does this. The colors of metastases indicate the energy intensity that is spread in the linear accelerator based on imaging and AI. This enables highly precised treatment that is largely limited to metastasis. Healthy tissue is spared as much as possible and disease issue is treated. You can see how important the triangle is. And you can see AI plays an important role in almost all cases.

This image shows how our AI road map is structured and how it is used to combat nonhumanical diseases. There are 3 steps from left to right. First from patients to image. This is about speeding up the examination and reducing staffing requirements. Second, translate the clinical image into a medical diagnosis, where there is [indiscernible] for next doctor as a plan for treatment. And thirdly, from plan to treatment. [indiscernible] CT scan, the first of 3 steps can be performed fully autonomously. Much of this has been as simple as stepping on your scales in the morning, no user interaction, everything runs automatically. Next step, translate the image into findings or into the treatment plan in order to automatically to program the [indiscernible] device or to inform the physician for future perhaps the robotic assistant in the intervention. That is what we call health care AI, which has become a central factor in innovative strength and the field, which we are expanding most strongly. That's why that is what we do for patients.

And the next phase is all about clear focus on the 4 disease areas I've mentioned. The other perspective on what we do is the customer perceptive. Just the challenges for our patients are the 4 disease areas. The 3 major challenges for our customers are essentially the same everywhere and the need for efficiency, the goal of clinical excellence and keeping pace with medical advances and the goal of giving more people access to modern health care. Efficiency here as long system in just cost efficiency. The far greater challenge worldwide in emerging and industrialized countries alike is the shortage of staff. Today, more with less often means more with fewer people. This is also 1 of the reasons why our AI innovations resonate so strongly clinical excellence also has 2 dimensions. On the one hand, how individual physicians be placed with medical advances increasingly importantly, how an entire institution such as a hospital chain succeeds in establishing new procedures across the board. And the third major issue is access to care or more people, which above all, means in developing modern healthcare systems for emerging markets.

Because of these 3 global challenges. I [indiscernible] I'll take the superpower. There's no other organization that I want an entry-level CT scan on the same breadth. I want to improve my radiology department for oncology service line. Our team can switch from transaction to partnership. It is deeply rooted locally within Malaysia, Norway or Brazil and understands the challenges on the ground, but we can also draw on global knowledge. That is the global standard of care, and that is how it is implemented locally. And this is how we are now translating it into growth areas, firstly further promoting value partnerships. [indiscernible] Wish the more and more large institutions in long-term partnerships to further develop the range of services and to increase efficiencies across many locations with a clear and ambitious common goal and sort of negotiating numerous individual contracts. That is what value partnerships are all about. Secondly access to care. Access to medical treatment in otherwise. In emerging markets, too, [indiscernible] disease are also the leading cause of death. That is why there is significant public and private investment in cancer centers, cardiovascular care and stroke management.

At local organizations are that compact AI driven products are helping to develop these regions as important growth drivers. We are already generating more than EUR 3 billion in revenue and achieving double-digit growth figures. And we want to continue on this path.

How is always reflect in our financial targets and reporting. We have adjusted our reporting strategy by creating our precision therapy segment that was [indiscernible] advanced therapies and ultrasound. On the medium-term goals, 2027 to 2030, we wanted to grow strongly and profitably in the 2 synergistic segments of imaging and precision therapy. We're aiming for 6% to 9% revenue growth on a corporate basis with slightly more growth on the precision therapy side. Imaging the high single digits. I assume that will be in the mid- to high single not this year, which has also been effected by tariffs, imaging returned to margin expansion for scaling.

[indiscernible] and margin is around 100 basis points per year in precision therapy. Diagnostics and [indiscernible] grow in the mid-single digit in term of sales of [indiscernible] in the mid-teens on a year-on-year basis. For the company as a whole, this translates into 5% to 7% sales growth and double-digit EPS growth as the aim. Last but not least, I would like to mention our figures for the first quarter of the current fiscal year 2026. We got off a very good start. [indiscernible] strict imaging precision therapy compared to the previous year's quarter. We have grown by 6% the book-to-bill ratio of ratio of incoming orders to sales is at -- on 1.12, which indicates strong growth in the qr ahead.

Despite considerable headwind from currency developments and tariffs, the adjusted EBIT margin has been kept stable at 15%. Diagnostics businesses is working on the transformation. And I've already mentioned that significant market changes such as in China because of the central volume procurement by the -- just on in the replacement has had an effect.

The portfolio [indiscernible] been very successful, business growing by 20% of the accounts for 70% of our business in this setup. Last but not least, our sustainability goals, we want to further increase our patient impact to 3.3 billion patient contact a year. We want to reduce our carbon footprint in scope 1 and 2 by 90% by 2030 and in Scope 3 by 2050. And we want to maintain a very high level of commitment to the Healthineers team. With the goal of having at least 80% of Healthineers work in countries where we are certified as a great place to work.

Shareholders, your Healthineers team delivered another successful year in 2025, while also setting the signals for further profitable growth in the years ahead. I should like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to the entire Supervisory Board for the trust in cooperation. And to you personally arrived for your advice and assistance. [indiscernible] shareholders I'd like to thank you for your trust and support, which you have once again demonstrated today through your renewed interest in us. Thank you very much.

Thank you. So very much, Bernhard.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Siemens Healthineers Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to the safe harbor statement on Page 2 of the Siemens Healthineers presentation. This conference call may include forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the company's current expectations and certain assumptions and are, therefore, subject to certain risks and uncertainties.

At this time, I would like to turn the call over to your host today, Mr. Marc Koebernick, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome, everyone, to our Q1 earnings call for fiscal 2026. I'd like to thank each one of you for joining us today. At 7:00 this morning, we published our Q1 2026 results. All related material for today's results release are available on the IR section of the Siemens Healthineers web page. In a moment, we'll hear directly from our CEO, Bernd Montag; and our CFO, Jochen Schmitz. And after the presentation, we will have a Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] All the more so as we have quite a tight schedule today with our Annual Shareholders Meeting starting at 10. Additionally, please note that a full transcript and recording of today's call will be made available on our Investor Relations web page shortly after the session ends. And again, thank you for being here.

And now I'd like to turn it over to our CEO, Bernd Montag.

Thanks, Marc, and also a warm welcome from my side. Let me start with a brief look at key takeaways from the last quarter. Firstly, we had a good start into fiscal year 2026 and confirm our outlook. Notably, the synergetic part of our portfolio, Imaging and Precision Therapy showed strong underlying operational performance in the quarter, especially in light of substantial headwinds from tariffs and foreign exchange. However, Diagnostics was affected by material market challenges in China that we did not foresee to their full extent.

Secondly, we are fully on track with our preparations for the deconsolidation from Siemens AG. We began the preparation for the demerger agreement and the refinancing necessitated by the planned deconsolidation. In this context, we received a strong investment-grade rating from Moody's, a clear milestone for our financial independence that demonstrates our financial strength and the resilience of our business model.

And finally, the Elevating Health Globally strategy we presented at our Capital Market Day in November is gaining traction with very good feedback from customers and partners. Before diving deeper into the progress on strategy execution, let me give you my read of the quarterly print. Imaging and Precision Therapy is performing very well. Fundamentals are fully intact. Strong 6% growth, a decent equipment book-to-bill of 1.12 and an operational margin expansion that could broadly compensate for tariffs and FX. That's really an achievement.

Diagnostics recorded a revenue decline of 3%. The Diagnostics business in China is challenged by material market changes primarily due to volume-based procurement, but also reimbursement reductions. Since VBP is primarily price driven, it does not just lead to a decline in revenue, but to a significant loss in profit at the same time. The reimbursement reductions impact primarily volume, which means another drag on revenue and conversion on top of VBP.

In the Americas, on the other hand, Diagnostics is operationally growing again compared to previous years. This growth shows that the Atellica portfolio is gaining traction in our biggest diagnostics market, while dilution from our shrinking legacy is, as expected, still holding back growth. Overall, the Atellica franchise has grown by roughly 20% in Q1, like in recent years and is now at almost 70% of sales in the important core lab solution business.

In Brazil, the Diagnostics team renewed the contract with a large strategic diagnostics customer, a major force in the industry whose decisions have an influence on the market, one of the consolidators. Not only was the team able to retain the customer, but the customer is now adding additional analyzers beyond the existing contract, a testament to the strong demand for the Atellica franchise in the industry. Jochen will run you through the financials later.

Now let me briefly recap the key elements of our strategy. What moves the world the most when it comes to health care are the noncommunicable diseases or NCDs. These are neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, cardiovascular diseases, stroke and cancer. The NCDs are responsible for 75% of all deaths worldwide and are precisely the diseases on which our innovations and growth initiatives are predicated. Our triangle of patient winning, precision therapy and health care AI is what it needs to fight the most threatening diseases from earlier detection to the right diagnosis to the right therapy selection and planning to the personalized minimally invasive treatment and all this at scale by using health care AI.

This is exactly what we showcased at RSNA with a series of new launches underscoring our unique clinical relevance. Our AI-driven Syngo.CT Coronary Cockpit tool quantifies plaque data and enables deeper insights for intervention planning and treatment by the physician. This AI-powered software is designed to automatically segment and label coronary arteries as well as to visualize and quantify plaque types for the entire coronary vascular tree or individual lesions.

Combined with the innovations like our Photon Counting CT and dual source technology, it offers unprecedented clarity and speed of decision-making. In precision therapy, real-time imaging is key for conducting precise and safe interventions. We move MRI into the interventional suite, offering new clinical opportunities in image-guided interventions. This XL MRI system with its excellent soft tissue contrast provides high-performance imaging without ionizing radiation and with exceptional patient access. And last but not least, there's our all-new family of angiography systems.

It comes, for example, with an AI-powered reduction of image noise in real time for crisp, high-resolution images and this at the lowest reasonable dose possible. Now let me come to our second superpower, our unmatched regional organization. Our customer-specific organization is very much local, whether it is in all parts of Europe, in Malaysia, in the U.S.A. or in China. Our company's strength can be found in all these places. We have the broadest and at the same time, also the deepest portfolio. We know how to address departments and medical subspecialties, and we know how to address the C level.

With our intimate knowledge of the local situation and our access to the global standard of care, we are perfectly positioned to support our customers to overcome their challenges. How do we translate this into additional business? Firstly, we further expand our footprint in value partnerships, create even more long-term partnerships and become even more relevant to our customers.

Secondly, drive clinical transformation along our strength in fighting the NCDs with value programs. Here, we are working -- we are giving support to rethink how workflows, technology and staffing work together, for example, by helping our customers to build a theranostics practice or supporting them to optimize their radiology department or to set up a stroke center.

And finally, we plan to further increase impact in emerging countries. Let me give you some examples of how we are progressing on the next slide. Next to a series of other value partnerships, we entered a new 10-year value partnership with Onvida in January, a provider for health care in Southern Arizona. This value partnership includes a $55 million capital equipment commitment and it is expected to exceed the $100 million in total value over the term, inclusive of service and solutions. It is a nice example of how we can improve rural health and quality of care in a long-term collaboration.

It ensures clinical excellence and access to advanced diagnostic imaging therapeutic technology and corresponding services from maintenance to consulting. For our value programs, we see here a strong deal funnel building up, particularly for cancer treatment programs. And when it comes to increasing impact in emerging markets, we see very good momentum. Vietnam was outstanding, delivering a very strong start with 45 systems across 18 hospitals and clinics, including 2 Photon Counting CT systems in the single month of December.

With this, I would like to hand over to Jochen.

Thank you, Bernhard, and also good morning from my side. Before I start, since this fiscal year, we have a new reporting structure. Just as a small recap, there are 2 main changes. Firstly, Varian, Advanced Therapies and ultrasound are forming the Precision Therapy segment. Secondly, the internal suppliers for the segments, the so-called tech centers which were part of the Imaging segment before, moved to central items as they serve all segments.

Now let me share some color on our financial performance in Q1, starting with the Imaging segment. In Imaging, our Photon Counting CT and our Radiopharmaceuticals business continued to drive growth again this quarter, resulting in an imaging revenue growth of 5.7%.

Two short technical remarks. Firstly, on top line, we strengthened the European footprint of the radiopharmaceutical business by an acquisition from Novartis, a transaction that we successfully closed in our Q1 of last fiscal year. For comparability reasons, the acquired revenue is from now on included in our comparable revenue growth number. Secondly, on Imaging's adjusted EBIT margin, prior year quarter had a negative impact from special items, which amounted to roughly 50 basis points in the new structure.

Imaging's adjusted EBIT margin of 21.6% is a result of strong operational margin expansion. Taking out prior year quarter's negative special items and this year's headwind of around 200 basis points from tariffs and foreign exchange leads to an operational margin expansion north of 100 basis points.

Now over to our segment Precision Therapy. Precision Therapy started the fiscal year with strong growth of 5.9% against a tougher comp of 8% growth in the prior year quarter. Varian has significantly contributed with 9% growth, while Advanced Therapies had as disclosed a softer start. Let me remind you that we will continue to provide you in our financial disclosure, the segment there in Varian for revenue and margin.

In Precision Therapy, we saw an outstanding operational margin expansion of almost 400 basis points driven by good conversion and a favorable business mix across the board. The operational margin expansion excludes the headwinds from tariffs and foreign exchange as well as a positive special item this quarter. The margin benefited from these special items by around 100 basis points. The most notable item was a catch-up booking related to software revenue recognition in Varian.

And now let's complete the segment run-through with Diagnostics. Diagnostics had a weak start due to major structural changes in the China market. The first is volume-based procurement that we repeatedly pointed out as a major headwind with regard to revenue growth, especially for the first half in fiscal year 2026. VBP essentially sets new price levels with a 1:1 impact on profit. Additionally, the diagnostics sector in China faces material market challenges now impacting volume due to reimbursement reductions impacting our diagnostic portfolio. This led to a muted demand and was another drag on the Q1 revenue line on top of VBP.

Outside China, our Diagnostic business posted stable revenues, though the weak diagnostic performance in Q1 is primarily due to the current challenges in the Chinese market. The revenue decline due to China obviously led to significant negative conversion missing in the EBIT line. The margin had another drag from a particular high instrument share. Bernd already mentioned a large deal in Brazil, which, for example, led to high instrument placements in Q1, which, as you know, in a razor, razor blade business model are always an investment into the field and consequently have a temporary dilutive effect on the bottom line.

And now to conclude, let's have a look at the group. Let's start with the top line. The 6% growth in Imaging and Precision Therapy and the 3% decline in Diagnostics add up to a solid 3.8%. Noteworthy in the regions are the Americas, which grew with 9%, continuing the excellent growth we saw also in the quarters before. China, on the other hand, declined by 5%, which was exclusively due to the steep decline in Diagnostics. Imaging and Precision Therapy in China were flattish with a positive prefix.

Operationally, we saw a strong earnings performance in Q1, which offset the significant headwinds from tariffs and foreign exchange in this quarter completely. While the disclosed adjusted EBIT margin was 15%, i.e., flattish year-over-year, -- excluding the headwinds from foreign exchange and tariffs, the margin expanded operationally by 200 basis points. Adjusted EPS was down by 3%. And excluding the headwinds from tariffs and foreign exchange on the EPS line, EPS grew by around 17% year-over-year.

So the 3 main drivers this quarter are strong operational earnings performance, tariffs and foreign exchange headwind, just as we showed in our waterfall chart for EPS in the fiscal year 2026. On the left side, you see the waterfall chart for EPS in fiscal year 2026 as of our Q4 earnings call from last November. Let's go through the main moving parts, starting with foreign exchange. We expect foreign exchange to be a headwind in every quarter this fiscal year. So the around $0.04 this quarter are in line with the around EUR $0.15 we expect for the full fiscal year.

Now tariffs. Tariffs are also in line with what we expected last November. The year-over-year tariff headwind will predominantly impact the first half of the year. So the headwind of around EUR 0.06 in Q1 is also in line with the around EUR 0.15 we expect for the full fiscal year. We expect significantly lower headwinds from tariffs in the second half, in particular, because of the increased tariff rates from 10% to 15% in the course of the second half.

Having gone through foreign exchange and tariffs, this leaves us with our underlying operational performance on the EPS bridge. Adjusted EPS in Q1 was year-over-year down by EUR 0.02. Taking out the total headwind of EUR 0.10 from foreign exchange and tariffs brings us to around EUR 0.08 of operational earnings improvement in Q1. This was driven, as said, by the strong earnings performance of Imaging and Precision Therapy, which more than compensated for the weak margins of Diagnostics in Q1. The EUR 0.08 operational improvements show 2 things.

First, we are in a good position for the around EUR 0.25 improvement we expected for the full fiscal year. And second, we continue to consistently improve our margins operationally every quarter, which brings me to the next slide. In Q1, we grew year-over-year revenues ex foreign exchange again after growing revenues each quarter for several years in a row, a strong testament to our revenue growth performance.

Now I will show the margin development in 2 different views. This one includes tariffs and foreign exchange. And on the next slide, excluding only tariffs. What you see on this slide is that the margins were holding up well despite tariffs. Q3 fiscal 2025, the first quarter which was impacted by tariffs, still saw year-over-year expansion. Q4 margins was only slightly down, and the margin this quarter was on a prior year quarter level despite tariffs and as we all know, foreign exchange headwinds.

On the next slide, you see margin development excluding tariffs. And you see consistent margin expansion, both sequentially and year-over-year. Why do we show this slide? We expect to fully mitigate the impact of tariffs over the next 3 years. Tariffs will be a longer but only temporary drag on the margin. And consequently, the ex tariff margin development is the long-term reference for our operational earnings strength, a strong proof point that we consistently turn our revenue growth into earnings growth.

And this brings me to the outlook for fiscal year 2026. We confirm our outlook for fiscal year 2026, both for revenue growth and for adjusted EPS. We are fully aware that the picture on segment level is mixed this quarter, but especially the strong performance in our synergistic core of Imaging and Precision Therapy is a strong proof point to confirm our outlook for fiscal year 2026.

Before I close, let me share our latest views on Q2. We expect revenue growth for the group in Q2 to be below our outlook range of 5% to 6%. Similarly, as in Q1, we expect Diagnostics to continue to face market challenges in China in Q2, resulting in a revenue decline also in Q2. In Q2, we additionally faced tough comps in China. Diagnostics revenue in China rose strongly in prior year's Q2, the only quarter in China last year with growth in Diagnostics.

Due to these tough comps in China, we expect the revenue decline of the segment to be even more pronounced in Q2 than in Q1. We expect Imaging and Precision Therapy growth in Q2 to be around the assumptions for fiscal year 2026, means mid-single digits and mid- to high single digits, respectively. Due to tariffs and foreign exchange, we expect margins in all segments in Q2 to be below the prior year quarter. Bear in mind that the Imaging margin in Q2 2025 was the highest in the last fiscal year with a disclosed tailwind from a positive special item.

Also, when you look at margins sequentially this year, the Precision Therapy margin in Q1 also had positive special items. So we would expect a margin decline in Precision Therapy year-over-year due to tariffs and foreign exchange and quarter-over-quarter due to special items in Q1.

For Diagnostics, we would expect sequential margin improvement from normalizing mix. However, with missing conversion from year-over-year declining revenue due to ongoing market challenges in China and tariff headwinds, still a clear margin decline year-over-year.

And with this, I hand back to you, Marc.

Yes. Thanks, Jochen. So let's go over to Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] First caller on the line would be Veronika Dubajova from Citi.

I want to obviously talk about Diagnostics. And Jochen, I'm just curious to get your thoughts, given the structural changes that you are seeing in the business. So how is your thinking about the long-term margin potential for Diagnostics changing? Do you still think we can get to a mid-teens margin here or towards a mid-teens margin? Or does what you're seeing in China fundamentally alter that trajectory? And then maybe if you could also kind of touch upon your expectation for Diagnostics also for the full year '26. I think the prior guidance divisionally had been for minor margin expansion. I was hoping we could get an update on that.

Yes. Thanks, Veronika, for 2 obvious questions, I would say. First of all, on -- and let me start with the second question. It was clear and that was also -- or we started, I would say, also the guidance for this that the first half for Diagnostics will be a tough one because of missing -- luckily missing volume-based procurement last year in the first half and then being exposed to it in the second half. Therefore, it was clear that the first half will be weaker than the second half. So this has not changed.

Obviously, Q1 because of also the trajectory and what we have seen in the market was a bit more pronounced, negatively pronounced than initially assumed. And this might also lead potentially to that we might need to change the assumption slightly on Diagnostics going forward for this fiscal year. But a bit too early to tell. And I think it's important to note, that's why we also, I would say, wholeheartedly confirmed our outlook and we saw a super strong start profitability-wise in the synergistic core. Therefore, we feel very good about the outlook.

Now coming to your first question was more the midterm outlook on Diagnostics. I think when we look at the trajectory at the plans we have and also at the relevance this China business meanwhile only have or has for Diagnostics, we still feel that the midterm guidance we have out there for Diagnostics is a valid one. The current China revenue portion in Diagnostics is meanwhile down to 7%, 8%. And I think we will hopefully reach this year then the new baseline in the business. We will also adjust, obviously, according to the baseline, our footprint accordingly. And I'm pretty sure that we will be able to get to midterm margins despite the fact that we see maybe a different baseline in China.

We move on to Graham Doyle from UBS.

Just 2 quick ones. You called out PETNET and PCCT in terms of driving imaging. Is there any way of quantifying how much of a benefit that's been in the numbers in Q1 so we can think about that going forward? And then just your overall message on China, excluding Diagnostics, what are you seeing? Because it looks to me like the market was probably down in the second half and some of your peers are finding it a little more difficult than you are. So just a good sense of what you're seeing on the Imaging and Varian portfolios in particular.

Maybe, Graham, I start with the forbidden second question, yes. because Marc asked for one question, but that's why it's not a forbidden question. So I mean, on China, we -- ex Diagnostics, we are -- we feel comfortable with what we projected when entering the year of more or less flat development. We are happy with the market share development, which is maybe also a bit of the difference to what you heard from others. But we also don't see a reason to change to a more positive outlook. So the kind of prudent assumption of a flat volume development in China is in the synergetic core is what we stick to, and we basically also see confirmed so far.

To your first question, Graham, Imaging grew 5.7%. What we highlight, that's the logic we have, grows faster than 5.7%. That is why we highlight things, what is overproportionately growing. And obviously, the Photon Counting CT with us being, I would say, clearly ahead of the camp having a portfolio of offerings is giving a nice tailwind to the growth trajectory in CT. And we are very happy with what we see.

On PETNET, we had a very strong quarter. As you know, this is solely in Q1, solely driven by the United States because we have not baked in the comparable revenue numbers in Q1 yet for Europe because that is coming only starting 12 months after closing. And you also can see then -- you saw also the strong Americas numbers. They are partially also driven by the nice, I would say, growth in the procedure-based businesses, which goes even beyond PETNET, which is also the nice growth rate we see in ultrasound-based catheters and even in our smallest portion or portfolio item in procedure-based business, which is Interventional Oncology. So we are very happy with what we see here. And the growth rates in PETNET are clearly double digit.

So moving on to the next caller in the queue, that will be Hassan from Barclays.

Another on margins, but on the core business, given the strong start despite the 100 basis points one-off. Can you elaborate on the Varian one-off and how you're thinking about the building blocks for margins for the rest of the year in the core given tariff headwinds and whether your divisional margin outlook for Precision Therapy and Imaging that you outlined in the CMD of minor margin declines remain?

Hassan, I might repeat more or less with the different -- with the opposite prefix my statement to Diagnostics beforehand. I think obviously, a good start, a very good start is helping everything we wanted to achieve in Imaging and Precision Therapy on top and bottom line. And as the start in Diagnostics was exactly the opposite, I think we will need to think that through and see what the next quarter exactly will bring. And then we might need to update the assumptions, which are -- which forming the basis for the outlook.

After Q1, for us, the main message is that we see us very, very strong in our core that we see an unfortunate, but from our standpoint, temporary and ring-fenced issue for diagnostic in China and that the combination of both will, first of all, allow us to confirm our company outlook at this point in time. And it also gives us, I would say, a lot of optimism looking even into the midterm and our midterm ambition.

Moving on to next one in the line that would be Julien Ouaddour from Bank of America.

So my question is on Imaging margin. So adjusted for the effect of the tariff plus the special items, I think the margin would have been up 120 bps in Q1, which is basically well above your midterm target you just issued some months ago. I'm just wondering if the main drivers are -- I mean, the one that you're basically exiting today, the Photon Counting CT and the PETNETs, given, I mean, fast growth on one side and the accretive profile for the margin on the -- on the other side? And how should we think about the coming quarters given these trends are just very likely to continue? And because you say Diagnostics is maybe a little bit softer on margin versus initial expectations, would you say Imaging and PT could offset it? And I mean that's why you're keeping the guidance unchanged.

I'll start with the second one. I think you are totally right. So when you have 80% of your portfolio performing better and 20% revenue-wise, weaker, I think that's more or less, and you are early in the year with the first quarter, then you can -- that's, I would say, the main rationale behind us confirming our outlook. So that is clear. When -- I'm sure we talk since 8 years about imaging margins and that they also sometimes fluctuate a bit quarter-by-quarter on always very high level, industry-leading in every regard. And this quarter was a decent mix quarter, but the margin was 21.6% will be not the highest for the year. That's not what it is. But it will be -- it was a good start. We are very happy with what we've seen.

But I think it would also be not prudent to assume that we now will, every quarter, improve margins by underlying by 120 basis points. That's not what it is. Is Photon Counting CT per se helping on the margin expansion? Yes, it is. PETNET is not necessarily a huge margin tailwind because here you know we don't own the IP. We manufacture and distribute this. We have a completely different P&L profile in that business, significantly lower gross margin, but also a very, very significantly lower OpEx portion in there so that the margins are more or less in PETNET, slightly better than the average, but not much.

Moving on in the queue to David Adlington from JPMorgan.

Just maybe on Varian. Given the fact you confirmed you're launching a new product in September, I just wondered if you're expecting a bit of an air pocket on U.S. orders between now and then as customers wait on the new system.

I mean the short answer is no. And we will also see to some extent, but I want to be a bit careful to not disclose too much when it comes to the new product or new technology because in a way, it's also a question, is it a product? Or is it a new -- a complete new philosophy of treatment? So it's -- and Varian has a very strong track record when it comes to taking care of existing customers of installed base.

So it is a topic which we don't really see and where we also know how to -- where the team knows quite well how to handle this. So -- and in the end, I mean, a topic where you also don't need to be, let's say, too concerned is that typically the time between orders and revenue on the Varian side is pretty long, so that the current revenue line is pretty much secured with the orders we have in-house, and then we can still have a discussion with customers who have issued orders once the new technology is announced, whether they want to stick with the original scope of their order or whether they want to convert, which potentially also comes with a price.

And David, as one data point, book-to-bill in Q1 in Varian equipment book-to-bill, which is exactly referring to what you're asking for was very healthy again.

Next one in the queue would be Julien Dormois from Jefferies.

Hope you can hear me okay. My question is related to Diagnostics. Obviously, a new round of challenges coming now this time from China. Could we just get a sense of what is your commitment to the business for the mid- to long run, given this new round of challenges and obviously, difficult financials once again coming from the division?

Yes. Julien, I mean, I want to qualify a little bit the new round of challenges. I mean we knew that China is -- or the transition in China is a topic for our Diagnostics business as much as it is a topic for all competitors and peers in the market. It's a process, which lasts a couple of quarters. And that is not changing, let's say, materially how we look at diagnostics and how we look at Diagnostics, I think we have also indicated at the Capital Market Day, we have, as part of the transformation program, verticalized the business, meaning it steers its own sales and service as a vertical entity.

We have been also very clear that there is a synergetic core of Siemens Healthineers around the strategic triangle comprising the 2 businesses, Imaging and Precision therapy and that we want to give Diagnostics even more freedom after that successful transformation with now 70% Atellica revenue in the core lab, 20% growth rate to further verticalize its structure to then also create optionalities. And we will take it from there. It is very clear. This is a business within -- this is a business with its own logic. And we want to run it as independently as possible. And there is, of course, optionality in the long run, whether we are the better owner or not. And when I say the synergies are limited, I'm kind of indicating how we are thinking.

Moving on to Hugo from Exane.

Just a quick follow-up on a previous question, but focused on China operation. You made comments that you would be looking at streamlining the China businesses. Does it mean that you will be just keen to make that more efficient across all businesses or reassessing whether operating the 3 businesses in China still makes sense? And I guess how far would you be willing to go? And if you can give us a sense of the value of the Chinese assets on the balance sheet?

So first of all, there was no comment regarding China at all and our commitment to -- yes. Okay. So I mean the only topic, which maybe Jochen was commenting on, I mean, since in Diagnostics, the Chinese -- let's say, the volume in the Chinese market is going to a significantly lower level, we are also adjusting our go-to-market structure. And on the other hand, I mean, there is also an opportunity for efficiency because the more volume-based procurement, the less, let's say, retail "go-to-market" you need.

Otherwise, we are happy with 8,000 employees in China. We have about 1,000 R&D employees in China, about 10% of our workforce generating about, I don't know, 12%, 11%, 12% of revenues. We are confident and we see it also we had that in our assumption for the midterm targets that China will slowly return to growth. We baked in an assumption of 5% growth into the midterm targets, which is the midterm as defined as the period of '27 to 2030. And I hope that answers the question.

And maybe just because of your second part of the question, assets and so on and so on. I think we need to differentiate between 2 things. And my comment was more related to what Bernd answered. It was the China market, and we need -- obviously, we do this in every market. If market dynamics do change, we adjust the way and the resources we put or we assign to those markets or employ to those markets. China is also a significant value add location for us. And this is also -- we do not plan here any changes. And therefore, this is only related to the go-to-market in Diagnostics.

Moving on to the next caller. That will be Natalia from RBC.

It's a follow-up on the Precision Therapy side. You talked to the strong Varian performance and the weaker Advanced Therapies as expected. Are you able to talk a bit more around the drivers of the strong underlying Varian margin improvement there in Q1 and sort of what the positive business mix is that you referred to? And then just to touch on the Advanced Therapy side, if you're able to talk around any sort of initial feedback you're getting ahead of the new Advanced Therapy portfolio launch.

I'll start with Varian. When we had -- people tend to forget quickly. We had also not a super strong Q4 from a top line perspective, you might recall. It was only between 1% and 2%. We have now a very strong 9% growth in Varian as discussed back then and also kind of promised because we knew what is coming.

Secondly, we had -- we referred to a good mix. Good mix comes in different forms and fashions. Depends often where you can recognize revenue in which countries because price levels do vary. It comes with different products do have different margins. I would say also the -- in particular, in Varian, how much, so to say, aftersales business, if you want to use that term, you have, how much of upgrades you can bring into the field, HyperSight, RapidArc Dynamic, other pieces, which have different margin profiles.

The relative strength in the quarter of service growth can play a role relative to equipment growth because in Varian, the margin delta between equipment and service is more pronounced than it is in Imaging. And these are factors which all went in this quarter into a positive direction and helped us to show in the second quarter in a row, a very nice margin north of 19%. But we need to be careful that we don't expect this to happen all the time because as we also highlighted, there was a positive one-timer in that. We quantified that with 100 basis points. Varian is about 60% of the segment. Therefore, it was -- the 100 basis points were Varian related. Therefore, it's for Varian in itself, even higher than 100 basis points.

Yes. And regarding the AT portfolio, I'm very, very positive and about the feedback we get from customers. Basically 2 topics which really stand out. I mean, on the one hand, there is a lot of positive feedback for the depth of optimizing clinical workflows of really understanding how physicians work, how seamless the systems are optimized for whether it is stroke or whether it is spine surgery.

The one topic which even stands out more is this so-called OPTIQ AI, which is the AI-based denoising of the images, which allows to produce unseen image quality at much lower dose. So you can either use it to get the same type of image quality at much lower dose, which in this case, in AT means lower dose to the patient, but also lower dose for the operator or much more detail. And maybe as a remark in general because we often discuss what is -- how do we monetize AI. So what this points toward is also what we see in MR, for example, that this combination of bringing AI to improve system performance like we do with Deep Resolve and our MAGNETOM Free and technology is what we also now have transferred to AT, and it is differentiating the products and really making a big difference.

So moving on to basically the last caller for today. We need to cut it short, as I already indicated earlier on. It's Falko from Deutsche Bank. So, Falko, please go ahead.

Another European medtech company told us -- told the market yesterday that they expect an update on the Section 232 list for medtech products over the next 1 to 2 months. Is that something that you have also heard? Is there anything you could share with us in that regard?

Short answer, no, we don't have any, let's say, tangible news in this regard.

I would also be -- I think this is I would say, difficult territory per se to make predictions about those things. And therefore, I think we should be cautious and we should live with and then manage the outcomes we see. That does not mean that we are not supporting our position. And the position is unchanged in the entire industry that trade barriers are ultimately to the detriment of patient and the health care system that if we are here maybe reluctant to predict anything, it's not that we don't work on the right things in the background. But I think it is prudent to not predict what the outcomes might be. Sorry for this.

Good. Thanks, Falko. So that brings us to the end of our call. Thanks for the good questions. Thanks for tuning in again. We'll be on virtual roadshow in the next few days and especially Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And of course, we have several conferences coming up in London, Miami. And if we don't meet each other or hear each other in between, we'll at latest hear from each other with our Q2 reporting in May. So bye-bye.

That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. A recording of this conference call will be available on the Investor Relations section of the Siemens Healthineers website.

Good afternoon, everybody. I'm David Adlington. I head up the JPMorgan research team for MedTech in London for JPMorgan. It's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Montag and Jochen, CFO as well from Healthineers. There will be a presentation in a moment. Thank you.

So thank you, David. So as a preview, I mean, this is going to be a very important year for Siemens Healthineers here because many of you know that more shares will be available soon, yes.

So that is why I will start a little bit in the beginning about really who we are so that this is really clear. And on the other hand, this is why we team up today, and Jochen will also present, which means I need to speak very fast so that he has also some time and doesn't criticize me too hard afterwards.

So with that said, who are we? We are a clear market leader and compounder. We are a clear #1 in imaging and in precision therapy. We are seen as the go-to partner for the big institutions for the academic medical centers, 90% of them work with us.

We are global, global in the sense of being present in 70 countries. We have an installed base of about 700,000 systems and an impressive number, 3 billion patient touch points per year.

R&D is for us not a cost, but the lifeblood of the company. We invest more than anybody else. And that is what's driving our success, our growth, our margins. We invest about $2 billion. We are leading in AI in our field.

We have 13,000 R&D employees, more than people in production. And in addition, and that's sometimes underappreciated, we are super strong when it comes to understanding the needs, especially of the consolidating customers and the 200 -- more than 200 value partnerships and the order backlog of EUR 6 billion from these big arrangements speak for this. So it's not only innovation, but also a great sales team with special competencies. Then looking at the P&L and how we segment it, we are the unique, #1, as I said, in imaging, 38% market share. That's 7 percentage points more than at IPO 8 years ago.

Varian market share above 60% as an aside, since closing of the deal. The Varian market share has grown by 10 percentage points. So a real success, strong presence in Advanced Therapies with a lot of very exciting partnerships with companies like Intuitive, like Stryker, like Boston Scientific, like Biosense Webster, like Medtronic and Diagnostics on a very good path to transform the business and now on the track to further define its own strategy, its own structure because the synergies of that business with the rest is very limited.

So it is a business in itself. Looking at where we want to go as a company with the rest of the portfolio, the chunk -- the biggest chunk and the exciting part of the portfolio is basically shown on this slide.

And this slide is -- maybe it looks simple, but it is the thesis why Siemens Healthineers is better positioned for what defines the future of health care, in my opinion, in my unbiased opinion than anybody else because when you look at the diseases worldwide, 75% of global deaths that's globally are because of these diseases here, cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, neurodegenerative diseases.

What all these NCDs, the noncommunicable diseases, have in common is they start slowly. It's a process. So the homework is to catch the disease early. But when you have found the disease, it's about a personalized treatment. It is somebody's cancer in this and this stage.

It is somebody's stroke in this and this vessel. So you need personalization at scale. And this is what our company is set up for. This is what we optimize. This is how we strengthen more and more and more and more on the 2 pillars of our organization.

It's on the one hand, patient twinning or this enormous strength we have in imaging in characterizing the patient. And then on the other hand, precision therapy, which means technology-based targeted personalized treatment and these 2 powered by the third aspect, health care AI to make sure that this personalization at scale can be done efficiently and by applying the world's best knowledge.

So that's, in simple words, this is what Siemens Healthineers is doing. What it means in more detail in imaging, and I start clock right in the upper right, very strong position in MRI, more than 50% market share, for example, in the United States, which is quite impressive, I find, in a foreign country.

One of our main competitors is sitting here, where we have a super strong position. We are working on the one hand, on rolling out the DryCool technology, but this is also where a super important topic plays a role, which I would call physical AI, so AI algorithms, which make the use of the system, which are closely linked with the hardware, which make the acquisition super fast and that interplay is shown very nice.

We are very strong now in mammography also, super exciting, the opportunity, which we are not only having as an opportunity, which we are really grabbing in molecular imaging, where Theranostics and Alzheimer's drive growth. Our distribution business of radiopharmaceuticals, also known as PETNET is soon, maybe in this year already, in this fiscal year will be a EUR 1 billion business.

And of course, our flagship innovation, which is a lot of talking about it and so on is our photon counting CT where we clearly set the trend, but not only set the trend, we are also miles ahead in turning this into a business and making a difference for patients.

What does making a difference for patients mean? It means that it's really altering how a disease is managed in this case. This case it's just about what it does for cardiac -- for cardiovascular disease.

And what you see here is basically when looking at the triangle I showed, it brings early detection to coronary artery disease because you have crystal clear images at the lowest dose.

And I'm personally convinced that in the future, as much as mammography is the method for every woman above a certain age that this will be the method to fight coronary artery disease for every person above a certain age.

Then once there is the disease, there is no interventional diagnostic imaging and no interventional diagnosis necessary anymore because the images are so good. And then powered by AI in addition, the system gives you treatment maps in a clear recommendation, which stent to put in there. So that is building the bridge following the triangle I showed to treatment, powered by AI. That's the beauty of photon counting CT in just one application.

Then precision therapy, again, I start in the upper right angiography and very exciting because of the brand-new portfolio we have just launched with again, call it physical AI, AI-based denoising of the images in real time, which gives you crystal clear real-time images and depending what you want or the same image quality at much lower dose for the patient and for the interventionalist.

Lots of, as I said, partnerships and new opportunities to drive the deployment of the wonderful innovations of our device partners. And then in radiation oncology, it will be a very exciting year because as Arthur Kaindl, the CEO of that business has spread as a rumor at our Capital Market Day.

So we are -- so I repeat the rumor, we are shortly before launching a breakthrough when it comes to a new treatment device or you can always call it a new kind of therapy. So stay tuned for ASTRO in end of the fiscal year in our [ limit here ] in September, where we do a big step here also.

So a lot of excitement here as well. And what this means clinically is that we have the opportunity under one roof to optimize on the one hand, the imaging, which is necessary to diagnose, to plan the treatment to inform the next step to use AI in order to do a digital handover to the treatment system.

So this is what we do by using MRI for planning the treatment of prostate cancer. This is what we do with establishing theranostics with our PET scanners and with our leading distribution of radiopharmaceuticals.

And on the right-hand side, you see what AI can do. This is a patient with multiple metastasis in the brain. In the past, you would have radiated the entire scalp, entire brain with a lot of side effects.

Then in the next step, it was a super time-consuming topic to look at what should be the treatment plan and to kind of manually do this. Now it's done within minutes using AI and a patient like this can be treated. I talked a lot about AI, a little bit of what is the philosophy following the triangle.

We optimize every step and automate it. We slice the elephant step one, patient to image, making sure that the acquisition of the image is done in the fast possible way with less user interaction with unwarranted -- without unwarranted variations, but with a lot of what I call physical AI, which is deeply integrated in the system to make the system faster and better, then image to report, automated analysis of the image and then we hand over to the plan.

So imagine when looking at our road map, completely automated where without any user interaction, it's like stepping on your scale in the morning, your lung cancer screening is done without any person being needed, then the image to report and then in the case of treatment planning, automatic, this is the tumor.

This is the metastasis. This is how the linac is programmed in order to do this or in the future, this is how the endovascular robot is performing the thrombectomy.

And last but not least, and this always comes a little bit too short because we love to talk about segments and about innovation and so on and products.

The strength of our teams because what we have in 70 countries is a team which can go deep, addressing a medical specialty, which is at the same time, broad because we can address all service lines in the hospital.

We can talk to the department. We can talk to the C level. We can bring global knowledge to the local situation. This is how Mayo Clinic does it with us, as an example, or this is how people do it in Norway, what about you?

We are a clinical leader for and the go-to company for entire medical specialties, whether it is cardiology, whether it is radiology, whether it is radiation oncology or neuro interventions, but we are also definitely and the value partnerships are a strong proof point for this, the go-to company for the C-level running the corporated care, the health systems in the U.S., for example, yes.

And this is what the type of discussions we are having, how do you establish a theranostics center? How do you do stroke management in your system? How do you optimize the use of 60 MRIs in different locations? How can Siemens Healthineers help a customer. These are the type of discussions we have on top of being an innovation leader on the product level, on the AI level. And with this, as promised, I hand it over to Jochen.

Thanks, Bernd. Yes, also a warm welcome from my side. Bernd has talked about elevating health globally, and we also do this to create shareholder value, obviously.

And therefore, I want to talk briefly about how we want to be reliable revenue, earnings and cash compounder and have also a very, very solid capital allocation framework in place.

And obviously, we do this under a robust framework work of environmental social and governance that works fine, and it is very important for us.

And when we talk about this circle here, which is depicted on the slide, let me start with reliable revenue, only giving you a few data points to this.

When we talk about reliable revenue, we talk about recurring revenue. It is obvious that the recurring share of revenue in diagnostic is 90%. That is part of the business model. But also in imaging as well as in precision therapy, the recurring revenue stream is meanwhile 50% of revenue comes from service, biggest portion but also from the recurring aspect of our value partnerships, our large and long-term contracts.

And what is relatively new and was maybe not so clear yet to most of it, it's coming from procedure-based revenues, which are growing fast. Bernd mentioned PETNET, but it's also ultrasound-based catheters and also our Interventional Oncology business, which is meanwhile representing a number of more than EUR 1 billion of revenue.

So very reliable revenue streams. On the profitable growth side, we drive profitability by driving pricing excellence. We have premium pricing in place across the portfolio due to our innovation leadership position in general, and we will execute on this in a very, very rigid way.

We drive our advantages coming from economies of scale being the market leader in almost all businesses in the imaging and precision therapy space.

And lastly, we have a very, very clear mindset in place to drive productivity, catering for all the headwinds we see from other areas. This is about profitable growth. Organic growth investments, we are committed to keep our innovation leadership in place.

Therefore, we are committed to a very, very strong R&D team, very, very strong R&D pipeline, translating into 8% to 9% of R&D spend every year. This translates into more than EUR 2 billion of R&D spend every year.

Obviously, on the go-to-market side, we look into that very carefully. We currently spend about 17% of revenue into SG&A. And obviously, this is always an area where we can look for productivity.

But I would also consider this in the next 5 years to stay in a range between 15% and 17%. Obviously, from an organic growth investment, we also invest in CapEx, in our facilities, in particular, the manufacturing facilities, but also in growth engines like our radiopharmacy network in PETNET in the U.S. as well as in Europe.

And this all translates into very reliable free cash flow. We generate 0.8 to 0.9 cash conversion rate every year, and that's what we also commit for the next 5 years.

And this is something which we could even improve over time as also our diagnostic business became meanwhile, a cash conversion contributor over time, which was not always the case in the past.

And obviously, when you generate reliable cash flows, you also need to think about capital allocation. We have a dividend policy in place. We want to have a stable and growing dividend. That means we have just changed, I would say, the strict regime to tie this 1:1 to our net income development, but stable and growing dividend policy.

And obviously, with the change in shareholder structure, we will also consider share buybacks as a potential means to drive shareholder value if it makes sense.

Obviously, after the acquisition of Varian, we are still in the process of deleveraging the business. We have meanwhile delevered from 4x net debt over EBITDA to below 3x to 2.8x net debt over EBITDA.

We commit to go to 2.5x over the next 24 months and keep our balance sheet and strength. We have meanwhile a very attractive rating in place from Moody's in the A category, which is very nice and which also prepares us for whatever is coming in case we need to accelerately refinance our debt structure because of the shareholder structure change.

And then obviously, we will drive our disciplined M&A activities in a meaningful way, short-term. We will not go for a major acquisition. This is clear, but we will also consider and screen for meaningful tuck-in acquisitions if and when it makes sense, if and when it creates shareholder value.

With this, let me move on to the outlook for this fiscal year. We plan to grow the business again between 5% and 6%. And this assumes no tailwind from China. No tailwind from China is baked into the 5% to 6% like last year.

We expect to be in our adjusted EPS between EUR 2.20 and EUR 2.40. The midpoint is below the level of prior year because we face due to the strong euro, significant headwind from foreign exchange, around EUR 0.15.

We also expect to see headwind from tariffs of about EUR 0.15. This adds together EUR 0.30 headwind. And we want to compensate most of it, but we currently do not see us in the position to compensate everything. Underlying, this means an EPS improvement in the double-digit area.

When you put this together and set this into, I would say, into the longer-term development of the company, we were able within the challenging time of the new ambition phase since 2022 to grow our adjusted EPS by 11% CAGR.

We see, as I just explained, 2026 from an EPS development as a year of transition. And then we commit to get to double-digit EPS growth starting with 2027 again. How do we do this? We have a clear plan in place to mitigate the impact from tariffs completely by 2028 by driving an additional productivity program, which will cover half of the EUR 400 million headwind we have from tariffs as well as looking into, I would say, market adaptive and smart pricing, driving pricing to a certain level up to add additional EUR 200 million of profit to the bottom line to cover up for the EUR 400 million of headwind from the tariffs.

We see this all fits very nicely together into the strong line of driving shareholder value. And when we summarize this and look at the period of 2027 to 2030, you find here our portfolio split into 2 pieces.

First of all, the synergistic core, how we call it, out of imaging and precision therapy. Our ambition is to grow in this synergistic core 6% to 9% per annum, starting with 2027. And we expect to grow on the diagnostics side, what we call our second core that we will improve the growth trajectory towards the mid-single-digit growth.

And you see that we have also ambitious margin expansion targets in Imaging, where we are by far market as well as margin leader, we expect to be able to expand margins driven by additional scale we come -- we will generate in the business.

In Precision Therapy, we have a more dedicated margin expansion target of 100 basis points per annum on average coming out of significant margin expansion potential in Varian in Advanced Therapies and also in our dedicated ultrasound business.

And in Diagnostics, unchanged, we target a mid-teens margin level by 2030. If you summarize that all for the entire company and bring the 2 things together, you see that our plan is to grow the company between 5% and 7% in revenue over this period of time and grow EPS double digit, as mentioned beforehand, maybe a few words towards our current quarter, just repeating what I've said when we started off the year, we will expect a slightly weaker start into the year, as explained, we will not be in the range of 5% to 6%, as we discussed before and because we expect in our Diagnostics business, driven by China, by the volume-based procurement initiative, a clear decline.

We also expect in our, so to say, most lumpiness business in AT, a slightly softer start, which based on, I would say, a normal start in imaging as well as in Varian, slightly lower revenue growth than the 5% to 6% for the full fiscal year in Q1.

And in Diagnostics, just to remind all of us, this significant headwind from the volume-based procurement program will also have -- will also find its way into the P&L because it's primarily price driven and price, unfortunately, not so much volume-driven price goes one-to-one into P&L. Therefore, it's a tough quarter for diagnostics. And with this, I hand it over to David to structure the Q&A.

Perfect. Thanks, guys. Maybe before we dive into the individual business, maybe a couple of bigger picture questions. China has obviously been a drag on the business for the last probably 2 to 3 years.

And this time last year, you were quite conservative. I think some hope for upside for China as the year progressed didn't quite come through.

You still point towards a flat market in China this year. Maybe I could -- maybe start philosophically, when you think about China, do you think about that returning to the sort of growth you saw historically from a growth perspective?

Secondly, are you seeing increased competition and increased willingness for the local government to use local players? And then finally, how will that impact margins?

Okay. So first of all, I mean, looking at what Jochen also presented, I mean, the good thing is that, I mean, we have been able to grow the business globally without China contributing because we call it a drag. I mean, in the last 2 years, to grow by 6%.

And despite Diagnostics not contributing, despite China not contributing and have been able to deliver the double-digit EPS growth.

So just as a commercial break. When it comes to China, I mean, we assume that, I mean, for this year, we are prudent. Again, we assume a flat development for the market and us. I mean, Jochen said about -- talked about the special situation with Diagnostics, which is a transient effect, but which hits us, especially in the beginning of this year.

And we have baked in an assumption of 5% growth in China for the market and us in this -- for this midterm outlook, which you see on that slide. So -- and that means we are positive on the one hand, that China returns to growth, but on the other hand, not to the levels we have been used to.

And as I said, this is what we assume for market and us. That means why we have a very strong ambition and not only ambition, but also track record to gain market share in the rest of the world in China, the track record and ambition is to grow with the market and to defend our -- the position we have.

Perfect. And then just on the other headwind you faced this year on the tariff side, you point towards offsetting that through a combination of cost efficiencies and pricing over the next 3 years. Is there any thought about shifting any manufacturing to the U.S. or anywhere else?

Let me start first with the mitigation measures we put in place. We started as one productivity program, we call that Lean for Growth, where we, so to say, put additional productivity targets into the organization. The teams are working on it very diligently, and I'm very much convinced because we have that more or less in our own hands that we will deliver on the EUR 200 million plus in that respective time frame.

On the pricing side, the other EUR 200 million, and also to put this into perspective, we talk about a percentage point better pricing based on EUR 20 billion of revenue, EUR 200 million is 1% of EUR 20 billion over a period of 3 years. That means if you divide that by 3 years, it's 0.3%.

So you can say, oh my God, that doesn't sound too over aggressive. But you need to understand this is based on premium pricing we have anyway in place, and we put this on top.

And the limiting factor for us in this regard is that we do not -- we are not willing to deviate from our market share gaining strategy in the businesses, which is, from our standpoint, the main driver, which put us where we are today as the undisputed leader in imaging, in Varian and also in Advanced Therapies.

And value-add structure, this is, I would say, a topic which needs a lot of diligence. You don't just shift value add because value-add structures are shifted based on competencies. That's how we are structured.

And if we will do so, we will look in all angles. And maybe just the obvious thing, we're just moving it to the U.S. might be an option, but maybe not necessarily the most sustainable option, but could be. So we will look into this. We have plans in place and can execute if necessary.

Perfect. If we get into the businesses, start off with imaging, which is I think the key focus for everybody. Good year last year, 8.5% growth despite those headwinds still from China. Your guidance this year is for more mid-single-digit growth. Is there anything we should be thinking about in terms of particular headwinds relative to last year to drive that slowdown?

I would call this guiding prudently because I mean, this has been a strong year for imaging, but there's no change in the dynamics.

And so from that point of view, this is more a technicality that we set the targets overall as we are, but don't take it to -- don't look at the second derivative of growth and look at this as a slowing down.

Yes. I think the word slowdown, I think I also don't like that. I think it's -- this business is super intact. And when we gave guidance that we want to grow in imaging between 5% and 8%.

And if you have a year where everything works fine and you get to 8.5%, that also creates then obviously a difficult starting point -- a more difficult starting point. And when you then grow only whatever, 6%, it's not a deceleration. It's mathematically one, but it's not really one. So we see us fully on track in imaging.

And I want to highlight within imaging, obviously been photon counting CT for the last 2, 3 years or so. How has the uptake of that gone so far?

And what's the key attraction for customers that you're finding at this point? Of course the key attraction for customers?

So I mean, to quantify this, we have some numbers. I mean, we have cumulative orders for -- equipment orders for photon counting CT of EUR 1 billion and EUR 700 million in revenue.

This has been very as planned and actually faster in the last year developed. So half of that number has been in the last fiscal year.

So that means in the last fiscal year, EUR 500 million in orders, equipment orders, EUR 350 million roughly in equipment revenue.

And that represents for our CT equipment business about roughly about 30% of wonderful business, high-margin business, attached with also, by the way, great service contracts.

The main topic is, I mean, there's 2 things. First of all, literally photon counting CT makes every image better. I mean it's a little bit like a flat screen or like HDTV, everything is better.

And so this is -- and at lower dose and with more information. But then I consciously chose the examples I showed. I mean it brings the CT -- not only drives new applications for CT, but it drives new CT scanners, like when it comes to preventive use, when it comes to screening for coronary artery disease.

We are now -- we have introduced at ASTRO a dedicated system for treatment planning. So there's a lot of applications in this technology and now close to 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific publications show that the community has much to say about it. And this is not how the detector is built, but how it makes a clinical difference.

And over time, what sort of time period, where do you expect penetration of photon counting CT to get to?

So first of all, I am 100% convinced that there will be -- in a not too far future, there will not be any conventional CTs anymore. So this is a question of time until every scanner will be photon counting CT based. I mean we are at the forefront of that technology.

And when you say -- and by the way, I also want to say that penetration comes in different topic because there is volume -- there's units, there's volume and there is profit. And when it comes to the penetration in terms of profit pool in the market, we have already gotten a huge share, simply because this is -- these are high-priced topics with high margins in a photon count -- photo counting CT generates the margin of 20 low-end scanners [indiscernible] .

Just we're out of time. I just want to make sure that on the Diagnostics side, over the last 2, 3 years, you are telling of the story around Diagnostics has slightly changed, becoming less and less core, I suppose, as I describe it.

In terms of the message you're trying to get across the Capital Markets Day on Diagnostics, and where do you stand on future ownership of the business?

I mean, first of all, I want to make clear for the records that we have never said, I mean, including our predecessors a long time ago, let me say diagnostics and imaging or Diagnostics and Varian are synergetic.

So to say, hey, we are gaining market share in imaging because we have diagnostics or we are outcompeting in diagnostics because we also have radiation oncology.

This is a different business. And we have been very clear that we are not optimizing synergies. And now in this transition to Atellica, it was super important to also focus the business on that transition, but give the business also a clear independent structure or let's say, to manage the business operationally independently.

It has its own sales force. It's completely verticalized. It only -- it also has this verticalized service. So -- and it is certainly not our intent that after maybe some people would say lengthy process of getting out of a conglomerate, Siemens Healthineers.

My -- our target is not to be a conglomerate. So meaning corporate clarity and the clarity on what we want to achieve in managing the NCDs, as I talked about with the triangle is the priority. Diagnostic is under the same roof, but whether this needs to be the case in the long run is a question one can definitely ask. But for the time being, we have operationally independent structures, but we have no separate legal entities, no separate IT and so on and so on, but we are not trying to optimize togetherness, but optimizing the different -- needs of 2 different businesses.

Perfect. That's clear. I think we are pretty much at time we are. Great. Thank you very much, guys. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Great. So when we set off the plan this day, by the way, thanks to Jefferies for giving us kind of a bit of a room within their huge conference. So I had to see this upfront. I agreed to this with Lindsay. We didn't think that it would be such a crowd turning out. Actually, we hope that there will be some kind of product positive spillover from the idea, but it's impressive. So thanks to all of you for coming and showing interest in Siemens Healthineers. We have quite a bit of program organized for you today. So let me just run you briefly through the agenda that we have organized. So first of all, Bernd will be kicking us off with a run-through of our strategy. Then Jochen will follow up with, obviously, the story around financials and the midterm plan to be then follow up the first Q&A session.

Then we have Sharon Bracken for Diagnostics with her presentation and the Q&A. Then we have a break, say, 25 to 30 minutes, depending how quick we get through the first block. So that will be around about 3:00 p.m. And then we have a long block of presentations in one go. We have Andre for imaging, and we have Arthur and Carsten for Precision Therapy to then closing the day out with Dorin for Healthcare AI. And we have a block of Q&As then. First, a longer session for all of those 4 presenters in 1 block, and then we have a final presentation. So if things come up for maybe group discussion rather, we reserve that for the very last session.

And also, I might take the [ joker ] in the one or the other Q&A to say, look, let's keep that for the last session. So don't feel offended if that happens.

So -- with that said, one little thing at the end, obviously, we're talking a lot also about the future. So the safe harbor statement is something you should take note of. Also with regards to a bit of housekeeping, we are recording this session. It's also live webcasted. And also when we do the Q&A, there's a camera standing there. This will be shooting into the audience. And so if you're asking questions, we just assume that you've agreed to your voice and your image being broadcast and also then later on, put on our website.

So that said, I would say we kick it off now, and I welcome on the stage, our CEO, Bernd Montag.

So thank you, Mark, and thank you, everybody, for coming. I'm standing here together with Jochen, Andre, Carsten, Arthur, Sharon and Dorin on behalf of 74,000 passionate healthineers whose contagious commitment to our purpose, who have a spirit of winning together of continuous learning of being there for patients, for making a difference is what makes this organization one of the world's best workplaces, not my opinion, but publicly acknowledged by agencies.

We are stemming from 150 different nations. We combine an amazing breadth of different skill sets. We have physicists, we have physicians in our group, many, many, many different backgrounds. And it's a true honor to represent this group. This group has been on a journey since quite a while, since the IPO with the clear idea to create something big. We had the IPO, the transformative move with the combination with Varian. And now we are eager to go to the next phase of our company and to do this following last week's announcement also with the perspective of a completely and finally completely independent company.

This is where we are today, what we have achieved so far. We are not only a leader in the industry. I think it's fair to say we are the leader in the industry with a clear #1 position in imaging, in precision therapies with a clear #1 position in all regions, whether it is the Americas, Europe, China or APJ as we call it. When you look to the right, it shows the impressive global reach of the organization. We are directly present in 70 countries. We have an installed base of 700,000 systems. But I think what is most impressive on that slide is that every year, we touch 3 billion patients.

And when we later speak about what we do globally and when the theme is elevating health globally, you see here this is not just a tagline. This is a reality. For us, R&D is not a cost. For us, R&D is the source of everything. We invest more than EUR 2 billion annually into R&D. We expand our R&D budget year-by-year. We have 13,000 engineers looking ahead every day, about half of which are in the field of software, AI and data science and the fact of 1,300 patent families in the field of health care AI alone, I think, is a strong testament of this.

And in the lower left, I'm proud that we also stand out when it comes to addressing customers and especially the big customers, the consolidators with more than 200 value partnerships and a backlog from those alone of more than EUR 6 billion. We have grown into a company with more than EUR 23 billion in revenue, generating close to EUR 4 billion in EBIT. We have in the 3 synergetic businesses of Imaging, Varian and Advanced Therapies, very strong market positions with #1 positions. These are businesses which are working closely together. We will see this during the course of the day, and they share the equipment service type business model. Diagnostics is not synergetic to those. It's following its own path, own business model, razor-razor blade is in a different phase of a -- as we will see successful transformation.

And now before I go to the next slide, since our last Capital Market Day, which was a few years ago, certainly, the macro environment has changed in a way which we -- we didn't foresee and which probably nobody did foresee. The pandemic took longer than anticipated. The war in Ukraine triggered a peak in inflation. We had supply chain interruption. We had the sudden changes and transformation in the Chinese market. We had more and more geopolitical challenges. And last but not least, since a while, new trade barriers and tariffs coming up. I am super proud what our team has achieved despite these challenges. And that is what the next slide says. First of all, in the last 4 years, we have grown revenue by more than 6% per year, grown EPS in the double digits, 11% per year, very strong performance in imaging, Andre and team, 7 percentage points in market share gain since IPO, since closing of the Varian acquisition, we gained 10 percentage points in market share on the Varian side.

We widened the innovation lead with technologies like photon counting CT, DryCool MRI. We are at the forefront of novel treatments like HyperSight in radiation therapy or theranostics, which goes from molecular imaging to Varian. The Varian acquisition, and I always call it combination actually has proven to be a real big success. Arthur will speak more about it because the tagline back then was one step, two leaps. We wanted to create a kind of Varian on steroids, I sometimes say, a Varian which can do even more when it comes to cancer care and which then step-by-step becomes Siemens Healthineers, which is a super strong cancer care company. But it also changed the impact Siemens Healthineers has on customers globally, and it changes how we became a company which is much more about managing disease and which is much more about understanding the space of therapy.

As I already said, we have been very successful in developing a new type of business by addressing the C level of institutions, which created that EUR 6 billion in order backlog for value partnerships I already spoke about. And last but certainly not least, I'm very proud of the Diagnostics team, which is on track with the transformation of the business and since '23 has improved margins by 8 percentage points. And with Atellica, the business of the Atellica franchise has been growing in the last years by 20% per year, now being more than half, covering more than half of the important central lab business. And this is also why we are now convinced that it's time for the next step.

So we give Diagnostics more entrepreneurial freedom to build its own strategy in its own structure. The business will have the flexibility to operate in a dedicated organization with dedicated resources to fully crystallize its value and potential. It will continue to invest to grow, to improve margins and to innovate. And with this, we also create structural optionality's for a whole set on spectrum of pathways for this business in the future. And this is also why in the following, I will mainly concentrate on what we do in the 3 synergetic businesses, while Sharon, following Jochen's presentation, will explain where we are and where we want to go in Diagnostics.

So now switching to the future. Our next phase has a big word, elevating health globally. I already kind of justified with the 3 billion touch points why it's something we can really say. It is something -- it is a phase we have been preparing for since quite a while. I mean, in the details since about a year. But in the end, since IPO because we have step by step by step built an organization which is ready to do what we want to do in the next 5 years.

And now for those of you who have TikTok like attention spend, I do the story super, super, super short and then comes the more detailed version, okay? So the super short version is Siemens Healthineers has developed 2 superpowers. One superpower is managing the triangle of Patient Twinning, Precision Therapy and health care AI, which is exactly what you need to manage the most threatening diseases worldwide. And the second superpower is an unmatched regional organization which covers a broad portfolio is global and local, can talk to departments and can talk the language, speak the language of the C level. And that is why Siemens Healthineers is also best positioned to address the customer challenges worldwide of providers, which is efficiency, clinical excellence and access. So that was the TikTok version, okay?

So -- and now I go into it in a little bit more detail. So first of all, we focus on the patient aspect, what do we do and how does what we do in the next years matter and really make a difference for 8 billion people worldwide. The biggest challenge in global health care is the growth of the noncommunicable diseases. 75% of all global deaths are attributed to the NCDs, noncommunicable diseases. So it sounds a bit as a complicated term maybe yes, but that's how the medical community calls them.

But in the end, when we look into more detail, these are the diseases all of us are most afraid of, whether it's for our loved ones or for ourselves. It is neurodegenerative diseases, where 1 in 9 people out of 6 -- above -- over 65 worldwide has Alzheimer's. It's cardiovascular diseases, with more than 20 million deaths per year. It's stroke with 12 million patients per year and 7 million deaths, and it is cancer with more than 20 million deaths grow expected to grow to -- 20 million cases expected to grow to more than 30 million. So these are the diseases we tackle, and this is how we strategically have developed our skills in the organization.

And this is not a slide. This is not one of these feel good slides in a presentation of the trend is my friend, and I have some kind of a blockbuster, which fits into this and this disease category. This is our strategy, how we build our organization so that we are best in a sustainable way in helping physicians overcome these diseases. And now there's one simple, simple topic between infectious disease and difference and the noncommunicable diseases, the 4 disease areas here. In infectious disease, you have a one-size-fits-all kind of way of dealing with the disease. It's a vaccination to prevent it. And typically, when you have it, it's also relatively clear and doesn't depend on the patient or what the phase the patient is in, how you treat it.

What is the challenge for health care systems when it comes to the noncommunicable diseases, they are personalized. This is the early stage of a cancer or this is this type of coronary artery disease in this stage. So you need to personalize the treatment at scale. And this is exactly what our triangle of capability allows with the patient training with our unmatched strength in imaging. We have the opportunity to catch the disease early. We go into early detection that is, and you will see examples, whether it is cardiovascular disease or cancer. It is about diagnosing the disease. It is about selecting the therapy, it's about simulating the therapy and it's about creating a plan for therapy. That's what's happening on the left.

On the right, you have Precision Therapy. This is where technology makes the difference to enable the personalized care. This is what we do in Varian, which you can imagine is a kind of a robotic pencil beam to destroy the tumor based on the imaging information or it's minimally invasive treatment in a cathlab or very often, it's not only us on the right-hand side, but it is in collaboration with an intuitive surgical with Boston Scientific with whom we just have announced a new partnership when it comes to ultrasound guidance of LAAC closure -- with LAAC.

When it comes to Stryker, where we work in establishing a robotic thrombectomy or when it comes to Medtronic, where we operate in the field where we work together in the field of spine. So very often, what we see is on the right-hand side, either it is us doing the treatment, and we can optimize it hand to hand and under one roof or we optimize things hand-in-hand with a device company because what also one of my device CEO friends says, it's in the future for them, it's not only about optimizing the device, it's about optimizing and innovating the procedure. So this is how that 2 parts of the triangle work.

But what is as important, as I said, it is personalization at scale, and that sounds a bit like also the effort goes through the roof because -- and this is super important to use AI in a specific version of AI, which is optimized for health care, health care AI to help augment this information to help do the translation and to reduce the burden on the physician and to take out unwarranted variations.

We will hear more about this. And you will see it in some of my examples, but you will see in the end of the day today, Dorin, who has put us on the map years and decades ago when it comes to machine learning on AI, how we optimize AI for our cases here in the end for the triangle or call it, how we optimize and use AI to manage the noncommunicable diseases.

Now I'll walk you through some examples here. Alzheimer's. We are not only the market leader in PET and PET/CT, MR/PET and so on. We are also the clear market leader when it comes to the distribution of dedicated radiopharmaceuticals. That puts us exactly in the position here where on the right-hand side of the triangle, suddenly something is happening. A disease-modifying therapy starts to get available against Alzheimer's. So what you need is something happening on the left. You need the diagnosis. This is what we do here where we can see the amyloid plaque burden. We can decide if this patient does -- he or she have Alzheimer's and is the patient eligible for one of these DMTs.

And then in the next step, which is very often the case in health care, you don't do the imaging only once, but you need to do the imaging several times in order to accompany the therapy and exclude side effects like in this case of these novel Alzheimer's treatments where you need about 5 MR scans in the first 6 months of the therapy to exclude side effects like micro bleedings in the brain. Next example. And you will hear -- this is now -- I mean, I hope many of you share our excitement for photon-counting CT. But this is now the clinical side of it. Photon-counting CT is super exciting. I have never seen such a pickup of a new technology, 900 peer-reviewed papers. Andre will speak about EUR 1 billion of equipment orders, which we have generated so far with photon-counting CT. So that's the business side of it and the science side. Here comes what does it mean for our triangle.

Here, you see the coronary arteries of a healthy patient. Why does that make sense? Because coronary artery disease is a silent killer, so to say. It starts without the person noticing it. And typically, you only realize it when you -- when it's very late and sometimes when it's already too late. So photon-counting CT has the potential, and I'm sure it will be the method of early detection and screening for coronary artery disease. Here, you see no plaque, no lesion, no calcification, no risk. when it's a tiebreaker situation. Now photon-counting CT allows you tiebreaker, meaning there is something. But so far, you can see on the left here, it's a little bit far away that conventional CT didn't allow to really assess how far the disease has progressed.

Now -- and you see -- you see how crystal clear the images are, and this now allows us to replace the need for an invasive coronary angiogram. So again, it's a new way of dealing with the disease. You can use it for prevention. It's better assessment for the therapy. And then when a therapy is needed, you can use photon-counting CT to draw a detailed map, so to say, of the coronary. You understand the stenosis, you understand how much lumen there still is. And that information is then we call it CT-guided PCI. PCI is placing a stent in simple words. This is the handover to the therapy where the imaging information is processed with AI in order to assess the vessel and then the interventionist can do their job, do his or her job.

Similar topic in stroke, disease we are focusing on. We are working on -- we have created a CT scanner, which fits into an ambulance, but which has hospital-based quality for this type of exams, it allows in an instance to do the necessary diagnosis to make sure what type of stroke it is. And all information is already transferred to the hospital where then in a direct angio way, a procedure like thrombectomy can be performed under, again, image guidance. We are moving to the right, which is the treatment with a much, much better outcome for patients than the classic lysis therapy. And this is also one of the areas we are working on together with Stryker and Carsten will talk about it, to make this also robotic enabled in the future.

Last example or last disease area, cancer. So this is for radiologists, okay? So in essence, the message is what we do or what you have seen in coronary artery disease with photon-counting CT, we do, for example, for prostate cancer with MRI. MRI has much better soft tissue contrast. What you will see here, and these are, again, AI-enabled super fast sequences, which only take about 1.5 minutes, and you can see in an early detection fashion, which is much more reliable than any blood test, whether there is disease or not. And if there is disease, it very often, by the way, also replaces the need for biopsy, which is not a pleasant procedure.

Then MR, and this is one of the great examples why it is cool to have the world market leader in MR and health care AI and in radiation therapy under one roof is used for treatment planning of that. And next topic we are driving when it comes to cancer care is the field of theranostics where with our diagnostic capabilities, our strength in PET, our strength in distribution of radiopharmaceuticals and also with the IT systems from Varian for treatment planning, we are in a super strong position, and it is also one of the areas where we will have our so-called value programs of helping people to set this up in the future.

And my last example, and then I stop my clinical commercial break, if you want, is an example here of a oligometastatic patient, meaning multiple metastases in the brain. In the past, when you had such a case, you did whole brain radiation therapy, which had not too great effects on the patient and the cognitive abilities. In the next step, people needed to draw by hand, which organs to spare and so on and so on. Now this is completely done with AI. The colors of the metastasis here or the colors show the intensity of the energy, which is applied based on imaging and AI fit into the linac and then this super precise oligometastatic treatment is done.

So I hope you see that this triangle is super important for managing things. And I hope that this also explains why technologies like photon-counting CT or the interventional workplaces, the Linac and so on, why it all fits together. And most importantly, I think you often also saw that in most of these cases, AI plays a role. And here, you will see a preview of what Dorin, but also Andre will talk about, how we -- how our AI road map is shaped, how it is used basically for managing the noncommunicable diseases. And there are 3 steps from left to right. There is one step, patient to image, which is about accelerating the exam, taking the need of staff out and so on and so on.

Then comes translating the image into a medical finding, either a report for the next physician to read or for a plan for the next device to use the information and then from plan to actually doing the treatment. And Dorin will show how we have across the organization, a clear road map of step by step further driving these 3 fields into, I would say, I would call it autonomy. On the left, you see the path to a completely autonomous CT scanner. Imagine as simple as stepping on your scale in the morning or going to a solarium if you do that. So no user interaction, everything is just -- is done automatically without any unwarranted variations.

Next topic, translate the image into findings or the treatment plan, which then helps out of this situation in cancer to automatically "program the treatment device or inform the interventionalist or in the future, maybe the robotic assistant intervention. So this is what we call health care AI, and you will see that it is a super important enabler of everything what we do, but that it's always in what we are doing and not something which comes in addition on top. So that was what we do for patients and what the next phase will be about in with this laser sharp focus on these 4 disease areas.

The other angle to look at what we are doing is to look at the customer perspective. So this was patients more. Of course, there's always the physicians helping and so on now. Let's look at what are the big challenges of customers. And as much as the challenges for patients are the 4 disease areas, the 3 big challenges globally, and it varies maybe a little bit by geography. But in essence, they are globally the same. The 3 big areas are the need for efficiency, the need to keep up with medical progress and giving more people access to care. You see the numbers. I mean why efficiency out of 2 reasons, not only because health care needs to -- health care costs need to stay in a certain range. But the bigger challenge customers today have is staff shortage, whether it's emerging countries or developed world. So doing more with less very often now means doing more with less people, and that is also one of the reasons why we are investing so much into AI.

It's about clinical excellence. And this has a topic of 2 things. On the one hand, medical knowledge is pretty impressive, doubles every 73 days. It's a bit scary. But it's not only abound this or great, but it's not only about the individual physician having to learn -- there is -- and that's why I call it here cooperation of care. When you own -- when you are running a hospital chain or when you are an IDN in the U.S., it's about how do you keep up with progress because it's not about the treatment options Dr. Schmitz has or uses or what he has learned, but how is that done institution-wide, how is that done in a certain system. And the third big topic is access to care, which mainly means helping to develop a state-of-the-art health care system also in the emerging geographies.

And why I mentioned in the TikTok, this other superpower, which compares to the triangle. There is no organization which can offer the same depth, meaning I want to have an entry-level CT scanner or breadth, I want to optimize my radiology department or I want to optimize my oncology service line, yes. So our team can switch from transaction to partnership. Our team is deeply rooted locally, whether it is Malaysia, Norway or Brazil and understands the challenges, but can get back to the global knowledge, knowing this is the global standard of care, and this is what it means to deploy it locally.

We speak, as I said, the language of radiologists, cardiologists, oncologists, neuroinerventionalists because what we produce is basically their tool. It's almost their reason to exist as a profession, but we are as fluent in the meantime to talk to the C level. And this is how we translate all this now into 3 areas of growth in -- on the one hand, driving further value partnerships. What this means is that when it's now about how do I move my corporated care further? How do I do -- how do I optimize cancer care across Advocate Health, which is a 30 billion organization in the United States with 100,000 employees. How do I do this in a partnership instead of negotiating one deal after another. This is what value partnerships are. And we have a lot of momentum in them and a very, very good funnel also for the future, and we will further double down on this opportunity.

We will create and that ties back to the noncommunicable diseases when it comes to setting up a stroke center, improving efficiency in radiology, setting up theranostics for the first time, helping optimize cancer care in a given region. We will use so-called value programs to do an intermediate step between transactional business and value partnership because very often, it's not only about selling the machine and servicing, it is about helping to change how care is delivered. So this is what we do with value programs. And when it comes to access to care, I come again back to the noncommunicable diseases. Also in the emerging countries, the noncommunicable diseases are now the major reason for death.

So there is a huge emphasis publicly and of private investors to build cancer centers, to build to ensure cardiovascular care to manage stroke and so on. And this is where the strength we have in these countries, the deeply rooted organization, our strength in compact and AI-driven products will help us to sustain these regions as an important growth driver for us. And just as an aside, this is a EUR 3 billion revenue topic for us at the moment already growing in double digits, and we want to sustain that growth path.

So summary, again, all you hear about today is 4 diseases and 3 customer challenges. And I don't think that any organization is better suited to address them and also translate this into business. Talking about business, you heard a lot about the triangle already. We will -- in the spirit of reporting follows strategy, adjust how we explain our P&L by creating a segment Precision Therapy, which will include Varian, Advanced Therapies and by the way, also ultrasound, which is, for us, in the meantime, a therapeutic topic because the biggest part of the business is, in the meantime, a very strong ultrasound catheter business, which is meant -- which is used for guiding therapies.

We will make sure that you will have transparency for -- not for eternity, but for a reasonable future when it comes to the financial KPIs of Varian, so that this doesn't come across as a loss of transparency. So -- and now when it comes to the growth or to the midterm targets we have given ourselves, and we want to share today, first of all, the definition of midterm is the time from '27 to 2030, yes. So after this year. And the year which has just started on our own calendar will be the jump-off point for this ambition. We want to grow strongly and profitably in the synergetic now 2 segments, Imaging and Precision Therapy. We want to grow revenue by 6% to 9%, with a little bit of more growth on the Precision Therapy side with the high -- high single digits in Imaging, mid-to-high single digits.

We will see Imaging return to margin expansion from scale after the transition year we are currently in because of [indiscernible] Jochen will explain this. And we will -- and we target margin expansion of about 100 basis points per year on the Precision Therapy side. Diagnostics will move towards mid-single-digit growth when it comes to the top line and to margin expansion toward the mid-teens. And when you then translate this to the group, it brings us to 5% to 7% revenue growth and double-digit EPS growth.

And last but not least, our sustainability targets the most important aspects of them, we want to further grow our patient impact targeting 3.3 billion patient touch points. We want to reduce our carbon footprint in Scope 1 and 2 by 90% until 2030 and in Scope 3 until 2050. And that brings me back to the beginning of the presentation, we want to maintain that super high engagement level and that feeling of purpose in our global team and the target is to keep -- make sure that at least 80% of the healthineers are working in countries in which we are certified as a great place to work.

And with this, I finally hand over to Jochen.

Thanks, Bernd, and also a very warm welcome from my side and to clarify one thing, you don't need to be a physician to be the CFO of this company. I'm just an ordinary finance person, just to clarify. Bernd explained the strategy for the next 5 years very well. And I want to, so to say, put this into perspective, how do we translate this into financial returns.

And therefore, we look at 3 things, why we look at 3 things. First, how do we want to generate reliable free cash flow? How do we want to allocate the reliable free cash flow? To drive shareholder value and how much you can expect over this period of time. And we do this, obviously, as Bernd explained beforehand, under clear boundary conditions with regard to sustainability, Bernd explained this, and a very strong governance foundation.

So let me start with reliable revenue first. Since IPO, we were able to generate more than 5% revenue growth as a CAGR over the whole entire period. You see here some volatility. And the biggest volatility was in the midst of the pandemic, the 0% and then the 12%. The rest was relatively stable. And why is it relatively stable? One aspect, and now I move clockwise, is that when you look at health care expenditures, our offerings represent about 1% of the spend only, but are super relevant to the whole health care system. And I think a very nice KPI for this is patient touch points. We touch 3 billion patients by this. This is one aspect.

Then if you move further clockwise, our revenue streams are also reliable because they are recurring. It's obvious that they are recurring in diagnostics. It's a razor-razor blade business, more than 90% of the revenue are recurring. But meanwhile, in Imaging and Precision Therapy, our recurring revenue stream also adds up to about 50%. Gives a lot of resilience to it. And sticking to this topic of recurring revenues, let me deep dive a bit more on this. And let me start on the bottom of the slide. We are all used to this product-related services in Imaging and Precision Therapy.

We have here a very, very constant stream of revenue on a recurring basis, growing more than 5% based on a constantly growing installed base, high contract capture rate and the by far, farthest-reached service network in place. This come -- on top comes value-added services on top of the installed base and software offerings, which help our customers to improve their workflows and improve clinical outcomes. If you move up the curve, Bernd mentioned that also beforehand, value partnerships. What is also the beauty of value partnership is that value partnerships means customers enter into large and long-term contracts with us, and that turns classically transactional business in kind of recurring revenue streams.

And you see that those revenue streams grew over the last years significantly faster than the overall business, driving the recurring revenue stream up. And lastly, meanwhile, we have really a sizable consumables or per procedure business in place. Bernd also talked about this. This is led by our PETNET business, our radiopharmaceutical business in molecular imaging, sitting on 2 mega trends, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer and here, in particular, theranostics, but also the ultrasound-based catheter business, nicely growing, in particular, in the cardiovascular space and also our nicely growing interventional oncology business. And both on all those streams are growing significantly faster than our overall business and generating recurring revenue streams. Reliable revenues.

Next topic, profitable growth. We sometimes call this economic equation. Therefore, you find this term in the headline. Economic equation for us means how do we make sure that our growth stays profitable. First of all, why is it profitable? Pricing excellence. Based on our innovation leadership, we have premium pricing in general. And we also know how to deal with prices in the specific markets, in our specific product categories and sometimes we use a bit bulky term of market adaptive pricing, which means we adjust prices according to our market strengths and our product strengths to keep our price premiums up, pricing excellence.

Second topic, we are market leader in most of the businesses. That means we have scale advantage and economies of scale are very, very important in our industry. And when you look at it, it makes a huge difference if you sell 2,500 MRIs or 500 MRIs. This is obvious to cater for all the R&D needs, service needs, customer needs with -- having the right scale, you have a significant advantage, and therefore, this is also a driver of our continuous market share gains in this regard. And obviously, the scale helps up to drive operational leverage, helping on the functional cost side, but also on the gross margin side.

Third topic is cost productivity. I think we have a deep-rooted culture in the company to drive productivity on a constant basis. On average, 5% cost productivity on total cost every year, deeply rooted in the company. And then obviously, there is also a headwind to the economic equation coming from cost inflation and other things.

We deal with it with a very good strategic procurement organization who tries to counterbalance those effects with price negotiations, but also together with the R&D departments on design to cost activities. And I think what is also part of our recipe here is that we have a very, very strong value-add structure in place. We do relatively many things in-house, which allow us to stay more resilient. You have seen that during the supply chain crisis. This allows us to get to better cost positions to more resilience to be able to deliver all the time and never stop generating gross profit. This is our economic equation.

Now talking about organic investment into the company. Bernd mentioned that already. R&D. For the next 5 years, we are committed to keep our R&D intensity up between 8% and 9%. We believe this is necessary to keep our position. It will be invested in what is needed to deliver on our strategy. Bernd highlighted that we are also willing and will do, so to say, resource allocation shifts also towards software, towards AI to make sure that we stay ahead of the curve in this regard.

And this is also invested into collaborations, as Bernd highlighted, collaborations with other leading firms in the industry to make sure that we can live up to our promises in this regard and to fuel the growth. On the SG&A side, also here, we expect to see some leverage over the years from this arena, not because we are not investing into go-to-market. We have to also invest into go-to-market to become more clinical. That is a clear commitment on the one hand.

On the other hand, we will also make use of technology to enhance our go-to-market and also to free up resources. Therefore, we give you some hint that there might be an opportunity to go from today 16% to 17%, maybe a bit down over the years. With this, let me move to reliable free cash flow. A topic I'm particularly proud of the organization, what we accomplished over the years. When you look -- meanwhile, we are a very, very strong cash generator in the industry.

Over the last 2 years, cash conversion rate of 0.9. -- very good results. You see the increasing free cash flow. We commit to keep this range of 0.8 to 0.9 cash conversion rate over the planning horizon until 2030. We have achieved this by first, stabilizing of the inventory levels and then by increasing the inventory turns over the years. And we also do this by continuous investment into our operations, and therefore, the CapEx line stays between most likely 3% to 4% of revenue also over the planning cycle. So far, first topic, this orange bubble, what -- how do we generate reliable free cash flow.

Now coming to capital allocation. Let me start with dividend per share and share buybacks. On the left side of the slide, you see our dividend per share trajectory over the years. You can say a stable to progressive line. We started as a public company with EUR 0.70 per share. We are meanwhile proposing EUR 1 for the next AGM to be distributed. So it's a stable and progressive share. This dividend per share was tied to a dividend policy of distributing 50% to 60% of net income as a dividend per year.

As you can see, in 2023, we needed to leave this range and go to 70% to keep the dividend stable. Our commitment for the future is to keep a stable and progressive dividend per share in place, but do not tie us rigidly to this range anymore, EUR 50 to EUR 60. And with more free float available with delivering on our deleveraging target, we will also be able to make use of share buybacks if and when needed, which gives us more optionality to create shareholder value. Next topic, deleveraging, balance sheet health. What you can see on the left side is what we were able to do. We deleveraged the business pre the combination of Varian and post the variation of -- the combination of Varian. You see there a little dip in there between 2022 and '23. What is this?

This was the antigen effect because antigen raised, so to say, dramatically the EBITDA for a certain period of time and then it was over again. So if you draw a line from the 4.2x net debt over EBITDA to the meanwhile 2.8, you can draw a relatively straight line down. So we deleveraged nicely. And to give you a data point, we target to get to 2.5x over the next 2 years. And we also committed to organically deleverage on a constant basis. And we target strong investment-grade rating going forward because this is a prerequisite also from my standpoint, from our standpoint to drive our strategy forward.

One aspect, which is very special to us, and it's also related to the decision Siemens communicated last week, it's about our maturity profile of term loans with Siemens. As you can see on the left side, 2 of them amounting to EUR 3.3 billion becoming due within less than 12 months, independent of what Siemens -- independent of the Siemens decision. We need to refinance a certain portion of them anyway, and this is baked into our plans already. In the outer years, we feel very good about committing to interest expense line, which is not growing relative to where we stand today for 2026. Why is this?

Because we plan to further de-lever and we have optionality with regard to the maturity profile in case Siemens would accelerate the termination. So I repeat this. We do not expect to see a higher interest expense line going forward independent of an acceleration of Siemens if and when, obviously, the interest rate environment stays as it is today.

So last topic on capital allocation. It's about inorganic growth, M&A. You see on the top of the slide what has happened over the last 5 years, obviously, the transformational move with Varian and then 2 tuck-in acquisitions, block imaging service company in the United States and the radiopharmaceutical business of Novartis in Europe.

And when you look at our principles we put in place, I think they are very, very straightforward, and they target to create shareholder value. First, smart M&A means we need to have strategic fit. Look at Varian. I think the strategic fit is very, very obvious. And I think Bernd explained that well. You will hear from Arthur later, and you will hear from all presenters later that this is a huge strategic fit. The one exception is Sharon. But for all of them, it is a strategic fit. When you think about accretiveness, Varian is also a very good example. The fastest-growing business within Healthineers and significant margin expansion potential in the future. And we executed the deal during the pandemic.

So also a window of time, by the way, a challenging window of time, but I think also a favorable window of time. So that's how we apply this. And you can be rest assured, we will have always shareholder value in mind. So now I move on to the outlook section. Before I go there, let us have a look back for a moment. Bernd highlighted this to a certain extent. We were able to generate 6.5% CAGR, revenue growth CAGR over the last 4 years, accompanied by an 11% adjusted EPS CAGR over the last 3 years despite all the challenges around us. I think that is quite an accomplishment of the organization.

For sure, not every quarter was exactly on this line. There is certain quarterly volatility, sometimes driven by mix, but also out of other reasons. Unfortunately, Varian was a bit more exposed to that than other businesses. But I think we will get our arms around that also, but we will never be able to deliver every quarter the same result quality. I think we also need to be realistic about this. But on a yearly basis, we are very stable. You know the outlook of 2026. We have discussed this. Top line growth, 5% to 6%, same guidance as last year.

Unfortunately, we will go slightly backwards with regard to adjusted EPS, if you take the midpoint of the guidance range due to significant headwind from foreign exchange and tariffs in this fiscal year. Before I go to the midterm outlook, let me go briefly again on this segmentation topic. Bernd mentioned this already beforehand. The segmentation logic follows exactly the strategy we put in place. Patient twining equals imaging, precision therapy equals Varian, AT and ultrasound and diagnostics.

This is not intended. Not at all intended to limit transparency on anything. Therefore, we will temporarily give you the therein numbers of Varian. Don't worry about this. This is not the intention. It's just following the management approach, how we run this company, and that's why we do this. Maybe a few words on imaging, and this is a lot of technical information, but it's important.

You will see and you mostly have seen that, higher imaging margins going forward relative to what you have seen beforehand. There are 2 reasons for this. One is, ultrasound is not as profitable as the rest of imaging. This was shifted, so to say, towards precision therapy. But similar size of impact was that our internal suppliers, our tech centers which represent a very, very important value-add step for all of our businesses was out of historic reason always shown in Imaging.

And because those tech centers deliver or supply in a more and more intense fashion also the other businesses, we decide to take them into central items. And this dilutive effect from the business model we choose revenue without profit brought the other dilution to Imaging. So just that you know this.

So to complete the picture with regard to segment change, you see here the transition of the assumption we showed you November 5 to the new segment logic. If you look in others into the reconciliation, you see no change to the assumptions, and the rest is just a one-to-one translation. So now I come, I would say, to the most important topic in this regard to the midterm outlook.

And here, bear with me for a moment, I want to explain a bit more in detail how we -- how and why we believe that we can deliver the midterm outlook as we have planned it. First of all, we talked about the period '22 to '25 and the 11% CAGR of adjusted EPS despite a challenging environment. It is clear that this fiscal year is a transition year. And then we plan to be in this double-digit adjusted EPS growth environment again based on strong operational performance in EPS and based on our commitment to mitigate the EUR 400 million negative impact on tariffs in this fiscal year by 2028. How do we do this?

We have launched an additional cost productivity program to generate over the next 3 years, EUR 200 million additional productivity, which would cater for half of the EUR 400 million. And the other half should primarily come from better pricing. And let's put this into perspective. EUR 200 million more profit from better pricing means a percentage point better pricing over 3 years on average per year, 0.3%.

I just say it like this so that you can see that this is doable based on our strong market position. And lastly, we have one measure still in the back, which is a potential shift of value-add structure, where we have good plans in the draw, and we are looking into that topic very carefully and can execute if needed. And with this, I come to my last slide, the midterm outlook.

You have seen this slide. I think it's a very important slide for us. We want to grow this business on a very constant basis, nicely on the top line and faster on the bottom line. That's the message of this slide. And when you look into more detail, you see that the synergetic core should grow by 6% to 9%, means Imaging and Precision Therapy. Imaging in there with mid- to high single-digit growth. Precision therapy, high single-digit growth.

Diagnostics with its own strategy, which is with its own setup, improving the growth rate towards mid-single digits over the planning cycle. If you add this all together, you end up with a 5% to 7% for Siemens Healthineers. On the profit -- on profitability side, we will see Imaging getting back to margin expansion from scale in 2027. And we expect the Precision Therapy business to expand margins by 100 basis points on average every year.

And Arthur and Carsten will explain that in much more detail how that is possible and why do we believe in this. And Diagnostics will stay on its course towards mid-single -- mid-teens margin levels in -- over the planning cycle. This all will then, together with the ambition to mitigate the tariffs by 2028, bring us to double-digit adjusted EPS growth over this period of time.

And by the way, last point, we have not built into this a significant improvement in the Chinese market. We just planned over the time of 5%, roughly mid-single-digit, 5% market growth in China. Thank you very much. And with this, we move to the first Q&A.

Wonderful. So now you get a chance to talk as well after having to listen for 70 minutes. I hope it was insightful in any form. Great. So just short housekeeping. There's also a chance for people following the stream to ask questions in the chat. I obviously cannot promise that we will answer all of those, but we'll try to channel them through to me here on stage, and that would be the reason when I look at my phone.

Other than that, I would say we just kick it off and just raise your hand and I'll try to go -- so hard to kind of we start with Veronika. You're sitting here, then we do add David and then Hassan and then we take 2 questions.

Veronika Dubajova from Citi. I will keep it to 2 questions. I will be well behaved. The first one is just on the diagnostics noncore delineation given the business autonomy ultimately, can you guys talk about what's the destination? Where are we going to end up in 3 to 5 years' time? Is this still part of the group? And if so, why? And if not, why not? If you can just give us your insights into that -- into your thinking on that?

And then my second question is financial for Jochen. Historically, you've guided for Imaging margin improvement of 20 to 80 basis points per annum. Now you are just committing to margin expansion. I'm just curious if you can help us understand the magnitude of that operational leverage improvement that we should expect in Imaging.

On the Diagnostics side, I mean, I cannot give you the complete answer on everything, what will come in the next year simply because we don't know. So -- and what we, first of all, have always said, and I hope this is really consistent is that we never claim that there are synergies between the 3 or now 2 other businesses and diagnostics.

I think what is the big change now is that with this successful momentum we have, that Diagnostics has developed from an asset, which others look at from an object into a subject, which wants to go into -- which has now the momentum to chart its own course to look at further verticalization of the business.

So far, we have verticalized as part of the transformation program, the sales and the service organization, I mean, R&D and production anyway. We will look at what they will look at what else would help them on the back office side. And with this, as I said, we will step-by-step also get the structural optionalities. We don't -- and now what we don't want to say is, first of all, that this is a business which will always be part of Siemens Healthineers yes because I mean, there is -- the synergies are limited.

We will see over time, whether it is better, whether we are in a way, it's better under this roof, whether it develops in the long run better in a partnership or as a completely independent business. We are not at that point. But I think the main topic here is that we are in the transition of saying, okay, this is a business which is now charting its own course, developing its own structure and then we take it from there.

Veronika, on Imaging I think we went back and forth from margin expansion from scale and 20 to 80 because you got the question, what does it mean? And to be honest, the straight answer is I would not expect too much change in that direction. I look at Andre okay, it's fine.

Exactly. And therefore, when we look at, I would say, I don't know, at a 10-year horizon, I would say margin expansion, I would say, around 40 bps, roughly. So therefore, I think this is more or less what we can expect from Imaging.

Great. So you hand your mic over to David makes it simple.

It's David Allington from JPMorgan. At the CMD 4 years ago, you pointed towards 2025 margins approaching 20%. And obviously, we ended about, I think it was 16.5. I just wondered if, obviously, the world changed with respect to inflation. I just wondered -- I suppose the question is, in a world that's always changing, have you taken a different viewpoint in terms of how you approach guidance with the new guidance?

And then secondly, just on cash flow, point towards net debt getting down to 2.5x, I think, in 2 years' time. That doesn't seem particularly ambitious from 2.8x. Is there something we should be thinking about in terms of cash requirements within that, that means you're only targeting 2.5?

Okay. I'll start with the second one. We are going this year through a transition. It is -- when we talk about profitability being stretched. So therefore, I'm a bit cautious with my 2.5 -- prudent with my 2.5 over 2 years, primarily because of this fiscal year. And you know that the KPI is net debt over EBITDA. I'm not too worried so much about the free cash flow. I think we will be in a decent position.

But the KPI per se is only indirectly tied to free cash flow. Therefore, I'm a bit cautious, but it's a prudent guide, you're right. First question was on, I would say, guidance philosophy. When we look back to what we guided for at Capital Market Day or what we assumed at the Capital Market Day 2021, I think there were 2 things which primarily influenced, I would say, the margin expansion story from a business standpoint and often driven by exogenous factors.

It was the turnaround speed in diagnostics. It took us a bit longer than we initially thought. But I think we should be very -- and that is not a complaint towards the diagnostic team, but we wanted to be faster and it took longer. And the second topic was mostly, I would say, the speed of margin expansion in Varian.

But when you look at the guidance range and what we have established meanwhile, I think we feel very, very comfortable about the 100 basis points margin expansion in Precision Therapy per annum on average over this planning horizon because we have now put several things in place, and you will hear this from Arthur and Carsten later. I'll give an example, for example, on the Carsten side.

Carsten is completely through with this platform renewal on the fixed CRM side, which was a burden throughout the whole period. And that is now done, for example. And I think in Varian, we have, meanwhile, I would say, very, very diligent plans how we get to this profitability expansion, also making full use of what is, so to say, also available as help within Siemens Healthineers from a supply chain aspect, but also we have the by far largest backlog in this business. strong -- therefore, strong, I would say, insurance on future revenue growth being in the high single digits, and that will be so to say the driver guidance. And therefore, I feel good about this guide. And you can argue it's maybe a bit different than it -- maybe a bit less aggressive than last time. But if the heaven comes down, the heaven come down.

It's Hassan from Barclays. Firstly, following up on Diagnostics and Bernd, your questioning on whether this should sit under the same roof and that you're assessing options. Can we push you for a time line on this given we've been talking about this for a couple of years.

And if you could elaborate on how you're thinking about capital allocation when it comes to investing in this business versus some of the other higher growth and higher profitability businesses. And then secondly, Jochen, if you could help us understand the building blocks for the 100 basis points of margin expansion within Precision Therapies and maybe the relative sizes between the different businesses?

I mean, I think, first of all, I think we -- from a capital allocation point of view, hopefully, you agree that we did the right thing by transforming the business and making clear that this is a business which can go to a next level. With this super strong Atellica core, Sharon will speak also about the specialty lab solutions, the point-of-care business and all the opportunities.

So we are currently not at a point, and I think that is what Jochen also showed when he mentioned the de-levering and so on, where we are in a situation where we have to decide on which side of the house to allocate capital. But if that was a decision, the decision would be very clear to invest into the synergetic core and to then look at what are partnership options for diagnostics. But I want to be very clear that we are not at this point where this is a necessity from a capital allocation point of view.

And Hassan, on your 100 basis points average margin expansion per annum in Precision Therapy, I think I touched on the topic very slightly in my presentation. I said that those businesses are with its growth trajectory and its margin profile at similar levels, and they have similar opportunity to expand margins. And I refer primarily now to Varian and Advanced Therapies.

I just thought this is relatively small in the equation. And when you look at -- therefore, when you want to see how much comes from where Varian is roughly double the size of AT. So then you can say 2/3 come from Varian and 1/3 comes from AT, but you still should listen carefully to Arthur and Carsten because they will explain in much more detail how that goes.

So maybe give the second row chance and then we come back upfront again. Sorry, Julia. Graham first and then Hugo, and we take it from there.

It's Graham from UBS. Just 2 for me. One on the Diagnostics business. Just given what you said now is slightly more advanced than the past, does that mean maybe you can think about more tie-ups or partnerships with, let's say, a molecular company if you want to have a bigger, broader portfolio? And then the second one is just on geographies, which we haven't talked about quite as much.

How do you think about the different markets in growth terms given some of the volatility, say, in China, and we look at the U.S. where you're launching some of your newer products now and obviously doing very well. So just in that midterm guidance, just some color on how you think about those regions, please.

So I hope that Sharon can also answer the question of what -- I think when you look at the Diagnostics business, there are, I mean there's one particular strength is now in the central lab after this transition, plus the strength in SLS, which is to some extent especially lab solutions with coagulation and so on, is also plays a role in the central lab. And I think this is a very strong point of crystallization of value. And one can, in theory, look at, but I don't want to speculate here too much. What is -- because this is -- there are not many companies who really made it into the central lab. And how can you build scale in a central lab.

It is one of the questions, of course, what is the topic when it comes to further automation possibilities and so on and so on because this is also where a lot of consolidation is happening and where with the launch of the CI Analyzer, we have quite some strength. And when we say what is the own strategy, own setup, it is also about is it how to best double down on that strength?

And to what extent is it better to -- how much satellite activities do we need in addition? Or is it best to double down on the strength in the central lab and SLS space on the geography side. So this was for the company overall, right? I mean, first of all, I mean, and Jochen made the point here of this is 1% of spend, generating 3 billion of patient touch points and that the growth is -- and then I speak about it's the NCDs, it's the NCDs, it's the NCDs, it is procedure growth. It shows that in the end, I mean, the growth is not so much a topic of business climate, but it is a topic of necessity, which is also what drove the stable global growth we have.

So there's only a perturbation when at a certain moment, and that must be big perturbation, so to say, I speak like a physicist that people hold back investment decisions because there is a real issue, a real issue like uncertainty around anticorruption or the anticorruption campaign or no cash flow after in COVID, and people hold back investment decisions.

So -- but I mean I think the growth overall will be pretty equally spread. Of course, with higher growth where more health care is built up, meaning the emerging countries, which I spoke about with the double-digit growth, we are prudent, I think, with the assumption on China and otherwise, Europe and the United States, I see on a good path, I mean, especially in the U.S..

You can argue that there is maybe a bit -- certain aspects skewed a bit towards the North American market because of the procedure-based revenue because PETNET is very strong in the United States and the European network is much smaller so far. The ultrasound-based catheter business is shown in North America primarily because our -- it's kind of an OEM business, where we show this in North America.

So the procedure-based business is skewed clearly towards North America and also value partnerships are extremely successful in North America. Therefore, it's maybe a bit skewed towards North America structurally, which is not a bad thing. So that's.

I think Hugo was next.

So BNP Paribas Exane.

I have 2, please. First, on pricing excellence as a key driver for margin expansion. Could you expand a bit here on how much pricing has contributed historically? I'm just trying to put that in perspective of -- in the context of a 6% to 9% revenue growth ambition and also some of the tariff mitigation that you mentioned, Jochen.

And then on the leverage target, 2.5x within the next 2 years, that's organic. What about potential inorganic opportunity to deleverage? And would you use that to -- any proceeds, would you use them to deleverage faster? Or would you reinvest a bit more into M&A or share buyback? And I think historically, share buyback has not been used for cancellation of shares, but can you talk about share buyback in the context of Siemens AG, your parent company potentially doing some sell-downs along the way?

Yes. Let me start with pricing excellence. And as I said, when we look at our pricing environment over the last 15 years, I think 10 of them were more a period of price erosion, slight price erosion induced by ourselves to a certain extent by bringing always new products to market and the new product is the biggest enemy price rise of the existing product.

And then with the inflation kicking in, I think we changed the trajectory completely. We went into a price accretion environment, and we are meanwhile relatively flattish in pricing. And obviously, with the tariff environment and other things, we are, so to say, restarting this engine again or have restarted the engine again and see potential to get back to better pricing on a structural basis means a portion of the 6% to 9% will come from pricing. To commit now what is that exactly? Is it a percentage point or 2? I don't know. We need to see.

But I think we -- some portion will come from this. So with regards to deleveraging, the 2.5 over the next 24 years -- 24 months is organically has not taken any potential proceeds from somewhere into account, just to say that if somebody believes that this is a 2 years plan or whatever. And then if there would be proceeds coming in, in an inorganic way, we need to do capital allocation in the best way to drive shareholder value, and we need to look what that is.

So I would say, I think I gave a hint on share buyback because I wanted to give a hint on share buyback as an option, which we get into our hand with over time with the Siemens decision, but it's -- but we have not agreed upon something yet. But it is an option, and we will carefully look into this, no doubt. I think hopefully, that answers your question.

Maybe give a chance to the rest of the room outside of the first 2 rows, but if there's no need, then we stay here. Okay. Good. So maybe Ouaddour first and then Richard. Julian? Sorry, my bad. Too many Julians in the room. We have too many.

Julien Ouaddour from BofA. The first question on Imaging. Do you expect the CT and Molecular Imaging to grow faster than the overall guidance of mid- to high single digits over the midterm, but every single year until 2030. Any just thought about like the growth contribution from the specific, let's say, 2 businesses would be helpful. I mean you spent a lot of time on the key drivers for that. And the other question was on buyback, if I can just follow up quickly. Do you have any trigger in terms of share buyback?

I mean, any decision with the parent company in terms of timing or any, let's say, like share price that could trigger some? And the question is more for '26 if we still have this kind of like overhang on the consolidation. Is it something you can consider already for this year?

I'll start with the second part of the question. Yes. I mean it's very hypothetical because share price development, I don't know what that will be. I would not exclude anything from being possible, but I would not expect that we do major things in 2026 with regard to share buybacks because, as I said, I also want to deleverage first, and therefore, I would not expect something currently. I hope that answered this question. And the other one was on photon counting CT. Was it.

No, I mean it was more on the CT like plus the molecular Imaging.

Molecular Imaging.

Yes. Can you confirm that both combined will grow above the mid- to high single-digit target or not, but every single year basically until 2030?

CT and molecular imaging. So that gives Andre time to think. So he will answer. But see -- I mean, what is -- maybe to give you a rough feeling. I mean, when look -- I think what is very good on the imaging side, and Andre will give a rough revenue split, I mean, CT is the second biggest business, but the most attractive one in terms of margin. MR is bigger, but a little bit less accretive but accretive.

And -- but I think what is really nice is that molecular Imaging with the -- with building out this PETNET business, which is going into the EUR 1 billion range has really developed into a third leg of the business. And it has 2 growth drivers.

In the end, I mean, the radiopharmaceuticals in this procedure-based growth, as Jochen said, and the equipment. So -- and this additional booster in molecular imaging of that second part of this business is certainly something which helps on the growth side. But I think Andi will be -- so he agrees.

Good. Then -- so I have to concede to my mistake. Julian, now the right one and then, okay.

The youngest one, obviously. So Julien Dormois from Jefferies. The first one, probably very straightforward, but that what we know about the plan from your parent company regarding the stakeholding. So just curious whether that will change anything in your strategy, both operationally, but also maybe financially. So we already touched a little bit upon that, but happy to get your thoughts on this.

And the second question is on photon counting this time, and maybe this will be addressed throughout the other sessions this afternoon. But we probably know that competition will be starting in '26, maybe with GE. We've also heard some stuff from United Imaging and so on. So just interested to know how you plan to develop that business going forward and particularly in terms of price points into '26 and beyond.

Okay. I think this time, I don't want to answer for Andre. He will be super great in answering this. And -- but still, the message is being 5 years ahead means being 5 years ahead, and we are developing and moving fast. And when somebody makes big announcement, we are where Siemens Healthineers was in 2020, then they can do this. So it was my arrogant statements yes, so they can be more pleasant. -- but you don't have to.

So I mean, I make a short comment on the Siemens. I mean, first of all, I think there is a little bit of a psychological factor in this. And one aspect is, first of all, it is, I think, super important that when one talks about Siemens Healthineers, one talks about Siemens Healthineers and not about what the parent is doing. And so -- and this is -- we are not yet at this stage. I know there will be a period, how does that spin work and how that all this.

But at some point in time, I think this is really important. I mean, for you, for us and also for Siemens because they are probably also sick and tired to discuss what they do with us instead of talking about what they do themselves. So I think the other aspect is important, and that is why I say psychologically. There's a German word, which I don't like. I mean the German press writes about us. Sometimes they write about maybe [indiscernible]. The medical technology daughter. So it's like. So I have no problem being a daughter.

But I think for the topic of, hey, we have created a company. There are all these Healthineers. We are doing this. We are oriented at all these -- the diseases we talk clinically. We talk about health care AI and so on and so on. And then to also say, it stands on its own feet. And there's no doubt, I think this is a psychological aspect. I think the other topics are more in the Jochen arena.

We can -- what does it mean on the financing side, okay, he already said not much or nothing, the topic of, okay, share buybacks are an option, but we don't maybe talk too much now about this. But it doesn't change the strategy in essence because we -- and I have no complaints, by the way, ever.

And I'm very quick at complaining, by the way, about Siemens in the last 7 years since IPO that anybody tried to micromanage what we are doing. The opposite is the case. So we had really absolute freedom from that point of view. I also can say that we are changing anything in terms of strategy.

I think that is important. I think it will -- why did we plan this Capital Market Day as we plan them because the strategy will not be influenced by the shareholding per se and also the operational processes. On the financing side, I think we were relatively clear that this will not -- the financing aspect will also have not such an influence that it has any impact on the strategy or operational processes.

Obviously, we try to say what we expect that we can at least confirm that the interest expense line will not go up because of the Siemens decision and even if they accelerate the termination of the term loans relative to what we have guided for fiscal year. I think that is a strong statement.

And obviously, we're also preparing ourselves to do the refinancing. I think we are progressing here nicely, and we will be in strong investment-grade rating territory. I'm pretty convinced about this because we are a very stable company in this regard, and we will be able to show this. Therefore, I'm not worried, and I'm pretty sure that we can do everything we want to do from a strategic and operational standpoint even without having the Siemens support on financing going forward.

So actually, I think we have to wrap it up. Richard, you and Oli, you have a [indiscernible] for the other sessions, okay, promise. So we need to continue. We have a lot of program to get through to. So now I go off the stage together with Jochen, take this table with me. And I ask [indiscernible] to come on stage. Go ahead.

Thank you all for being here. It's a great opportunity to talk to you about diagnostics. I met some of you 2 years ago, we talked about the start of the diagnostics transformation. Some of you I have not met. I've selected the diagnostics industry personally because I believe in the blood test, what they can do for patients and the opportunity.

I joined Siemens Healthineers 3.5 years ago because I saw the potential across all the platforms that we have, great talent across the business. So I'm happy to stand here before you and tell you that we've had a successful transformation. We've delivered revenue growth. The transformation was designed to deliver a step change in profitability. We have effectively made a step change in the profitability, and we are ahead of plan.

So happy to talk to you about it a little bit more and saw the interest with all the questions. So if you look at our key financials, we are a large player in the market. We have a nice diversity across the segments, and I'll talk to you about the structure a little bit, point of care, core lab and specialty that Bern mentioned before. Nice geographic mix.

And when you look at what makes a successful diagnostics company, it's about having what I would call a healthy installed base, and that's having a large presence of analyzers around the globe that are generating revenue with a strong menu. And Bernd and Jochen mentioned the razor-razor blade in our case, it's 10% on the instrument revenue, but that really is the engine that drives the revenue growth. So we start from a very strong position with over 300,000 analyzers installed around the world and one of the largest menus with 800 different tests across 30 disease states.

And a large menu is table stakes and then there are -- is menu where you can differentiate, and I'll talk about that a little bit. In that together, the large installed base and the large menu means that we are able to deliver over 15 billion tests around the world, and that is our recurring revenue. If you look at our position, we've got good leading position in a number of different segments across the industry.

So just zooming in, when we started the transformation, we stratified our platforms across 3 business lines to drive focus, focus on market penetration, focus on talking about the value of the platform and then generating the growth that we needed and the focus that we needed in the business. And so the Core Lab, you heard a lot about Atellica. I'll talk about it a little bit more. Core Lab is all about the Atellica growth, strong Atellica placements, efficient platforms that are driving the menu. We have a great cadence of assays coming out on Atellica. And again, a sizable segment, 70% of the market is in the Core Lab. Specialty Lab, we like to call this business our hidden gem because by creating your own dedicated business line around specialty, and we actually have a few different technologies in that space.

So we have the hematology and hemostasis, plasma protein as a separate offering, toxicology as a separate offering. And they are often found in the lab, but they need the focus to talk to the practitioners about those tests and about the value in the platform. One of the platforms I'll talk about a little bit later is IMMULITE. It's a leading platform in specialty. So this is our hidden gem. And then in Point-of-Care, we have a very strong presence in the biggest segment, which is critical care. We've got a number of different offerings and great connectivity. So I'll talk to you about the Point-of-Care business as well.

So 2 years ago, you -- for those of you who are here, you heard us talk about the start of the transformation. And so how -- what did we do and how did we accomplish it? I just mentioned the stratification of our assets into business lines, driving focus on Atellica, which is a great platform. We're over $1 billion in revenue on Atellica and growing over 20% across all the key segments. With that, we were able to make -- to do streamlining and make capacity adjustments, which in turn improved our profitability. And we evaluated and we were able to eliminate complexity in the supply chain, eliminate complexity, but stay focused also in R&D. And that has resulted in the savings that you've seen since we started the transformation.

So the difference, I guess, was we had mentioned the $300 million of cost savings with the transformation. We are able to achieve an additional $100 million. So that puts us ahead of plan. And on the bottom right, what you'll see is the movement to the Atellica platform, which is super important for the business. Transformation was the first phase, and we titled this part of the section Next DX because we see so much more that we can do with this business. So the transformation on track, making the step change in profitability. But now it's about making sure that we continue to build innovation and focus growth across all 3 business lines. And that focus will enable us to accelerate.

So it's more reach, more market penetration, more installations that are driving an increase in the number of tests being run per installation. I want to make one more comment on this, too, is you heard Healthineers talk about EBIT margin quite a bit. In the industry, we talk about EBITDA quite a bit. So we wanted to show you both. So that way, if you're looking at how we are in the industry, you see both. So Atellica really is the foundation for the Core Lab. We're very proud about the customer response to Atellica because if you imagine what the health care providers are faced with, it's a change in workforce, reduction in workforce, change in footprint, change in their testing network.

And the Atellica enables our customers to configure their testing the way that's best for them. And it does that with the easy user interface. It's a fast analyzer. It's a family of analyzers, and it drives efficiency. So fastest turnaround time on some of the core tests, large competitive menu, easy user interface, -- it enables a lot of remote monitoring. So you can -- if you imagine you have a number of analyzers out in your testing area. We're able to upgrade software, evaluate efficiency with our customers. And then we have the addition of AI.

So AI allows our customers to best have, call it, air traffic control of their lab and how it's performing or also insights into the clinical aspects of the test results. So the other part that our customers are happy about is the green efficiency footprint of the Atellica because it's smaller and faster, it uses less reagents and is less wasteful.

Ongoing focus. So I heard you the question you had for Jochen about investment. We continue across all 3 business lines to invest R&D at par or at leadership levels versus the market. So good R&D profile and a good cadence of innovation that's evolving around Atellica. It's also the simplification of our legacy platforms in our portfolio. So as we remove older platforms and replace them with Atellica, that is -- it makes for a healthier business. The evolution across all 3 platforms. So also those of you who know the industry know that the life cycle of our platforms are very long, right? They're out in the market for 10 or 20 years. So continuing to stay current and evolve on those platforms for our customers is key, and we do that across all 3 of the businesses. And then when you're configuring your workflow and our customers are getting smarter, right? So a lot of them had configured their blood testing networks 10 and 15 years ago.

And they know in this new generation of how they're going to run testing, whether it be sampling at the Point-of-Care or running a hub-and-spoke model, they will turn to us to make sure that we cover the gamut from patient collection all the way through to results. So we don't only innovate around the platform itself, but also around how samples are collected, how the results are compared, what type of air traffic control or AI do we have in informatics. And so our R&D portfolio is balanced based on that. So as we move to past the, I'll call it, the launch of Atellica, it affords us opportunity to invest in other areas and continue to innovate.

And then clinically, there's a number of tests that have been on the market for a long time. Some customers use them in a different way. As an example, inflammation tests in a post-COVID world or respiratory therapy kind of allergy testing is now more important as people come off of long COVID and are trying to say, like, why am I having trouble breathing? Is it allergies? Or is it some complication. And so super important that we have specific biomarkers in conjunction with our strong panel.

So the Core Lab solution, I mentioned Atellica was the key to really building up our Core Lab. We have an over 40% increase in Atellica's installed base since 2023. Not only do the customers come to us for the initial Atellica, hey, I would like to have a large-scale platform, but we have the CI Analyzer, which we launched last year, and we had spoke about it 2 years ago to you. That is one of the most successful analyzers that I've seen in my career in diagnostics in terms of the uptake from our customers. So when we get orders now and someone turns to us for Atellica, they often buy the CI Analyzer, which is more of the mid-volume analyzer and enables customers to configure their hub-and-spoke model. So over 90% of the orders that we've been getting also include a CI Analyzer.

And then what you'll see as you watch the Core Lab growth, it's about running twice as many tests per analyzer because of the efficiency. So that means per test or per razor blade, you're spending less on service. The start-up of the system is easier and the customer is able to have a leaner footprint in their operation. And then overall profile, you'll see that our EBIT or EBITDA is going to be continue to accrete because of the usage of Atellica and the installation and growth of the efficient platforms.

Specialty, again, I mentioned as our hidden gem. Hidden gem because as we pulled the businesses apart to drive focus, you can see the profitability of the Specialty platforms. CBC or red blood cell, white blood cell, as an example, is a very frequent run blood test. We've got a hematology analyzer with great connectivity that the connectivity of the analyzer is really the benefit for our customers because they can connect it in their lab operations. I'll mention IMMULITE just for the sake of time. IMMULITE is a core platform that used to be included in our lab offering. And when we pulled it out in specialty, we saw the number of tests on IMMULITE, very reliable, well-received platform with a really big menu. So we were able to add 9 tests to really round out the allergy panel for our customer and drive further growth to reinvigorate this platform and focus it on where it's needed, which is in the allergy area.

So you can -- we'll continue to see in each of these platforms, which are focused, a good accretion of growth and a lot of focus on double down. Jochen mentioned the S and SG&A. We will also be building out our S because when you think about all these platforms of Specialty, they need people who articulate the value prop and really grow the platforms out into the market.

Point-of-Care. So Point-of-Care, we've got a very broad offering. We're in the critical care space, which is blood test. And when I say broad, what I mean by that is we have benchtop and we have handheld running the same types of tests. So the customer can pick, which one they like, and that's Point-of-Care. We have the leading handheld Point-of-Care blood tester, which is very convenient for customers as they're trying to place it through their hospital. But one of the highlights really in our Point-of-Care business is connectivity. So when you have a Point-of-Care device, you can picture having thousands of these, sometimes hundreds of thousands in your hospital network, and they're out in different departments. And so it's really critical to have connectivity so that you can monitor the results coming off of all the Point-of-Care tests, but also you can -- from a training standpoint, from an analytics standpoint, you have this air traffic control, and we have the leading informatics platform that enables connectivity not only with our analyzers, but it's an open platform. So other analyzers can connect in as well.

So wrapping up, I mentioned the 3 business lines, but clinical innovation is critical, and we continue to do that in a number of different spaces. So we have a cadence of assay launches, both in the Core Lab and in the Specialty Lab. So I'm just going to mention a few. So our liver test, as an example, is focused around non-fatty liver disease, which often goes undiagnosed until it's advanced. And so being able to test and assess liver function early stage is a breakthrough and a novel new biomarker, we would call it. Multiple sclerosis is another area where we have a blood test, and it avoids and reduces the need for spinal tap. So this is another area of interest for us in the neurodegenerative space, both in MS and in Alzheimer's, where we have key assays we'll continue to launch.

And I mentioned allergy already, 9 new allergy tests coming out on IMMULITE and Specialty, which drives the growth acceleration of the Specialty Lab business, which, as I mentioned, is one of our more profitable businesses as well. So happy to be here to tell you about the transformation, good solid step change in our profit. And then our commercial acceleration, as I mentioned, putting out more S in the SG&A enables us to grow the business and drive the penetration. And the movement to Atellica drives the accretion because of its efficiency and because we're running twice as many tests per analyzer. Thank you.

So we go into the first focused Q&A session now on diagnostics, be a bit shorter than the first one, obviously. So if you don't have one, okay, then Richard, I promise you and then Oli and then Hugo. And can we have a mic here. It's coming from Richard.

Richard Felton from Goldman Sachs. So within the Core Lab business and the transition towards Atellica, how much longer is it going to take to sort of wind down some of the legacy systems? And then the next part of the question, the 20% growth that you mentioned or was mentioned in the previous presentation for Atellica, how much of that is new contract wins versus replacing legacy systems?

Yes. So there's -- we went from 15 platforms to 4 in the Core Lab. And those manufacturing of those platforms have been announced and discontinued and it enabled us to reduce our manufacturing footprint. There is a service obligation, and we maintain support for our customers, and that continues. And by 2030, we'll continue to see the substantial drop. That kind of rate of change that you've seen. If you remember the pie chart where we've moved over to Atellica, that will continue and then 2030 is where we can see the ramp. We were able to achieve an initial step change in our service costs to be able to take a drop, but we'll continue to be able to do that towards 2030 as we continue to remove the service aspect of it, which means the factories don't have to make the spare parts, et cetera. So there continues to be that. In terms of new versus replacement, I would say maybe 80-20, 80% is we're getting better utilization from our existing accounts and then 20% would be new customers that come online roughly.

Okay. It's Oliver Metzger from ODDO BHF.

One question on your margin target you set for Diagnostics. So what do you expect to come out from the shutdown of legacy portfolio versus the contribution coming from the Atellica ramp-up?

We -- so if you look at our profile, I'll just answer it from a profile perspective. So our R&D profile continues, I would say, to be healthy with the, I'll call it, the maturity of Atellica, we take some R&D out of the, call it, the hardware and then redirect it to clinical. Service is the other area where we've seen improvement. Supply chain is primarily the other. So we'll continue to see some of that. And then we also have the revenue growth, I'm trying to kind of do the math from the forecast that we've shown. I would say about 1/3 of the margin improvement will come from the revenue improvement and the revenue accretion over that horizon.

Hugo, next.

Just on the 43% of sales coming from the Americas, just curious how much of that is for most common parameters and you thought about potential impact or exposure to PAMA in the U.S. And second on Alzheimer's test, I think it's research use only for now. Could you share maybe some time lines in terms of when you expect it to be launched more commercially?

Okay. So on the PAMA, so PAMA, as you know, has been in discussion for most of my tenure, I think, in the last couple of businesses. But I would say we've been talking about reimbursement headwinds in diagnostics for a number of years. And I think the key is differentiating on some of the clinically relevant assays that I mentioned like our ELF assay, that would be an immunoassay that drives stronger margins than the chemistry and other. But right now, we don't see that as a major headwind for us, and we continue to be active in talking about the value of diagnostics.

The other thing is some of our features in our solution, not only about the test, they're about the ease of use of the analyzer, what we can do from a service perspective. So while the tests are important and they drive revenue, but also the services that we're able to offer, the intelligence that we're able to bring also helps from a growth perspective. We have 5 different neurodegenerative or Alzheimer's assays currently in the RUO form, and we'll continue to launch 2 per year. The regulatory time lines, as you know, they vary and they'll kind of follow each new RUO assay. And we foresee in the next, I would say, 2 years where we start to see some of those approvals come through beyond RUO.

Good. So I think actually, Graham, then right through and then Veronika.

It's Graham from UBS. I think cash flow has been a little bit of an issue because of the investments and then the restructuring charges. But presumably, we should be at an inflection point now. Does that allow you to do things more kind of proactively from an investment, whether it's external or internal? And from your perspective, the kind of conversation we're having today, what does that allow you to do and the business to do in terms of being slightly more independent than maybe it has been?

Yes. I think we focus on -- I'll answer the second one first, and then I'll go back to cash flow. So we focused on verticalization and autonomy when it came to sales, manufacturing and service, right? Because the core of the business is being able to effectively deliver and ship, effectively being able to position all of these great assets, but then also being able to service effectively and efficiently, drive cost savings and customer satisfaction. We see opportunities to continue with some of the support functions, right, quality, regulatory, things like IT and support. Those are other opportunities for us to continue to drive independency right now. It's a benefit for us to be part of it, but there is opportunity for us to continue to address those other functions.

And then when it comes to cash flow, yes. So with the margin improvement, with the focus on receivables and payables, we've made great cash flow improvements. And like I mentioned, I see our R&D profile staying super strong across all 3 business lines, but deliberate, right? So in this industry, you've got to decide, am I going to spend it on AI? Am I going to spend it on software and the millions of lines of code? Am I going to spend it on the assays? Or am I going to spend it on a new platform? And so I think for us, it's about -- that's why I talked about the clinical and the intelligence and the sample handling. Those are areas for us to shift R&D but still keep it there. So that's an enabler for us. And I do see us spending more on the [ I of the S ], which is getting more salespeople out in our workforce, so to speak.

Julien?

A quick one on China. We've obviously talked a lot about VBP, but I think there's also been some regulatory changes in terms of how much test can be covered for each patient and so on. So the market has clearly changed there. How do you feel about the market for the midterm on your side? And does it still make sense to operate there?

Yes. I'm sure you've heard from the industry. It's been one of the biggest kind of down calls, right, that I remember in my experience in a couple of decades. So -- and I do believe a lot of that has been realized, largely realized. So it's about looking at the market and saying, what do we do to reinvigorate growth, right? Because I see it as a correction, right? It's been a correction. And so now that you have a new base, right, less testing, maybe it's -- the prices are lower, so you have a correction and then how do you reinvigorate growth. When you go and talk to the actual -- in the institutions, there's a real passion still for innovation and for diagnostics. So I see us continuing to invest there.

And I think partnerships are important there because the Chinese market, as you know, is becoming a lot smarter about diagnostics with their own platforms and their own assays. And I think we're stronger together when we can collaborate. So I see more local collaborations, but I see it still as an important market for us.

I'll wrap it up with Veronica now.

Veronika from Citi. Two questions for me. One is just the shape of the margin progression and the growth acceleration. Obviously, you said getting towards mid-single digits in terms of growth, getting to the mid-teens margin. But looking at some of the charts, it does seem like the progression is pretty back-end loaded on both of those counts. So just curious if you'd comment and kind of confirm that, agree with that or if I'm missing something.

And then my second question is, to what extent is the discussion about what Healthineers does with the Diagnostics business a distraction for you, for your organization? And is there a preferred outcome you have and time line for it, I guess?

Yes. So I'll just talk about kind of the short term versus what you see as the long term or mid- to long term. So we removed 13,000 analyzers last year from the market as we are moving to Atellica. So when you think about discontinuing from 15 to 4, you're deliberately saying these are older platforms that are obsolete where the service costs versus the reagent flow doesn't match, right? It's not healthy. So those decisions are still happening as we speak. There are a couple of key platforms that in the U.S. as an example, that our customers love. And so we're working to be careful and not be as painful as we can. It's a big change for them. So that's where we see this kind of, I would say, in the next 4 quarters, this movement, right, that continues on the top line, which is why we call it kind of our focus phase because we're focused on this deliberate switch, but then also growth at the same time. So that's the key.

And then in terms of being a part of Healthineers, I think this industry is relatively small, right? I have no 3 out of the top 4 in the industry. I joined because I believe in where we're headed. And I have a mature management team that I'm proud of. You can look them up if you want. But we've -- Diagnostics is always kind of -- if you think about some of our competition, where usually exist with another business in many cases.

And then in those other cases of focus, then you have like more of a mid-cap or small cap company. So I think it's a fluid industry. It's an important industry right now. But I think our management team is ready for what's right for the business. And I think we have a huge opportunity to continue to grow on the top line, and then we've got opportunities still on the bottom line. So we're excited about it, and we all believe in Diagnostics.

That's a great wrap-up. Thank you. So we have a break, roughly 25 minutes. You can refresh yourself. You have the restrooms. So do whatever you like, and then we'll be back for the second block. Thank you.

[Break]

So if you could maybe start to get back to your seats, we want to continue. Thank you. Welcome, everybody, to the Capital Market Day 2025 as well from the imaging side. My name is Andre Hartung. I'm responsible for the Imaging business in Siemens Healthineers. And let me tell you, it is just a great business. When you look into EUR 12.1 billion revenue, industry-leading adjusted EBIT margin, adjusted margin, industry-leading being #1 in all the key modalities, be it on the CT side, where obviously photon-counting is creating a lot of tailwind right now, be it on the magnetic resonance side, where we do see dry cool technology is taking up.

And at the same time, we have things like Deep Resolve embedded AI, helping really to cope with the productivity challenges in health care. When you see molecular imaging, where the current developments in Theranostics and Alzheimer's disease where Bernd and Jochen and everybody alluded to, this is driving, of course, as well the need for more imaging on the molecular imaging side. And therefore, we see quite an uptake there. And thinking about X-ray Products, we just launched a new platform on the mammography side, which is gaining a lot of traction in the market. We just had a new fluoro platform launched as well, where now we, again, in the United States, where it's the largest fluoro market exceed 50% market share.

Looking to the markets, North America, obviously, the biggest chunk of the market followed by EMEA, but we are #1 in all geographies, and looking a little bit back into the track record since IPO, we gained 700 basis points in market share. We had an average 7% CAGR or slightly above 7% CAGR even an every year margin expansion of 30 bps. And why is that working? And this is working because of the unmatched investment into innovation, innovation into profitable, sustainable growth, resulting in the fact that the majority, more than 2/3 of the products being sold as of today are not older than 3 years.

So innovation, clearly a driver there. As well in terms of margin, there is an innovator margin on top of this that results in the 23%, which is by far, by far ahead of what everybody else in that industry is delivering next to the market share, which is quite a distance, a clear #1 globally. Jochen explained a little bit the revenue story around recurring revenue, driving resiliency. And we have seen in the last couple of years, quite a good development there from 45% in '22 to 50% in '25. And we expect this going to continue because on the one hand, we have this growing value partnerships. 8 to 10 years agreements where you know exactly what type of revenue is going to come when. We see the strong impact by the PetMed arena with the growth on the Theranostics side and the amyloid tracer basis, which is recurring revenue because it's delivered in doses for every individual test being performed.

And we translate our success as well in a very strong installed base, 160,000 units at 45,000 plus since 2018. And this is exactly the leverage of scale that we're having, helping us to further expanding on the margin. So how is our environment looking like right now? And what are the key drivers? Obviously, very similar to what we see for Siemens Healthineers as a whole. There is the ever-growing need. On the one hand, you have the aging population. The demographics result in much higher number of NCDs, noncommunicable diseases. This is creating demand for imaging. More than 2/3 of the people on our planet do not have proper access to health care, but they are striving for access. And we mentioned that we are growing double digit in those emerging countries, and this is driving, again, demand.

So the demand is ever rising. We have the new clinical opportunities ahead of where we talked about Theranostics, obviously, in cancer patients. And there, we at the starting point with neuroendocrinic tumors and prostate tumors being at the focus right now. But there are a lot of Phase III trials out there with other cancer targets and some of them definitely will make it as well into the pipeline and will further fuel the growth of this. When you look into Alzheimer's disease, first of all, there's enormous costs associated with it. When you look into $1.3 trillion on costs, not all directly hitting the health care system, but overall costs. It will increase to 2.8 trillion. So that shows you how much there is an urgency to act on that.

On the other hand, there's the first time light at the end of the tunnel. There are treatments now that can slow down the progression of the disease, and there are further pharmaceuticals in the pipeline that probably show even better effect than that. And this is why currently, we see this enormous uptake in imaging in order to prove whether somebody has Alzheimer's and is an individual that can be treated or not. The challenge, though, is that all this driving the demand dramatically, at the same time, we have a significant shortage on health care workers. Just 67% of the U.S. radiology departments report staffing challenges. They are understaffed on the radiology side. They are understaffed on the technician side.

So that means by the ever-growing volume, they have no chance to cope with that volume anymore. And there, we need to have a boost in efficiency in order to help our customers to overcome this challenge. And because they have to do so much more with a lower number of people right now, burnout is becoming one of the pressing issues in radiology. 40% of technologists are reported with burnout in the United States. So there is definitely a need to do something about this. I'll give you now one example, and probably this is to most of you, kind of familiar. I'm not sure who has an imaging test or had an imaging test in the past. And depending for the country you are coming and your network, -- the question is how long do you have to wait? It's probably going relatively fast if it's an emergency case. But if it's not an emergency case, you easily wait weeks, sometimes months to get an appointment. And that is something which, from my point of view, is not sustainable. And the question is what can technology do in order to overcome this. And one example here is embedded health care AI in MR, which is called Deep Resolve, which is boosting the speed of MR on the one hand and at the same time, increase the image quality.

So it's a win-win situation. And when you look into the impact that we see as of today, I put there 3 examples. One, Eisenhower Imaging Center, they had 3 weeks waiting times, now down to 1 or less than 1. We have the other one in Atrium Health United States, who have been able to increase the number of patients being spent by 40%. This is very attractive, in particular, knowing that radiology in the United States is a profit driver for the health care system. And there is another example for Karolinska Hospital in Sweden. They had a backlog of 2,200 MR patients with huge results and huge waiting times, and they have been able to bring them down to almost 0.

So these type of technologies prove and that they are already helping as of today, 16 million patients did profit from this type of technology since we launched Deep Resolve. Why do I tell you this? Because it shows a technology and innovation can be a very important cornerstone to answer the challenges in health care and to boost productivity. And this is one of the reasons why we strongly believe that we need to invest more and drive stronger the automation of everything we do in imaging, be it at the scanner side, we are looking for the autonomous scanner, be it on the image to report plan side, automated reading and reporting. So once you have the image, you need to have the final report. This today is a highly interactive process, and we believe that needs to be fully automated.

And then you need to have this information that is coming out of the radiology department as the source of what to do best next in order to treat the patient as good as possible and to personalize the treatment around the patient. And we need to, therefore, integrate this information and bring this information to the place where those decisions are finally being made and where the treatments are facilitated. And we are not starting from 0 there. I put 3 examples on the top of this slide. One example, myExam Companion. It's a little bit like a navigation system that helps you to understand what is the next right step to setup the right protocol for the right patient.

This has reduced, the reduction of workflow time for this by more than 60%. And it's available, for instance, for CT, for MR as well for conventional x-ray and for molecular imaging. We have it across the fleet. It's the first step. It's not yet fully autonomous. But we know how to get there, and we know what to do, and Doreen will later on show you a little bit more the individual steps to come to this autonomous type of scanning. Then, the question is how to take the human interaction and reduce it to a minimum away from the reading and reporting side. The Syngo Carbon is a stronghold, which is already as of today, automating by using AI and as well large language models in order to automate as much as possible this process until you have the final automated report.

Ideally, a physician tomorrow -- there's only need to look at the report and has nothing to do with generating the report and make an educated decision whether this -- what is reported, he agrees with. Then, it needs to be integrated into the therapy arena, where we take the case of Arthur when we think about auto AI-based organ contouring, which is absolutely fundamental and necessary to facilitate radiation oncology treatment. As one example, if you can automate that, you can save up to 90% of time by preparing this. It's a pretty time-consuming exercise of doing this. Or when you take the example of Carsten, where we integrate the information from a photon-counting CT into the Angio suite and even navigating based upon that data, the Angio system, helping a physician, the cardiologists in this particular case to make the right decisions. What is the stent looking like? What type of catheter do I do? How fast can I do the procedure? How do I reduce the risk? So it's really resulting in additional efficiency and speed and probably as well better quality for the patient.

So this is why we made on top of everything we said in the past in terms of innovation in the various modalities, something that we now put very much in the center of everything we do, automating the imaging value chain, making the scanner able to understand who is on the table and helping to understand what is the best treatment decision then at a later point in time for the patient. Of course, we will continue to make every CT coming from Siemens Healthineers a photon-counting CT within the next couple of years. We are very well ahead from what we have been looking at in the past, and I will get to that in a deep dive a little bit more in detail.

We will continue to introduce DryCool technology in higher field strengths as we just did with the Flow 70 centimeter recently and the 3 Tesla dry magnet is not too far out. Looking into molecular imaging, the challenge there is, in particular, to handle the larger patient volumes and to make sure that we as well bring the speed up of molecular imaging and reduce the TCO as we will see much more of those tests being facilitated in the next couple of years. So it is about speed and total cost of ownership in that context. And on the X-ray side, we just have been launching the new platform on mammography and the new platform on fluoroscopy.

Having said that, let's look a little bit into the photon-counting arena, and there were a couple of questions around this. And probably I have the chance to answer them right away. I mean we started in 2021, where we said this is going to be a journey. This is going to be a journey to bring photon-counting CT in every segment that is existing in CT. We are now at 2024, and we have already a fleet of photon-counting systems, 2 dual-source CT systems more focusing to the more high-end side, but moving as well now a single-source photon-counting system in a little bit more affordable arena, and we continue to do this and have now the first one as well as a link into radiation oncology with the NAEOTOM Alpha.Prime for radiation therapy planning.

Financially, it's today showing that it was definitely worth the invest. It is a multibillion business. Just EUR 1 billion accumulated order already since 2021. 700 million accumulated revenue since 2021, and we are at the beginning of the penetration of the market. At the same time, there was a lot of clinical evidence generation. This is key because we do ask for somewhat more money when we sell photon-counting CT, but you can only justify somewhat more money if you can tell the customer why it is worth to invest it. And it makes a difference based upon 900 papers in the meanwhile published in urology, cardiology, and oncology.

So you asked for competition. I think it's probably not really a deviating answer from what Bernd said. Somebody who is entering the market and today, nobody has a commercial available product, nobody. And who is the first one, we will see. There as well competing technologies on the market. There's one company talking about a different generation. I said just different technology with probably the disadvantage of lower resolution and higher dose. And there is one other player stating that they will have something soon, which probably is something which from a performance and dynamics cannot compete what we have.

So they start basically in 2021 now. We continue to progress from 2024 with a fleet of systems not addressing a single segment, but all of the segments. And I think that's making quite a big difference. So looking into how do we translate the diagnostic information in the various therapeutic fields into value, I brought a few examples up for you. One thing is CT-guided PCI. I don't go too much into details because Carsten will later on go very much into the details. I just tell you, the important thing here is really the efficiency gain. We have done first studies on this, close to 30% efficiency gain by using this additional information to guide your procedure in the Angio suite is quite remarkable.

When it gets to the stroke side, where time is brain, when you can combine the diagnostic proof of the stroke directly with the Angio procedure and remove the clock from the artery, this is very good for the patient. 30-minute less time to treatment can make the difference from walking out of the hospital without any symptoms left to being in a wheelchair. So this is really fundamental that we gain time there. So 20% more patients without disability just by this 30 minutes. We talked a lot about Alzheimer's and neurodegenerative disease. Yes, and definitely, end-to-end, we cover the entire spectrum, including the radio diagnostic tracers. And we are setup to not only sell the individual pieces of equipment, but do with well kind of programmatic services around it and consult people how to setup, for instance, memory clinics and Alzheimer's programs.

The same is true for the Theranostics and we look to cancer, I think it is a difference if you have a partnership with a smaller hospital chain or a larger hospital chain or an entire province in Canada, where we, together with Alberta have set the target to reduce waiting times for treatment by 50%, which is quite remarkable in a population that unfortunately faces quite a lot of cases of cancer. So take these 2, neurodegenerative and cancer. They both do profit a lot from the development, the recent developments in treatment options that we have seen. And this was the reason why we see this huge uptake of radio diagnostic tracers in these 2 type of diseases. Theranostics, we expect 2.5 numbers times the patients in 5 years at least based upon what is available in the menu today and Alzheimer's patient, 10 year more patients in the next 5 years to come. And we are already, as of today, at 2 million doses annually delivered with a strong growth pattern behind. And that was the reason why we bought AAA to expand our network beyond the United States, where we operate the largest network and now become as well the largest global player by adding the European one. And by knowing, the demand will rise and rise, we will further expand this network and we'll invest further. We are very close to the pharmaceutical industries.

They basically come to us to ask us to produce, manufacture and deliver their drugs if they are going to develop. And therefore, it's very interesting to see which of those tracers of those novel tracers will add additional growth volume to this. And to give you just an idea about the size, last year was EUR 700 million revenue just from PetMed, EUR 700 million. It's quite remarkable. And when you see the growth pattern behind, you can basically extrapolate.

So coming to an end, and not touch too much on the '26 guidance because Jochen has done this, and this is basically publicly known in the meanwhile. But on the midterm, we are per annum commit to at least grow mid- to high single digit and to see a margin expansion from scale as we have proven to deliver this on the past, as I've shown you on the very first slide.

Thank you very much for listening.

And with that, I'm very happy to hand it over to my colleague, Arthur.

So Bernd earlier introduced our strategy where we're going with elevating health, focusing on our unique capabilities in patient twinning, in precision therapy and in health care AI. While each of these capabilities are powerful in itself, it's their convergence that is transformative. And nowhere else does this matter most than in the diseases that determine global health. It's our fight against the noncommunicable diseases where conditions quietly shape the lives of millions and millions of people. And it's these diseases that account for 75% of all the deaths globally. And that is the reason why we, as Siemens Healthineers, we have aligned our strategy along 4 disease areas. Neurodegenerative disease, cardiovascular, stroke and cancer.

Now our customers, they are looking for partners that can see across the whole patient journey. From early detection and diagnosis to treatment and survivorship. Our customers are looking for partners that can connect data, insights and precision at every step. And we at Siemens Healthineers are such a partner that can bring the whole patient journey together. There's no one else who has that depth and the breadth in patient training, in precision therapy, as well as in Healthcare AI. That's the reason why we can make care more personalized, more efficient and more accessible.

So let's dive a bit into precision therapy and our strong foundation. We are the undisputed leader in radiation therapy with the strongest portfolio and the largest installed base. Yet our leadership goes beyond cancer care. We have strong -- we have unique capabilities in cardiovascular and stroke care, supported by our strong foundation in angiography. In both of those fields, we'll expand our market leadership going forward by introducing new platform innovations over the course of the next 12 months.

The businesses in precision therapy are strong and resilient. You see it by the number, EUR 6.8 billion revenue in fiscal year '25, EUR 1 billion EBIT, and a 15% adjusted EBIT margin. And the businesses are attractive because more than 50% of our revenue is coming from recurring revenue, from software from services, from long-term contracts, but also from devices.

In precision therapy, every moment matters for the patient. And elevating health globally means to make these moments more meaningful by turning them into better outcomes. And I hope you will see this approach where we're looking into the Varian business area. We take cancer care to heart. Our mission of a world without fear of cancer is the driving force behind everything that we do. And cancer doesn't wait. Cancer doesn't make any exceptions. Every other second, somebody in this planet hears the word, you have cancer. This year, it's about 22 million new cancer cases on this planet. This number is likely to rise to 24 million cancer cases by the end of the decade.

And yet, even with that challenge, there is a path forward. Radiation therapy plays a pivotal role in cancer care, where more than 50% of all cancer patients benefit from radiation therapy, either in curative or impeditive care. Yet we are facing a paradox. There's more and more people that are being treated in cancer, yet the demand is outpacing the capacity. And we stand apart, we're building not only cutting-edge innovations, we're building that capacity. And it's personal for us.

You have Melanie and Keelin here on this picture. They are colleagues of ours. They are cancer survivors. And they lead our in-house patient advocacy team that helps us improving our products, making them better day by day, and they remind us -- remind us, cancer is never distant. Yet purpose alone doesn't do the trick. It's all about the ability to turn that purpose into innovations and tangible business and hopefully, outstanding business performance. And when Siemens Healthineers and Varian came together in the year 2021, it was a strategic decision. It was the natural next step clinically as well as operationally. By this, imaging can see more, and by this therapy can do more.

So bringing both companies together helped us to accelerate to turbocharge the pace of innovation. Advances that have only been possible together. And you see a couple of examples here on this slide. HyperSight, we talked earlier about it, bringing high-quality imaging to the radiation therapy world for the first time. AI-enabled RapidArc Dynamic is an example to improve those distribution and to make care more efficient, cancer care more efficient.

IntelliBlate is our microwave ablation solution that allows to improve ablation -- image-guided ablation in the field of interventional oncology. PerfectKinetix Dynamic Couch, yes, it's a patient table on the one hand side, but it allows different clinical procedures with the [ O-ring ] based radiation therapy systems, which has never been possible before.

And finally, we talked a lot about Photon-counting CT and now we're bringing with the NAEOTOM Alpha.Prime Photon-counting CT for the first time into radiation therapy planning. These innovations drive business performance with more than -- more patient touch points than ever. With a strong book-to-bill ratio with a sustained growth -- revenue growth over the past year since we joined both companies. And with strong partnerships and customer relationships over a huge installed base in imaging, in software, as well as on the therapy -- therapy delivery systems. Yet we will continue advancing and bringing together imaging and therapy and you will see that in the clinic.

Precise and precision therapy requires precision imaging. You can only treat a cancer tumor accurately when you can see it clearly. Imaging defines the anatomy, the motion, but moreover, the relationship between the tumor and the healthy tissue surrounding the tumor. So better imaging leads to better planning, better contouring, better planning. And of course, it raises the confidence in the decision making of the clinician taking care of the patient.

And we have two great examples here. On the left-hand side, you have MR of the prostate. On the very left-hand side, the anatomy of the prostate. On the right-hand side, you see a subsegment of the information, which is the diffusion rated imaging, sort of functional imaging, and it helps the clinician to make the decision where to boost the energy verticals, the radiation exposure to the tumor to be most effective.

On the right-hand side, you see a nice comparison between conventional CT and Photon-counting CT. And I guess everybody of you will be convinced of the benefits of Photon-counting CT and radiation therapy planning because she can delineate the tumor at focus, and you can dedicate the irradiation of the tumor to the exact size and location of that tumor. This is when imaging and therapy comes together. And it's even getting better by deeply integrating AI into those applications.

So now let's look into the future. Advancing our revenue growth is basically driven by 3 key levers. It all starts with how cancer is treated, and how cancer care is managed and delivered. So we're focusing on growing procedure volumes. We will do more in radiation therapy. We'll do more in theranostics. We'll do more in interventional oncology. It continues with Healthcare AI enabled through our digital oncology solutions, where we're bringing together the information from imaging, from planning, from therapy to enable clinicians to improve their clinical excellence and to boost efficiency.

And we're focusing on value programs. Innovations as good as they are, as good as they are, they cannot transform care. People do. And the value programs, we eventually enable the clinicians, the teams around the globe to improve the excellence of care what they're doing and ultimately transform care at scale. So let's look into all of these 3 levers in a little bit more detail.

We've been shaping literally every area of radiation therapy over the best part of the last 75 years. And now we're defining the next area. Our new platform innovation will focus on improving the throughput of radiation therapy, expanding the indications, the clinical indications and yet, at the same time, increasing the utilization. And you will see this happening over the course of the next 12 months, where we'll be launching a Next-Generation Linear Accelerator that will enable our clinicians to become faster, to become more precise, where delivery becomes easier, and we will focus on democratizing radiation therapy across more cancer centers and across more regions.

Yet at the same time, with these technological innovations, we strongly believe we can shape and we can push the adoption of radiation therapy in health care. We believe that radiation therapy, for instance, will go more and more into the treatment of oligometastatic disease. An area which is currently reserved more or less to medical oncology to systemic treatment. And it opens up new treatment opportunities for those patients who are suffering from that disease. We also see a great potential in noncancerous diseases, for instance, in treating osteoarthritis where radiation therapy will significantly improve the quality of life.

Now if you would agree with me that the growth opportunity is clear. Cancer cases are on the rise. We'll shape the adoption of radiation therapy, and by this we'll increase the demand for linear accelerators. And as new clinical indications are opening up, we will accelerate this even further.

What we've learned from radiation therapy is one thing. You can only treat what you can see. And that same principle holds true also for interventional oncology. In angiography, you're combining imaging and therapy, and by this you're enabling the clinicians to clearly and precisely see where therapy is reaching. And more importantly, to give the clinician feedback, when the endpoint of the therapy is reached, and that is why interventional oncology and focusing here on embolization, as well as on ablation is such a powerful part of precision therapy. By combining 3D guidance, by combining that with real-time imaging will enable the customer, the interventional radiologists, oncologists to be more consistent, more precise and to have an easier way of delivering care.

In the clinical field, we foresee a new generation of embolics and the automated treatment guidance to make a massive difference in clinical care. Again, we see significant growth opportunities here because interventional oncology is a highly dynamic market, on the one hand. Yet we will capture share in that market by combining imaging, treatment planning software and devices into one integrated solution.

So these therapies, they are powerful. So the next step is how to connect them? Every image, every treatment plan, every procedure generates data. And Healthcare AI essentially is all about how do you turn these data into insights that help to save time, that raise precision and confidence with clinicians and patients alike. This is transforming health care.

It starts with automation. I'll give you one example. For instance, the integration of CT simulation data into our ARIA CORE patient management platform is one example. It builds on generative AI, where based on digital twins, essentially, it helps to optimize the patient management, the workflow, the scheduling in a clinical department. And it advances with agentic AI with smart next-generation autonomous linacs that adapt in real time to the anatomy, but also to the motion of the patient that is currently being treated. And one thing that is super critical here, it allows to treat the patient with less people, addressing the staff shortages challenges.

So in essence, we're combining Automation AI, Foundation Models and Agentic AI, and leverage our huge installed base across imaging systems, software as well as treatment delivery systems to eventually drive high margin -- high growth and high margin expansion. So we have the technology. We have the intelligence to help clinicians to make treatment procedures more precise.

I believe we have a responsibility to make cancer care more equitable. And that's the reason why we're working together with our customers to address some of their most pressing challenges they are having, and we touched upon them a bit earlier. And probably the biggest one is the health disparity.

Unfortunately, today, far too often, one must say, where you live determines whether you live. Financial pressure, staff shortages, or burnout. But also how to help our customers to advance in medical progress? These are all these challenges that we are being confronted with. And our value programs that we are issuing and launching these days helped to reduce the burden of adoption and help the customers to create lasting and sustainable transformation of cancer care in their responsible constituencies. It essentially helps our customers to do more and to reach more.

And by this, we created a couple of partnerships over the last couple of years. And you heard about the Alberta one. Certainly, the most significant and largest one, an 8-year partnership with the government of Alberta to be precise Alberta Health System, and supported by the Alberta Cancer Foundation, where we are upgrading the whole infrastructure in the province of Alberta, the population of 5 million people spread out across a huge geography. And where we're not committing only just to install hardware or software, but we're committing to work together with them on reducing the time that it takes between the diagnosis and the onset of the treatment. And as I said earlier, cancer doesn't wait. But also to help reduce the ER visits.

There's another example, completely different one, and this is rural East Tennessee and Western Virginia. We're partnered with Ballad Health, the local health system. They made to its goal that they are advancing and raising cancer care to an academic medical central level because people in that area have to drive 6 hours to get to the next university hospital. And not everybody is capable of doing this. So we're working together with them to increase the quality of care there.

Another completely different example is our partnership with the Ministry of Health in Zambia, where we're establishing the first comprehensive cancer center in that country, bringing together imaging but also radiation therapy and radiation therapy, in particular, for the first time into the country. So we're providing equipment, software, but also training and educational services to serve a population of more than 20 million people.

These value programs are amongst the most fastest, or the fastest-growing business segments within our business. And they contribute right now to EUR 1.5 billion backlog across imaging and therapy equipment and services.

Excellence is the standard when it comes to how we're serving our customers and their patients. It's also in the way how we're operating. Historically, we've been driving margins yet and as Jochen alluded to it, we see a great potential to expand them even further. And we see 4 key levers, 4 key drivers for that.

One is certainly innovation. Talk about our next-generation treatment delivery system that's coming out over the next couple of months. It will increase the value how customers can treat their patients. And by this, we can also set new pricing standards. On the other side, I talked about Healthcare AI and how we can spread that and scale this across our large installed base, high-margin portfolio, helping us also to manage our margins going forward.

We're collaborating with our in-house technology centers and the patient Couch is a perfect example here. It's all about shared parts. It's all about productivity manufacturing but also, it's all about adding a high-value portfolio item to our offering. And high-value portfolio items are our fourth level here like RapidArc Dynamic or HyperSight, they can be either upgraded to our large installed base, or added as a high-value option towards new deals going forward. So our growth and our margin expansion will significantly contribute to the overarching profitable growth of the precision therapy segment.

And you heard earlier the outlook in '26.

I'd like to highlight our trajectory going beyond '26 until the end of the decade. And again, we're committing ourselves to go into the high single-digit range when it comes to revenue growth, and that translates then into an adjusted EBIT margin expansion by roughly 100 basis points per annum.

But let me finish by saying this. Behind every number here, there's something much deeper. It's the impact on the patient. The person behind every diagnosis, the person behind every treatment. The reason why we innovate, the reason why we are strengthening precision therapy. And you heard a lot about our strategy in cancer care, our innovation, our operational rigor, the margin expansions. You will see the exact same thing in advanced therapies, focusing on cardiovascular disease, on stroke and on cancer care. And you will see the same opportunity to create value.

Carsten, over to you. Thank you very much.

Thanks a lot Arthur and a warm welcome to Advanced Therapies. Advanced Therapies is a global market leader, a EUR 2.1 billion business with 30% market share and a strong #1, #2 position in all our segments. And as I often get the question, what exactly is it that AT is doing? Let me try to wrap this in 40 seconds.

So our image guidance solutions provide a view into the body. They visualize the body's vessel system and they enable to navigate through the vessel system so that physicians can better diagnose and treat diseases from within the vessel system. These are the so-called minimally invasive procedure and they change the way how therapies are delivered for the most threatening diseases. They provide significantly better clinical outcomes than open surgery, and all of this based on the solutions that AT is providing.

AT currently is at an inflection point, and that's an inflection towards faster growth. And this is based on an all-new portfolio of angiography systems we will bring into the market in 2026. For us, that's typically once a decade opportunity. So our products crucial elements in the fight against cardiovascular disease, stroke and cancer. And therefore, AT is contributing to saving millions of life every year.

[Presentation]

So we all have loved ones, family members and friends that are confronted with the most threatening diseases. And what you see is that the incident, the burden of these diseases continues to grow. But there is hope and the hope are these procedures that treat these diseases. And our products are key on treating these procedures, are key for the procedures, and therefore, are key enablers to fight these most threatening diseases.

We want to transform these procedures. We want to make them faster, simpler, more precise and more affordable. And we want to enable new procedures to treat conditions that cannot be treated today, improving the lives of millions of people. So the number of procedures is growing fast, and we are, on the one side, growing with these procedures, but also we are expanding our role in procedures. And we do this because more complex procedures require more image guidance. We add AI to procedure guidance, giving you an example, identifying and highlighting the vessels that treat a tumor, so that physicians can decide and know exactly which vessels to embolize to treat a liver cancer. And by creating new procedure-specific solutions, for example, enabling better device selection and stent sizing in the treatment of coronary diseases.

So we are operating in a market that is growing structurally, and we are expanding our role in that market. And for us, that means that we are accelerating our growth and expand our margins in the next years. And we are accelerating growth because we will gain market share in the procedures that are growing fast, and we have the ability to move into new and adjacent procedures. At the same time, we will expand the margin because we will move to one unified product platform that allows us to reduce cost and complexity, and we will move towards more procedural revenue at higher margins.

And we do all this based on 3 key levers. Innovation, our own innovations and the innovation portfolio of all of Healthineers, by strategic industry partnerships with device and robotics companies, and by offering and providing comprehensive customer offers like value partnerships and value programs. Now let me briefly go into each of these levers and let's start with the first one, our own innovations.

AT in 2026, we launched a complete new portfolio of angiography systems. For us, that's a once every 10-year opportunity that we will exploit. And the all-new portfolio addresses all minimally invasive procedures, in all clinical fields, and we cover all segments from value to high end. And all these new products are built on one unified product platform, that as I mentioned before, allows us to lower cost and complexity. And the whole platform is built around AI and focused on procedures.

So all products provide superior clinical capabilities centered around our new AI-powered image engine that provides superior and clearly better visualization of devices and anatomical structures, in the most complex procedures at significantly lower dose, which is a complete game changer. And at the same time, we are introducing, as I mentioned, AI into procedures. What you see here is an example of what we call the fully automated coronary evaluation that analyzes the complete coronary tree, so that you can -- that the physician really knows what's the right stent and what's the landing zone for the stent.

So with our new portfolio, we are very confident that we will gain market share and therefore, accelerate revenue growth and expand our margins. We have the first systems at customer sites with overwhelmingly positive feedback, and we will start to launch and ramp up the system in 2026. So stay tuned.

This all-new portfolio also enabled us to integrate innovations from across Healthineers. Innovations from ultrasound, from Varian, from imaging. Because we believe that if you create comprehensive solutions, you can create significant clinical value in multiple clinical fields. And let me just give you one short example and that is in the structural heart procedures.

If you unite the life images from AT with the live images from ultrasound, we get a significant better view into the anatomical structures of the heart, which then allows the physician to better navigate in the heart. If it's about putting new heart valves in, or closing the left atrial appendage. So again, by uniting solutions from multiple parts of Healthineers, we improve our clinical relevance and create competitive advantages.

And talking about left atrial appendage. This is probably the fastest-growing procedure in cardiology. And by the way, connects two of the noncommunicable diseases. Because you're closing the left atrial appendage in the heart to reduce the risk of stroke. So you might have seen the announcement that our colleagues from ultrasound have announced a strategic partnership with Boston Scientific. Boston Scientific is the clear leader with their WATCHMAN device in that field. And by uniting the 4D ICE next-gen catheter from ultrasound with the WATCHMAN workflow, they will change the future of LAAC procedures. And by the way, that's a great example on why strategic industry partnerships are key for innovating minimally invasive procedures.

I truly believe that if you want to innovate minimally invasive procedures, you have to bring together imaging, image guidance, devices, robotics and AI. And that requires strategic industry partnerships. And for us, these partnerships mean we can innovate new procedures, we can move into new clinical segments and we can access procedural revenue pools. Here are two examples.

So the one is our collaboration with Intuitive, that we are using to together transform lung cancer detection and treatment. For this, this is the combination of the iron robotic bronchoscopy platform with a 3D mobile C-arm of AT. And the clinical result is a significantly higher target in lesion rate for lung biopsies, which is crucial for earlier detection and treatment. For us, this has opened a new clinical field pulmonology. We have sold more than 300 of these systems into pulmonology, which has added more than 100 basis points of our revenue growth on the equipment side.

2 months back we announced a strategic partnership with Stryker to redefine how aneurysm and stroke is being treated robotically. Here, we put together the robotics capability and the image guidance of AT with the market-leading position of devices on the Stryker side. And together, we will change the way how neurovascular procedures are done and create the market for neurovascular robotics with first clinical study in the next 12 to 18 months.

So now let's move to the third lever. The third lever is comprehensive customer offers. And you heard already a lot about value programs and value partnerships. With these, we go beyond transactional deals and create comprehensive offers that solve customers' key pain points. Value partnerships, long-term strategic collaborations continue to grow in terms of size and number. And for AT, the number has more than tripled. What we now add are value programs. They are new, they are more focused. They look at changing or to the clinical transformation of one clinical care path on our side. For example, setting up with acute stroke network, or building a heart center.

Now we add the industry partnerships together. And if we bring these 3 together, we are able to solve customers' key pain points. And you heard about them, Access, Clinical Efficiency and -- common guys help me out, Clinical Excellence, that was the third one. Thank you.

So -- and for us in AT, it means we will accelerate revenue growth. Now this is the main topic for us. Now let's look at how we bring all of this together and both Andre and Bernd already talked about it. This is an example from coronary where the stenting of cardiology -- what is stenting of coronaries is the most common minimally invasive procedures. And we now keep the capability of the Photon-counting

CT. The unique diagnostic capabilities to look into a lesion, understand how the plaque is transformed, come up with a treatment plan and you then seamlessly integrate that into the cath lab, the pre-procedural results from CT. And now we combine that with the, intra-procedural capabilities of our all-new angio system. Remember, the AI-powered image quality, AI-powered procedure guidance.

And with this, we now guide the complete procedure, from lesion selection to what is the right device to use, size diameter, what's the right landing zone and then really making sure the stent is placed correctly. And for us, it means the new procedures, CT-guided PCI is more precise, it's faster, it's safer and it can be more affordable because you're now are sure you need just one stent.

So for us in AT, bringing the 3 key levers together that I talked about, innovation, our own innovations and the one of all of Healthineers, strategic industry partnerships and comprehensive customer offers is the key that will help us to further accelerate revenue growth and expand our margins. And with this, we will strongly contribute aligned with Varian and ultrasound to fulfill the ambition of the Precision Therapy segment.

Thank you. And with this, I hand over to Dorin.

Good afternoon. My name is Dorin Comaniciu. I have the pleasure to talk today about Healthcare AI. As you have seen, HealthCare AI is part of every business of Siemens Healthineers, and also is a core part of the strategy. I've been with Siemens for 26 years and it has been an honor to contribute for many years to Healthcare AI.

Today, we're a global leader in AI-enabled medical devices with more than 100 AI-powered devices approved in the U.S. and hundreds of them worldwide. We're also innovation leader for AI in medical imaging. We have more than 1,300 patents granted, and many of them actually in foundational AI. We're also -- we have recognized leadership in prestigious institutions such as U.S. national Academies.

Now in Healthcare AI, we're running global network of Healthcare AI centers. I'm coming from Princeton, New Jersey. And you see we have centers in Erlangen Germany, Brasov Romania, Bangalore India, Shanghai China and we're currently building one in Edmonton in Canada, in the partnership with Alberta that Arthur mentioned. Now these centers are giving us the global view, but also the capability to collaborate locally with core customers.

Now the centers run what we call Global Healthcare AI factory. This is a scalable infrastructure that is based on super computing and on a large data lake, on a very large one, actually. We're running in terms of the supercomputing in colocation mode more than half of exaflop compute power, plus 23 billion of -- this is on a 23 billion (sic) [ 2.3 billion ] of images and an additional clinical information. And these are coming from more than 200 partners.

Now it's very interesting, right? We have something like six petabyte of all flash memory, massive memory. So this allows us to move very fast in and out big data into the GPUs and out. And this allows us to run something like 1,800 large deep learning experiments per day. We have also a very efficient pipeline that includes curation, reading, annotation, the R&D and the development of models and ultimately, the translational models into the businesses, both models and foundation models, yes.

So Healthcare AI is a question of scale where everything works together. The compute power in our experience for the last 10 years, compute power grew something like 1,000 times. The big data that sits on the data lake and also the talent of the scientists that are working to create better and better models. And everything we do is, again, the way my colleagues mentioned to make healthcare more efficient, to make healthcare more effective, and to increase access.

So what you see in front of you is one of the largest foundation models in industry. More than 0.5 billion medical images used for training. Now if you want to take 10 seconds per image to analyze these images, you would need something like 150 years to go through the entire database. We have been pioneers in building such foundation models. Actually, we have our first publication 2022 with 100 million. And today, you see the 0.5 billion and actually today also, we're training with the next generation with 1 billion, medical images.

And by now, I guess, everyone knows that the foundation models are these very large models that ensure much more efficient downstream of the downstream development. We don't have only large models, but we also have lighter models that is focused on NCDs. And you see there on the screen, neurogenerative -- neurodegenerative disease. We cover cardiovascular, cardiovascular both image analysis, but also interventional. We cover stroke, we cover cancer. So all these models are part of the factory and ensure much faster development downstream and much more expanded development downstream, meaning that with such models we're able to detect more pathologies.

So now Healthcare AI. You have seen Healthcare AI is a key enabler for patient twinning. And when I look at twinning means sensing the patient, early diagnosis, early detection of the disease, diagnosis. And ultimately, selecting the first -- selecting the best treatment for the patient. And how do you move that information into precision therapy?

Now part of this journey, there are a couple of paradigms that we address. And I will mention today 3 of them. How can we help our customers imaging patients faster? How can we help the radiologist interpreting, reading faster images? And also, how do we shorten the time from diagnosis to treatment? And as Bernd mentioned, based on the increase of compute power, based on more data, based on more powerful algorithms, we're looking now into how do we elevate Healthcare AI to the next level? And if you really think in terms of evolution, we're moving for the scanning part from elements of automation to the autonomy. Autonomy means that the machines are doing more and more in an autonomous fashion with less intervention, of course, in a secure and safe way.

Then for the image to report, the advance means that we move from radiology findings into generating the report. If you can imagine this, this can have a major impact in introducing a lot of efficiency for radiology. And the last example that I'll talk about is how do we introduce instant radiation therapy planning as a way, again, to expedite, to move things much faster from the diagnosis to reduce the waiting time from the diagnosis to treatment.

As Andre mentioned, today, we have quite a number of exam companions. And I will underline here the 3D camera. The 3D camera we introduced a couple of years ago. Today, per year, we have something like 30 million CT scans done with the 3D camera in the world. That's first element of automation that helps positioning the patient in the gantry. But now when we introduce more and more automation, imagine what an autonomous scanner would do?

When you look from that angle, we look into a completely redesign, a completely changed machine that has autonomy at the center. We look into the improving perception, improving sensing of the patient, looking to bringing more intelligence, and ultimately also ensuring a smooth patient to AI interaction. And you can imagine that this is a problem of scale. This is a problem of agentic AI. This is a problem of exascale simulations. So it's a fascinating way to think in the evolution of these machines, again, from elements of automation into autonomy.

Andre was mentioning -- mentioned the Deep Resolve, right? Deep Resolve is a fascinating technology right? So in the slides that he showed we have something like a 17 million scan last year, more than 30 million scans since introduced, right, making scanning much faster, sometimes 4x faster at double the resolution. But still, the technology is evolving. And now we're looking at the scalable diffusion, a diffusion foundation models and how they would accelerate scanning even more. But such technology would allow us to expand from MR to CT, to X-ray to reduce the level -- further the level of radiation. To expand to cone beam CT to reduce the number of projections. And also, we're looking now into the diffusion models how do we capture more dealing with nonlinearities of the acquisition in order to reduce the demands for the hardware, or something that we call software-defined hardware.

So let's look at the report now. So today, we have, say, in the world of chest CT, we have systems that analyze lung nodules, emphysema, airspace opacities, classifications, measuring the aorta and quite a number of them, right? These systems today, they improve the workflow. But now the next level, the elevating part can we generate a report. Now that's a big business and can have a lot of impact on radiology and can transform everything that would happen in the future in the space of radiology by the machine generating the report reliably.

And you can see there, we have foundation models, coupled with many light detectors that can be trained very fast. And we don't have a couple of detectors. We have more than 100 for chest CT working together in order to identify many pathologies, multiple potential pathologies and translate everything into reliably into report.

So let's talk also about radiation therapy as an example of expediting the drive from diagnosis into the therapy. So in radiation therapy, the problem is how do you deliver the most dose to the tumor while protecting the surrounding tissue. So in order to do that, the first step is contouring. You contour the tumor at a couple of levels and then you're contouring the surrounding tissue, something that you call organs at risk. And today, we have the auto contouring software. It's a very industrial software. We have something like more than 200 organs at risk covered and is used today, day by day in many, many centers in the world, including a lot -- introducing a lot of efficiency, more than 90% time cut in the contouring part.

But then after contouring comes a very sophisticated optimization that defines how the therapy will look like by, again, optimizing the location of the beams, how everything is optimized, again, with the same target, deliver more radiation to the tumor and less to the -- to what we want to protect. So now the challenge is that this optimization takes a lot of time because it involves quite a number of passes. First of all, it is long and then involves quite a number of passes from the radiation oncologists to the dosimetrist and back. So now we have the first modeling in industry, the first foundation model for radiation therapy that drives this optimization in under second.

So imagine what that means for the efficiency of radiation therapy. You press the button and you get the optimization done. And if you're not satisfied, you can go with that -- you can do that in a couple of iterations. But that means, again, introducing a lot of efficiency. And here, the target is that, as Arthur mentioned, can we do that? Can we do the path from a diagnosis into therapy in 1 day. And this is also -- actually, it's a problem of scale because in order to do that, we run supercomputer, we run tens of thousands, hundreds, thousand plans from where we learn how to generate the best plan for this case. So now let me talk about AI orchestrated workflows.

So the message here is that using a new generation of optimization technology based on agents, we are able to introduce more to optimize the evolution of the health care systems from the bottom to the top. And again, this is a problem of scale. Now just to give you a simple example, think about how do you do the scheduling for patients, for personnel and for machines. And this is a very -- a problem that is -- involves a lot of dynamics. Things can change drastically, right? Lack of personnel, patient doesn't show for appointment, machine down, you can have pandemic, you can have a lot of things happening that changes, right?

Now in order to do -- to deal with so many situations, what we do, we do Exascale simulations, again, billions of parameterizations. So now you can have AI systems, AI agents, you can see there that learn to play strategy in order to achieve user-specified KPIs under dynamic conditions. And this is fascinating, right? It's well beyond operational research that is happening today. So now imagine that we do that in a product. We have already introduced, as Arthur mentioned, the Smart Scheduling for our oncology information system. But now you can start optimizing departments, radiology department, cardiology, radiation therapy. But then you can do even higher.

How do I optimize the patient journey? That means service coordination and balancing. And going to the next level, how do you optimize capacity? How do you maximize capacity? I made such presentation to CEOs. This is the #1 topic that every, any CEO cares, optimize, maximize my capacity. And then even higher level, imagine, again, more compute power that means also capabilities to play strategy. So this is a topic that we're actually running with a number of partners as partners in value partnerships. And it's a fascinating development that makes us very, very important players into this field and optimizing health systems.

And by the way, the name that we use is operational twin. So health care AI. To me, health care AI is a story of scale and impact. As you have seen also from my colleagues, we focus to introduce more efficiency, effectiveness, clinical excellence, but also to improve access to many people in need. Now from a scale perspective, we operate everything at scale. We train on massive data. We have a growing and growing -- we have growing, growing supercomputing capabilities. But also, we have a lot of brilliant scientists, PhDs in machine learning that are working in this system. And perhaps what is the most important is that we have the experience of running everything together in the healthcare AI factory. And ultimately, such healthcare AI factory continues to produce day-by-day models, small models, large models that are being translated by our businesses in differentiating products and services. And with that, I conclude my presentation. Thank you so much.

I would like the presenters come on stage for our joint Q&A session that we have now for the synergistic core. Great. So here we are. The floor is yours. Yes, please go ahead.

Oliver Reinberg from Kepler Cheuvreux. First question just on AI. Can you just talk about the commercialization? I think so far, the technology is largely embedded into the kind of platforms. So to what extent do you have currently already separate revenue streams? And how much can you build on that? And do you believe that also this kind of new technology can drive basically the kind of replacement cycle of instrument in the industry? And then the second question would just be on imaging. I mean you talked about the kind of different growth drivers. I mean, can you just unpack the imaging growth a bit? I think you talked about the impact from pricing.

But can you just give us a flavor in terms of what do you think in terms of what comes from market growth, what comes from market expansion to new areas and probably market share gains and also get some kind of color because there's also a headwind coming from the fact when you have more throughput, both on the imaging side, but I guess also in [ RT ], what is the headwind from this kind of incremental throughput that you can actually do more with the machines?

Who's going to start there? I mean I can first probably comment a little bit on the AI side as well because it's -- in particular, in imaging, but as well in the other modalities. I mean, Dorin said it perfectly. It is an embedded incremental differentiator that basically makes us more successful in the marketplace on the one hand. And it does not come for free. I mean this is something we ask for money, and we sell it in different shapes and forms. And it's not always just embedded in terms of you pay it once. We have other solutions as well like Flexinity and it's more along the imaging value chain where it's more procedure based.

As it has been known already in the PACS environment, for instance, this archiving environment, where it's running that way. And on the other hand, I think we need to accept that there is not ultimately more money in the system, but it's really more about investing in things that help you to live with the money that is available. And therefore, we think that driving competitiveness by embedded and fully automized processes is one of the key drivers. And yes, it will increase productivity and it will increase throughput of systems, and it is ultimately absolutely necessary to do it because as I told you in my presentation, there is so much you can do as a radiologist or so much you can do as an interventionalist or in the oncology arena that when you currently see how the demand is piling up, this productivity topic is key.

And don't forget, there is a lot of installed base there that is not capable of doing this. You cannot easily upgrade this. Sometimes you can. We have Deep Resolve is a good example. There, we can upgrade. When we look into the impact on the units we sell, you will see it's even accelerating just because people want to have it either on the installed base or new systems, very similar in other modalities. The overall imaging market, to put it a little bit in perspective, yes, I mean, we talk about -- you can calculate it basically by yourself, EUR 12.1 billion, 38% market share. So you end up with something like EUR 35 billion for the imaging market, with a growth dynamic, which is in the range of 2% to 4%.

We are a little bit conservative for '26 because it's not so easy to estimate how China's dynamic is going to be. So we rather see this a little bit more muted. And we typically outperform the market growth by 2%. So when you look into our growth as compared to what we see on the market with more than 7% since 2018 at the IPO, we roughly have 2x the dynamic. And the majority out of this is coming out of both growth on the service side, which is basically a follow-up after you have been sold the system at some point in time after a warranty period, typically, there is a service contract with it, but it's kind of equal.

If I may add one comment on the monetization model of AI. I mentioned, for instance, one option, which is the RapidArc dynamic that improves the care of certain cancer types much better. This is a sellable item. It's only possible through AI enablement. It's mostly software that you need. And in this case, it's an option. And by this we generate additional high-value portfolio items. This was my fourth key lever in driving not only the growth, but also the margin expansion of sellable items. So it can be both deep resolved, by the way, that Dorin was referring to it as well. It's also a sellable item as an option on MR.

And maybe one short comment on in terms of how much does the improvement in terms of making procedures simpler, bring down the demand for procedures, what is working against it and is helping us that procedures become more and more complex. So you have something that simply takes longer because you're doing things you couldn't do 3 or 5 years back. So AI is just helping to fill that demand that you otherwise would not be able to fulfill at all. And I think this is something on the Advanced Therapy side, we will see more and more that you have very complex procedures. But again, these are the ones that are able to treat conditions you could not treat 3, 5 years back.

So Oli and then Richard and then Veronika.

Okay. Oliver Metzger from ODDO BHF. So both questions on Varian. So first, for the next-generation linac, how should we think going forward about pricing versus volume? So you are already the market leader. So if you bring a new device, do you target more towards further volume market share gains? Or is, let's say, the margin more important?

Second question, on your event 2 years ago in , you also talked about increasing the radiation, basically that people or patients need fewer radiations and have, let's say, better clinical out come. And you said you're running some studies on that about, I think, 1x stronger radiation. Can you give us a few words on that? Where do you stand with these studies? And what are the outcome, in particular when you talk about the photon counting technology to get a better visualization, so -- which should also drive accuracy.

So on the next-generation treatment delivery system, we are creating massive more value due to the efficiency gains that we're anticipating with that system. But I also mentioned new clinical indications and the most prominent one is certainly around this oligometastatic treatment currently only being taken care of or mostly being taken care of by systemic therapy. We expect higher pricing coming out of that. So to answer your question, certainly, there is a focus on the margin expansion here with that kind of system.

We have seen that trend, by the way, already over the past 4 years with our existing portfolio through adding additional options to the system that the average pricing goes up next to other pricing measures. So that's the answer on that one. But obviously, we're also going for additional market share. So we don't want to stop at the 60-plus percent that we're having today.

On the other question around new treatment technologies, the FLASH technology, basically, just for the rest of the audience, we're not too much into it. What we're doing is very similar like with a flashlight on a photography, we're increasing the dose delivery in a millisecond essentially to 100x times intensity with the benefit of being more effective in the tumor treatment, yet being more conservative than on the organs at risk. Currently, there is research work going on, on proton-based flash. There was little research on electron-based flash. And there will be a project to come on photon-based flash.

And as you were referring to photon counting, I personally believe this will be our photon counter in the future where it changes the paradigm of radiation therapy. And fortunately, I don't have the signature underneath the project yet, but there will be a government-related project in the U.S., hopefully soon after the -- we're just waiting for the signature of RFK to do that to invest into a joint project with the U.S. government on photon-based flash. And Photon counting CT is where everybody is super excited about it.

And our own -- we have a little group of researchers who are paving the way for Photon counting CT and radiation therapy planning. They say 2/3 of all simulation systems in the future will be photon counting because of the unparalleled advantage of the tissue differentiation in photon counting CT. So we're super excited about it as well.

Thanks. Richard, we'll be next up there.

Richard Faison from Goldman Sachs. A question for Carsten. It seems like there's a little bit more focus on strategic industry partnerships today than was the case a few years ago. First of all, is that observation correct? And if it is, how does that change the way that you innovate and commercialize products?

A very good question. I mean I'm now in the role since 4.5 years. And if I really look back to the beginning of when I joined, that wasn't such a big topic. Also from an interest point of view, if I look at the device and robotics companies, that has changed completely because what's clear now is that they also clearly believe that bringing together imaging, image guidance, devices, robotics and AI is the way forward on how you can best innovate minimally invasive procedures.

And yes, I mean, taking the example from Stryker, that is clearly a co-development. This is something that -- if you think that you have to bring it together, it's the question, if you want to fully exploit the capability, you have to think it from the beginning onwards. And these are things like what are the -- what's the material composition of devices? How can you best make them visible? How do you ensure that devices are coming back with the Stryker example, as compatible as possible to the robot we are providing. So yes, this now is requiring more of a co-development.

On the other side, we also have to ensure that a lot of the things we are doing are agnostic. So you have to [indiscernible], on the one side, you're looking at how can you make sure that the improvements, the new innovations are available to as many companies or to as many device and robotics company as possible. But at the same time, you -- for selected arenas, you really go into a very deep common partnership.

Veronika.

Veronika Dubajova from Citi. Two questions for me, one for Andre and one for Carsten. Andre, for you, just curious to get your thoughts on the competitive environment in imaging. Obviously, you've had a great run with that 700 basis points of market -- with market share expansion. But there are new players, in particular, in China, who are moving more and more into the other markets around the world. Just curious kind of as you fast forward, how do you think you compete and win against some of those lower-priced competitors who are coming from China in particular?

And then, Carsten, for you, just on the Angio system upgrade opportunity, can you maybe contextualize it for us? You said once in a decade. When was the last time that you launched a new portfolio? And my model only goes back to 2015. And if I look, the growth rates were fine, but not amazing. So maybe you can talk about sort of what you would expect that upgrade to drive in terms of growth rate and how quickly that gets realized through the next period, especially since the guidance for 2026 doesn't seem to be super punchy. So those would be my 2 questions.

Should I start? Okay. Referring, in particular, probably to one of the more emerging Chinese competitor, I guess. I mean, first of all, let's think about China as such. First of all, we have 9,000 engineers in people in China, half of them on the engineering side, very close to the Chinese market, very close to Chinese customers as well to make sure that we understand what their needs are as Chinese competitors need to understand what the international needs are.

And probably there, we are closer as well, much closer than everybody -- anybody else China could be right now. That's one aspect of it. Then I like, we really make sure that we don't take that easy. And you can see already when you look into the success that we are having in this entry-level segment that those players target sometimes that we have with 12% growth there and overproportional growth as well in the past, we took that quite serious. and we continue to do so. I mean, take to go back to China again.

And China, we are #1. Yes, we had years where the pressure was kind of higher, but I think we made a progress quite well in making sure that we could further strengthen and in the future by expanding our #1 position. While a Chinese player in the international environment, in particular in the United States, of course, is facing some challenges. But of course, they are around, and we need to be careful because they follow fast. And this is the third and last point to that. This is why I believe at the end, it is about we need to out-innovate them, and we need to keep the speed and don't make any compromises on that.

Yes. To contextualize that a little bit, the once a decade simply means that usually building a complete platform from scratch is something that happens only every 10-plus years in our industry. We had a launch in a certain segment of the market in early 2020, but this is the first one where we are really going through all segments to provide that. Now looking at your question, why is it that you don't see that already in 2026 at the full extent?

I mean you have to keep in mind that on the one side, it's the launch and the ramp-up, but there is something in addition, and that's called the regulatory approval. And that is something that typically takes a little bit longer, and it depends on is it China? Is it the U.S. So you will -- despite the fact that we will start the rollout in Q2, the full impact we will see earlier on the order side. But on the revenue side, 2026 will be a transition year until we have regulatory approval in all countries and then can ship into all countries.

Julien Ouaddour From BofA. The first question on Imaging. So you provided an interesting number on PETNET, EUR 700 million in terms of revenue. And I think EUR 1 billion was mentioned a few times. Is there any time line for that? And if you have similar kind of target for photon counting either in terms of revenue or how much of the installed base can you -- let's say, can you address during this plan?

And in [indiscernible], just going back on the targets. In the past, you had the target of Varian's margin getting close to imaging. Is this still the case because you haven't mentioned it there? And just a follow-up to Veronika's Advanced Therapies, you haven't break it between this and Varian. Could it grow high single digit with the partnership and the product launches you just mentioned?

First of all, I think put it a little bit into perspective, the EUR 700 million was referred to the revenue we realized in PETNET by radio diagnostic tracers, so only the tracers of EUR 700 million. The EUR 1 billion that I mentioned was referred to the accumulated order volume that we currently have in photon counting that was not directly associated to the EUR 700 million. But we do see a well double-digit growth on the PETNET side. We have seen enormous uptakes in particular last year as well.

Now of course, as the absolute volume is increasing, so probably the relative growth rates will come down a little bit. But there are 2 things not anticipated at all because we can't. One thing is which of those phase trial tracers are going to get approval. So as I said in the 25 trials out right now with different tracers for different diseases, certainly, some of them will make it, and they are looking very promising. But because we don't know yet, we did not put it into equation. But I think that's a little bit of the fantasy in that as well, you can think of while amyloid tracers and PSMA tracers for prostate and Alzheimer's are reality right now and come with better margins as well than the regular FDG tracers. This is why it's really very attractive for us.

Yes. And on the precision therapy side, obviously, Varian is strongly contributing towards the precision therapy reported segment. You will see the Varian there in part going forward. Our trajectory in terms of growth as well as in the margin expansion does not change. As a matter of fact, we want to even accelerate it. We strongly believe through the growth, but also through all the margin expansion, margin discipline measures, in particular when it comes to productivity, but also the conversion from the growth and we touched upon that earlier on the previous question on driving to new pricing standards. We are convinced that we will further expand our margins. So no change to that one.

Yes. And I mean talking about the revenue growth for the Advanced Therapies, if we can get to high single digit, we have been growing close to 6% during the last years with our current portfolio. So I'm very optimistic that with a brand-new portfolio gaining market share in our current segment, but also with industry partnerships that allow us to move into new adjacent segments, we will be able to get to the high single digits that we also have on the precision therapy side and therefore, be also a strong contributor to the overall target of precision therapy.

Graham.

Just a question on imaging and then also on Varian. Just on imaging, I think, Jochen, it might be a question for next, but you mentioned 40 basis points or so of margin expansion. But then we think about the tariff kind of unwind, that feels about the same over the next 2 or 3 years. which I'll move to hypofractionation and Varian. How do you expect the landscape to be for like actual linacs in 10 years' time? Do you sell less of that but a lot more software, which seems to be the way things are shifting anyway? And what does that mean for Varian?

So hypofractionation is one aspect. So basically, it's the reduction of the number of treatment cycles that's needed in order to complete a complete care cycle of a patient in radiation therapy. The average number in the U.S., for instance, stands right now at 14 roughly. I personally believe that a decent prostate cancer treatment today should be done in 5 fraction so that driven by imaging and adaptive radiation therapy. We're seeing this trend going down from the average number. You're implying that then there is potentially less radiation therapy systems or linacs potentially needed.

We see a different trend, and the trend is being driven by the fact that more adoption of radiation therapy is happening, working very closely with also the societies here with [ IAEA ] to drive into the low middle-income countries. So as I said in my presentation, we are convinced that the demand for radiation therapy systems will actually go up with rising cancer cases. And then it's also the new indications. So the first osteoarthritis treating centers are popping up now in the United States. It's strong in Germany, for instance, already. So the new indications will also contradict that hypofractionation trend, which we actually support because it's a good thing for the patient.

Maybe just a quick follow-up on it. It was more that within radiotherapy, it's been clear for a long time that you can sell software at quite high prices if it adds value. It might be a little bit harder in imaging the model isn't quite the same. So I was just thinking if we go further, is that -- how do you change the business or...

Indeed, our -- we have a stand-alone digital oncology business here, which is a sizable business, a highly profitable business as well. And we're expanding that one as well. The advantage that we're having, we have a strong installed base, I guess I mentioned or at least I showed the number on the slide with 5,000-plus installed systems and more than 200,000 software users each day operating those systems. And then we can expand from there. So we can scale the innovations there. So we're actually expecting that part of the business being accretive to the growth.

I think there was actually somebody in the background. We take that chance. That would be the last question for this round.

It's Andrew Hemming from Independent Mines. I was just wondering, as a way of reducing radiation exposure, do you see the potential for MR to be used for minimally invasive procedures?

Yes, absolutely. And at this year's RSNA, just recently as one of the interventional conferences, we basically introduced a partnership with Cook Medical and interventional MR. And we are just launching the MAGNETOM Free with large bore, 100 centimeter, which because of its low it is very suitable for do as well minimal invasive procedures in there.

That will be a step-by-step development because community needs to kind of get close to it and understand how to do that safely, not in terms of radiation safety, but using a different device. And we will start now with prostate and well, certainly then move beyond. So yes, we absolutely see a big potential of MR in interventional therapy. And maybe just in the light of my colleague here on the, the same is true for radiation therapy planning. MR will play a bigger role there in the future.

And if I can add a 10-second commercial break here. Our IntelliBlate system, the microwave ablation system is currently under CT guidance. And at the same conference when we announced our partnership with Cook for the biopsy side of things for the diagnostic part, we also announced that we will make our Intelliiblate device compatible to the MR system and was very well taken by the community, the interventional oncology community because that's the next step in interventional oncology treatment using MR as well.

Great. Thank you. So thanks for all the speakers.

Thank you so much.

We move to our last Q&A session of the day, wrapping up with Bernhard and Jochen on stage again. So please join me.

So Marc signals that he expects a wrap-up from and so this is, I think, what you have heard or what I hope you have heard, yes. So we are a clear market leader, driven by innovation leadership. I hope you saw the strong importance of health care AI and you enjoyed Dorin's talk to see also how deeply it is integrated and what kind of a scale we have developed there. You saw the thought process about managing the NCD and how this NCDs and how this is driving our growth. You saw in all of the presentations, the importance of bringing customer relationships to a new level where there's always now a consulting or more and more a consultative selling or selling consulting piece in it.

But in the end, it triggers more stickiness and more relevance of us. You saw from a financial point of view, our midterm growth targets of 6% to 9% in the synergistic core, double-digit earnings growth and robust free cash flows for the group in total. And we talked about the new strategy and new own strategy, own setup, which we give for Diagnostics.

Exactly. And I would open directly with Graham. So just get a microphone. I know your question already. Sounds good.

My question has been answered. It was just on the margin. So I think you said something like 40 basis points for Imaging earlier and the tariff might be closer to like 40 to 50 if you unwind it over 3 years. So just to understand the relationship between those 2.

Yes. Very straightforward. Thanks for asking the question. Again, by the way, we were not the only one who asked me that question when I walked out there. When we talked about margin expansion from scale, I talked when I said 30 to 40 basis points, I said, I meant underlying margin expansion. So because it's a 4-year horizon.

So we have, according to our assumptions, 2 years where there is no tailwind from tariffs, the outer years, theoretically because we have mitigated them beforehand. That's the plan. And you have 2 years where you have tailwind from tariff mitigation. That means the 40 -- if you say the 40 is the average over the period -- over the 4 years, and you have 2 years where the 40 is not 40, but higher because you have tailwind from tariffs.

Very basic part of it. So it could be like you're saying the average is 40 in total.

Underlying 40. underlying -- hope try to understand me. Underlying -- underlying -- and then on top in 2 years, tariff mitigation.

That's clear. Yes Oli.

One question regarding pricing because we heard a lot of innovation, which drove prices. You also mentioned pretty early the 100 basis points you want to achieve in price increases. So just to decompose this figure. On one hand, pricing is used to actively improve margins, for sure, from an underlying perspective. But with 100 basis points regarding tariffs, is it like you want to apply it more on a regional perspective, say, okay, the U.S. introduced the tariffs, so it's more about price increases on top on your U.S. products? Or is it kind of mixed bag?

When we talk about pricing, I think it's important that we differentiate. first of all, and I said that hopefully, clearly enough, we have anyway premium pricing. Innovation brings us premium pricing. That means our an example out of imaging, our high-end CTs have a better price than high-end CTs from our competitors. Always, that is -- this is pricing on the one hand.

And now the question is, how is pricing, our pricing developing over time? That's the next aspect, -- it's a different aspect. And here, I said, we expect that the price development over the next 3 years will be a bit better than we normally think or normally plan for the percentage point I mentioned, which would cater for half of the headwind we have from tariffs. And we will apply this not by just -- by the way, there is no price list out there for a pound CT. This is not -- it is more an internal discussion with our sales force, what prices they can -- or what prices they should try to get into the field for certain products with certain configurations and so on and so on. Therefore, this is not that you can really compare this so easily.

So -- and what I meant is we have, first of all, premium pricing due to innovation, and you hear that all the time when people talking about innovation leadership, premium pricing per se, which is, by the way, also the reason why we have this huge margin data to this -- one of the reasons why we have huge margin data to the second best in class, by the way, one topic of it, not only the scale, but also the pricing. And now the delta of pricing or the development, the dynamic of pricing is a second aspect, again. And here, our plan is over the next 3 years to generate a percentage point better pricing to cater for the tariff impact or for half of the tariff impact.

That's a percentage point in 3 years, right?

Over 3 years.

0.3 per annum. Just to make that clear again. Yes. Julien.

I think it's for Jochen or Bernhard actually. You talked about disciplined M&A, so which will obviously remain the norm. We had lots of presentations focusing on partnerships and so on across advanced therapies. But just curious whether in 2 fields, so especially in advanced therapies, where there's an appetite on your side for consumables or devices or starting to move into that category or not at all? And same question on molecular imaging. We've talked a lot about the drugs, the tracers and so on. I know it's a different job, but are you in any way thinking about becoming an IP holder in that space?

So I think very important question. And I will give you an answer that both topics are not high on our list. And the reason -- I mean -- and I want to -- so that's the headline, yes. So I want to quantify it. I mean, in the end, on the, call it, consumables on the devices side, I mean, there are companies which are definitely giants, and they know their topic. I'm talking about Medtronic, Boston Scientific, Stryker, Edwards. And an acquisition can only make us a mosquito in that field. So I mean, you know what possibilities there would have been, like Shockwave or what was the other Inari and so on and so on, yes.

So -- and this was -- would destroy to a large extent also our ability to partner because we are then seen as a competitor. So -- and what we also are very mindful of is that the sales model, the go-to-market in this industry is very different. When you look at the feet on the street or the people in the interventional lab, the device companies typically have, it is a category in themselves. I mean they are almost part of performing the procedure. And that whole topic only makes sense when you have a big basket of products. So from that point of view, the clear way forward, is partnering here, sometimes in being open, whatever -- and sometimes when it comes to optimizing a procedure in a way that it's really optimized hand-in-hand in a more exclusive arrangements, but that depends very much on the disease.

I think the only small question mark is where I wouldn't be too less religious is in the field of interventional oncology, where there is not necessarily always a giant who is like in the cardiac space or so or in the field of interventional radiology, where it can make sense and it's a different topic, but this is not a large scale. This is -- this would be more in the tuck-in range.

On the -- on the IP side, when it comes to radiopharmaceuticals, it's a little bit of a similar answer because on the one hand, we also here, we don't want to necessarily become competitors of our customers because basically, we have 2 customers here. I mean the people performing the procedure, but on the other hand, also the IP holders. And then I mean, we want to be focused in what we are doing. And I don't see us as driving a pharma-type discovery pipeline. So -- and I don't really know how that fits to the skills and how that is part of a synergetic core, if you wish.

Veronika, do you want to take the chance?

Excellent. Two questions for me, if that's okay. Jochen, I'm sorry, we're going to go back to margins. The 100 basis points for the precision therapy business, does that include the margin, the tariff reversal? Or does the tariff reversal come on top of the 100 basis points per annum?

First of all, the tariff topic is a bit less pronounced in that field because AT has a significant exposure to it, but it is the smaller piece. So it's anyway a bit less than it is in imaging per se. And secondly, let's go for the 100 basis points first, but I think it's prudent, and we said average. I would also say we should have certain tailwind in the beginning, but let's stick to the 100 basis for now.

And then my second question is for you, Bernd. Ultrasound, I know we talked about the strategic value of this business back a long time ago when you came to market, obviously, having moved it from one part of the business to another, it's quite easy to work out that you have EUR 600 million of revenues that is effectively making no money today. Just curious how you think strategically how this fits into the business. I know you've touched upon some of the pieces that you think are attractive, but sort of how you think about that? And then maybe longer term, what are the ambitions from your side and maybe also, Jochen, from your side from a financial perspective, whether we can see some better return there?

So ultrasound is a bit of a tale of 2 stories, if you wish, because the aspect is that we have a hidden and truly mean it hidden gem in this procedural ultrasound piece, which is where we are a clear market leader. I think it's in the -- probably 2/3 or more of all ultrasound catheters are from us. And this is not an easy business by because I mean this is not only about technology, it's also about manufacturing capabilities.

It's about bringing scale, driving down costs of these consumables where we have strong partnerships with Biocon, Webster and J&J and now also with Boston Scientific. This is super strategic because it fits exactly in what we have been talking about here. And we talked about -- we learned the word LAAC today. When you talk to Mike Mahoney, talking certainly speaks a lot about it. So -- and the whole topic of EP and what role will this technology play when it comes to PFA and so on and so on. So this is a super important topic fits to -- in the other part of ultrasound, we are focusing on some segments only, meaning especially the GI segment, this is general imaging and a bit on cardio or echocardiography, cardiology.

We are not in the OB/GYN space. We are not in the point-of-care space. And this is not necessarily a topic which -- on the one hand, which is not really moving the needle. But it's also -- and it's not an area of the business in which we invest heavily because we say we want to be the player because this is also -- the synergy potential is here smaller. This is not what wins you a value partnership. This is -- happens at very different price points.

And maybe I start with a strange comment. So we make ultrasound double visible relative to beforehand because it is about 10% of precision therapy and it was about 5% of imaging, let's just say. And that means we have a clear plan also to focus this business on where it is profitable. And that is what Bernd described here, the first tail he described.

And I think we are clearly on that path. I think we are also very happy that we could convince or that Boston Scientific is convinced that 4D [indiscernible] might be a very attractive option for [indiscernible], which would then create significant pull-through because the 2D [indiscernible] business is more or less an OEM business. The J&J pulls our stuff into their procedures. And then it's a very nice business for us and for them and so on and so on. And that's how it would work.

And we need to keep -- to make this viable to keep ultrasound, the classical ultrasound box capabilities in-house to make sure that this works. But -- and then we might look into what is there any synergistic stuff left for something else, but we will trim that down towards procedural ultrasound.

So you'd expect profitability to improve over time?

Yes.

Great. I think that's a nice last statement. Improved profitability is always good to end on. So thank you for spending such a lot of time of your life today with us. I hope you found it a useful time spent. And hopefully, we also can ultimately see it as a good investment into the understanding of our strategy and our plan going forward and that we will see it in the share price soon.

Anyway, that said, probably we'll see each other in the next few days or in the next 1.5, 2 weeks at the latest at different events and conferences. RSNA is coming up as well. I think there's several brokers coming there with groups of investors that you haven't already signed up, always worth a visit. to see some of the products that we talked about today. So that's, I think, wraps it up. Thank you for coming. Thank you.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our annual press conference for fiscal 2025. Thank you for joining us here in Erlangen and via webcast.

We would like to remind you that this press conference is being recorded. And before we begin, I would also like to draw your attention to the safe harbor statements. This press conference may contain forward -- and hopefully, forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the company's current expectations and assumptions and are, therefore, subject to certain risks.

So, we have roughly 1 hour for our discussion. First, our CEO, Bernd Montag; and our CFO, Jochen Schmitz, will discuss the results of the past -- of the bygone quarter and the past fiscal year. They will then provide you with an update on the expectations of the company's further development in the new fiscal year. And after that, both will be available until 11:00 for questions. The slides you will be seeing can be found on the press page on the Internet, and there will also be a recording of this press call.

And with that, I'll hand over to our CEO, Bernd Montag.

Thank you very much, Matthias, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's great to have you here with us today here in our Innovation Center or virtually.

In a challenging environment, the Healthineers team has successfully completed another fiscal year-end. I would like to express my sincere thanks to all my colleagues for this achievement. The very good equipment book-to-bill ratio of 1.14 in fiscal year 2025 underscores the high global demand for our products and solutions and also our strong market position.

With the comparable revenue growth of 5.9%, we're at the upper end of the target range we set ourselves a year ago. Our business grew in all regions, except China.

We are also very satisfied with the performance of the adjusted basic earnings per share. Here, we are clearly in the upper half of the forecast range. If we disregard the impact of trade tariffs amounting to EUR 0.12 per share. And if we would not take that into account, we would have even exceeded our original outlook from a year ago.

The development of free cash flow is also remarkable. We could reduce our debit (sic) [ debt ] ratio to the 2.8x., our EBITDA over the course of the year. And based on the good results in fiscal 2025, we are raising our dividend proposal by EUR 0.05 to EUR 1 per share.

And now I would like to take a look at the performance of the four segments in the past fiscal year. Our three synergistic segments: Imaging, Varian, and Advanced Therapies increased their revenue, including -- excluding tariffs by a total of almost 8%. This was driven by the excellent growth momentum of Imaging, which also further improved its margin through economies of scale.

Varian once again demonstrates how important and correct the combination of the Healthineers classic team was 5 years ago. Since our merger, Varian has been growing at least in the high single digits year-after-year. In terms of margin, Varian was at the upper end of the original segment assumption in fiscal year 2025, excluding tariffs.

Advanced Therapies contributed solid growth and maintained its margin at last year's level.

And in Diagnostics, we achieved a further leap in profitability through the conscientious and successful implementation of the transformation program, despite the challenges of the Chinese market.

And now, Jochen, I'd like to turn over to you for a look at the figures for the fourth quarter.

Thank you, Bernd. I would also like to warmly welcome you in Erlangen. The positive order intake throughout the year continued in the fourth quarter. The equipment book-to-bill ratio at Imaging, Varian and Advanced Therapies was once again well above 1. This shows the growth trajectory the segments are on.

In China, the equipment book-to-bill ratio was again just above 1, nominal sales in China in the fourth quarter were around EUR 620 million as in previous years. Our figures, therefore, do not yet indicate a market recovery in China. And I will explain towards the end of my speech, how we took China into account in our outlook too.

Thanks to solid growth. Sales growth in the final quarter, we achieved growth at the upper end of our forecast range as planned. Sales development in this fiscal year was much more evenly distributed across the quarters than in previous years. In 2024, we recorded growth of 4.3% in the first 9 months of the fiscal year and ended the year in the fourth quarter with a strong sales increase of 5.6%, excluding antigen that had been a topic the year before.

This time, our company had already grown by 6.8% in the first 9 months. And in the fourth quarter, we achieved a growth of solid 3.7%. We had already communicated that, in our Q3 communication, the year-on-year margin development was mainly impacted by higher tariffs. Without these tariffs, the margin in the fourth quarter would have been more than 100 bps higher, reflecting the strong expansion of operating margins in the segments.

Including tariffs, earnings per share were at the same level as in the previous year quarter. And excluding tariffs, earnings per share would have been around EUR 0.74. This would correspond to a growth of 10% compared to the previous year.

Now, let's take a look at the segments. For Imaging, our PETNET business and the photon-counting CTs were once again the key growth drivers. Revenue rose by 6.5% compared to a strong previous year quarter.

Imaging's adjusted EBIT margin was reduced by a total of around 3.50 basis points due to tariffs and unforeseeable business mix and negative special effects. The special items related to a number of minor aspects such as the bringing forward of a government grant from the fourth to the third quarter or the increase in the provision for necessary service inspections in the installed base.

Now, let me move on to the two segments that focus on therapies, namely Varian and Advanced Therapies. Since fiscal year 2023, Varian has consistently recorded double-digit revenue growth in the fourth quarter compared to a very, very strong basis. Varian grew only by 1.4% this time. The exceptionally high volume in previous years has thus reflected in the somewhat lower growth rate in the fourth quarter of this year. In absolute terms, Varian's revenue development was very stable across the quarters. Margins developed very well at Varian. Excluding tariffs, Varian achieved a strong margin of around 21.5%, which is also attributable to a favorable business mix.

Advanced Therapies achieved solid growth of 3.8%. And excluding tariffs, a solid margin of around 19.5%. This means that Advanced Therapies is operating at the strong level of the same quarter last year.

Diagnostics recorded flat sales growth year-on-year due to the volume-based public procurement in China. We had already pointed out that volume-based procurement would primarily affect the second half of the fiscal year and continue into the new fiscal year. This will continue until the effects are included as a new baseline in the respective comparative figures from the previous year. And this expectation has happened, but we're not through with it.

Nevertheless, Diagnostics remains on track for margin improvement. However, this was also supported by a weaker previous year quarter. Without the negative effects from earlier periods, the Diagnostics margin in the previous year quarter would have been around 7%. In contrast, the year-on-year margin increase was attributable to operational improvements, tariffs, cost diagnostics, around 100 bps.

Let's change perspective and once again, look at Healthineers, in general. You will see that we increased revenue, excluding translation effects for the third year in a row quarter-to-quarter and also compared with the previous year. This impressively underscores our growth performance. Excluding tariffs, this success story also applies to margin expansion year-on-year, and sequentially we increased our margin for the third consecutive year. This shows that we are consistently converting our strong sales growth into operative profit growth.

This brings me to the outlook for fiscal year 2026. We expect our growth trajectory to continue this year. For the fiscal year 2026, we anticipate a comparable sales growth of 5% to 6%. As in the previous year, we have decided to assess the growth opportunities in China cautiously. With regard to China, we have repeatedly said over the past year that we need sustainable recovery in order to become more optimistic, and we do not see this happening yet. We have, therefore, decided to assume flat sales development in China for fiscal year 2026 as well.

We also expect our positive operating earnings performance to continue this year. At the same time, however, we expect profit growth in fiscal year 2026 to be leveled by the current macroeconomic challenges. The keywords here are a strong euro and tariffs.

Taking these macroeconomic headwinds into account, we expect earnings per share to be between EUR 2.20 and EUR 2.40. I will break down the macroeconomic factors and operational improvements in more detail in a moment. But first, let's take a look at the key assumptions for the segments and the other reconciliation items for adjusted earnings before taxes.

We expect Imaging, Varian, and Advanced Therapies to continue on their growth trajectory. For Diagnostics, we expect flat sales growth due to the impact of volume-based public procurement in China.

In terms of margins, the headwinds from currency effects and tariffs are also reflected in the assumptions for the segments. However, if we exclude these two negative effects, we see a margin increase in every segment.

For Imaging, we expect margins to decline slightly due to currency effects and the impact of tariffs. These effects are even more pronounced in Advance Therapies with our production facilities in the dollar zone, this segment is more dependent on exchange rates and tariffs.

For Varian and Diagnostics, we expect fewer headwinds from tariffs and no significant headwinds from currency due to their value creation in the U.S.

For Varian, we expect the underlying margin expansion to offset the headwinds from tariffs, and this will result in a largely flat margin development compared or stable margin development compared to the previous year.

For Diagnostics, we expect the underlying margin expansion to more than offset the impact of tariffs. This results in a slight margin expansion in our assumption. Assuming the midpoints of the ranges for financial result and taxes, we expect a negative year-on-year development, slightly negative development in the financial results. This headwind is mainly due to the refinancing at higher interest rates and a slight normalization of the tax rate. In addition, we do not expect any onetime gains from what we call fair value accounting of smaller venture investments this time.

To bring all these aspects together at the group level, the next slide illustrates the factors that will influence earnings per share in financial year 2026.

In terms of currency effects, we expect headwinds of around EUR 0.15 year-on-year. This is primarily due to the stronger euro against the U.S. dollar and other relevant currencies. In addition to the U.S. dollar, many other currencies are currently weaker against the strong euro leading to significant negative currency effects. We also expect tariffs to have a negative effect of around EUR 0.15 in fiscal year 2026. Overall, we anticipate tariffs to have a negative impact of around EUR 400 million on our earnings in fiscal year 2026. In 2025, this figure was at roughly EUR 200 million.

The past fiscal year included initial compensatory measures such as early delivery and even lower customs rates prior to the 15% deal between the U.S. and the EU. Their effect has now almost expired, however.

For fiscal year 2026, risk mitigation measures such as sourcing, optimization and selected pricing measures have been taken into account. This does not include future reductions through better pricing or the possible relocation of value creation.

And as already mentioned, the financial result does not include the profit from fair value accounting, which was reflected in the financial result for fiscal year 2025. This corresponds to a headwind of around EUR 0.03. Excluding these three negative effects from currency, tariffs and financial results, we expect EPS growth of around 10% from operational improvements in the segments.

We expect fiscal year 2026 to be of the year with the most noticeable effects from tariffs. Assuming that the current tariff environment persists, we expect the net impact of tariffs to decrease year-on-year as a result of our countermeasures. We also expect that the negative effects of tariffs will be fully offset in the medium term.

We have three key levers at our disposal to achieve this. First, market-appropriate pricing. We have already pointed out on several occasions that in our view, tariffs will make healthcare more expensive for everyone. Second, consistent cost control. And if that doesn't suffice, thirdly, a shift in value creation.

With our global production setup and our strong presence in the U.S. and other countries, we have every opportunity to shift parts of our value creation if needed. We are examining the options available to us. However, we will take action only once there is sufficient planning certainty and it makes economic sense.

Before I conclude, I would like to share a few current assessments on the ongoing first quarter with you. We expect sales growth in the first quarter to be below our growth forecast of 5% to 6%. We expect growth at Imaging and Varian in the first quarter will be roughly in line with our assumptions for fiscal year 2026, which would mean mid-single-digit percentage growth for Imaging and high single-digit percentage growth for Varian.

For Diagnostics, we expect growth to decline slightly due to volume-based public procurement in China. And we also expect for Advanced Therapies, slightly lower growth at the start of the new fiscal year. Due to current tariffs and exchange rates, margins in the first quarter are expected to be below the same quarter last year.

And with that, back to you, Bernd.

Thank you, Jochen. This fourth quarter marks both the end of the fiscal year and the conclusion of our new ambition strategy phase. We presented new ambition at our last Capital Markets Day in November 2021 following the closing of the transformative combination with Varian. Despite significantly more difficult environment with unexpected macroeconomic challenges, such as, the prolonged duration of the pandemic, the inflation shock, the global supply chain crisis, the impact of anticorruption measures in China, geopolitical tensions, and last but not least, tariffs, we have achieved revenue growth of around 6% and double-digit EPS growth every year since 2022.

And maybe more importantly, when we look into the future, first, on the product side, we have expanded our innovation lead with groundbreaking technologies such as photon-counting CT, our low helium platform for magnetic resonance imaging, and Varian innovations such as HyperSight, RapidArc and perfect kinetics.

Second, from our customers' perspective, we have increased our clinical relevance by combining imaging and therapy under one roof in the detection and treatment of cancer, and continuing our pioneering work in the field of theranostics. At the same time, we are driving forward the further development of vascular interventions through new partnerships with device and robotics companies. And we have a leading position in the rapidly growing field of diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.

Thirdly, we have significantly increased our relevance for decision makers among healthcare providers. This is demonstrated by our more than 200 value partnerships. Each of these partnerships proves the unique strength of this new type of collaboration. And at the same time, makes us more resilient by increasing our recurring revenues.

Fourth, we have further strengthened our leadership position in the field of artificial intelligence. We now offer more than 110 approved AI applications and technologies, including Deep Resolve, which dramatically speeds up MR examinations. Since Deep Resolve was introduced in 2022, our customers have used the technology in more than 300 million MR scans. And last but not least, I would like to highlight the remarkable turnaround achieved by our diagnostics team from negative margins in a year marked by high inflation and supply chain disruptions, the DX team has brought the business to a high single-digit margin level. And of course, this is not the end of the story.

On November 17, we will herald our next strategic phase at Capital Markets Day. In addition to our corporate strategy for the coming years, we will also provide information on our financial framework and medium-term financial outlook. All business units will present their growth strategy, innovation road map, and plans for further increasing profitability in London. As an additional highlight, we will provide an insight into the engine room of our AI development.

I would be delighted, if you accepted our invitation and joined us live via webcast for our Capital Markets Day.

And with that, back to you, Matthias.

Thank you very much, Bernd and Jochen. We will now begin the questions-and-answer session. First, I would like to ask those of you who are here with us in Erlangen to ask their questions. And after that, we will proceed into the telephone conference.

Höpner, Handelsblatt. I would like to find out what do you expect from the Siemens decision about majority share in the next week or majority participation?

Well, I'll try to take that easily. I expect and hope that there won't be any press conferences where such questions will have to be asked or in other words, it would be very helpful for both companies. If at Siemens Healthineers, we would talk about Siemens Healthineers, a fantastic company that is in the upper half of the docs, one of the few German global leaders with a great forward potential and that we don't know about who's potentially reducing shares. And Siemens AG should also talk about itself. And in analyst talks and in press conferences, we don't have to talk about the Siemens share in us. That would be in the interest of both companies, I think.

You make life difficult for me. So, I think the most important thing is clarity. But I think it's also a logical point that we're here today now, and I can talk about Jochen Schmitz and myself today but also for many others that we started with the IPO in 2018, and we established an independent company, one that is fully aligned to our customers' worlds. If someone is active in healthcare, that's a decision for lifetime. Once you become a medical doctor, you are a physician. And if you work at Healthineers, you dedicate your life to healthcare, and that's something customers like and value and something that we focus on in the companies.

And therefore, I think that also the outside perception of such a company should be the one-off being independent. And I have no reason whatsoever to say that we are in any way hindered by Siemens AG or that we can't do anything that we would want to do. It's just a question of perception, whether you see this or see us as an independent leading large corporation and representative company for German industry or whether you see some subsidiary or some daughter of Siemens that deals with medical technology.

Next question, Mr. [indiscernible]

Mr. Montag, I have a question. If Siemens should completely leave Siemens Healthineers, then would the new strategy also see a change of name as an option that you only called Healthineers, for example?

And the second question is about the Chinese market. Can you describe in more detail what the competitive situation there is like? And what is volume-based central procurement, what effects it has? And then there is also a Chinese company that has indirect routes in Siemens Healthineers that's very active in the Chinese market.

Well, it's two very different questions. The question about the brand is not an easy question. It's difficult to answer it, and I don't want to give rise for speculation. Nevertheless, I want to provide an answer.

There's three aspects in this. There is -- on the one hand, the aspect, and I think that's the most important one that we are paying into the Siemens brand ourselves. And with that, I mean when it's about our regular customers. The other day, I attended an event 50 years on computed tomography at this Siemens. We've been offering for -- we are -- or Siemens has started working in this field for the -- or 50 years ago. And these devices are just fantastic devices, and not because people were thinking that this company that also builds power plants or smartphones or industrial automation, when they do something like this, then their healthcare products are also good. But we also worked in this -- within this brand, and we'll continue doing so.

So, we're not only a recipient profiting from this brand and the brand, interest in the brand, but that we are also contributing to it and make a net positive contribution, so to speak. And then, there are some geographies where the name Siemens is helpful as such and per se.

And here, I'm talking about countries in the process of developing and in the Asian market where Siemens is just the top of German industry. And then, there's a point in here like the comparison you made to Infineon, in the very long, long, long term, a company that is completely a healthcare focused. Which means, in 30 years' time with -- to have this relationship to Siemens as a brand name as well, whether this will still make sense. And we have to consider this and it's not a no-brainer.

The second question about China. The situation in the market in China, the -- in the last 2 years, the Chinese market has been at a lower level at a -- historically speaking, too low level because there is some reticence towards purchasing and also changes in the way procurements are made. And -- but that's going to change sooner or later. Jochen Schmitz already said we're not betting on anything, we are waiting for evidence.

Our market position is something we well defended in China. We have a stable market share, which is good, but it's nothing fantastic or great. It would be great if we had reached what we have reached in the rest of the world, namely a continuous increased market share.

However, we're the only multinational company, as it's -- as we're called in China, that's managed to do so. At the same time, we're seeing that local competitors are gaining market share. But this is too -- or has a negative effect of other multinationals, so at the expense of the smaller multinationals, right? Does that answer your question?

So if there are further -- no further question here from the audience present here. Are there any questions from virtual participants? Doesn't look like it at present? Okay. There is one more question.

Mr. [indiscernible] from Bloomberg News.

I wanted to know, why do these tariffs, the U.S. tariffs have a rather strong effect on the earnings. I mean, EUR 400 million is quite a bit. Maybe you could explain how that is related to the footprint in the U.S.?

And then my second point is thinking forward, do you have new strategic opportunities now with the possible change in the shareholder structure. I mean, you asked us not to mention this topic anymore, but nevertheless, I have to pick it up. It would be interesting to see whether there is possible other ways for you that will open up through that.

Well, let me start with the second question, and then I go back building a bridge to the first one where maybe you can take over. So, the point about the strategic opportunities, I would like to be a bit careful, really.

Since the IPO, we're doing our own thing. We are following on our own path. We are a company that has a Supervisory Board, and there's nobody who tells us what to do, provides instructions. So, it's my role as the CEO to complain if I weren't allowed to do certain things and make certain decisions. This is not the case.

So, when we look what's -- we were able to do and how we were able to develop the business in the last couple of years with the acquisition of Varian as the biggest step or that we built up the antigen business during the pandemic. These were things that we did on our own, independently. And that most probably are seen as part of the group structure or would have been much more difficult to accomplish if we hadn't considered really part of this group. So, I don't see that there would be -- will be many new strategic opportunities because of that. So, we are much further actually than it is in the heads that see us as a subsidiary of some listed division of Siemens. This is not the case.

At the same time, we could become attractive for new investors. So, that means that it is possible for long-term investors that are interested in big tickets to invest in Siemens Healthineers, which was much more difficult in the past.

I'd just like to recall the fact that when we did the IPO, the free float amounted to EUR 4.2 billion. So, if you want to invest EUR 1 billion, you have 25% or you bought 25% of the free float. And that's something different if it's a company that has a market capitalization of EUR 50 billion, EUR 60 billion, EUR 70 billion, because then it's just a different possibility of investing. And I think in the long term, this is going to be helpful for us and leads to a positive exchange rate development and for that -- are presently suffering from certain insecurities.

Then about the tariffs for the -- in the footprint question you asked. We are a global company. We have 73,000 staff. We have 17,000 in the U.S. and 15,000 in Germany. The U.S. is the largest -- is the largest population in our corporation are U.S. citizens; and Germany with 15,000; and India with 7,500 follow suit. This global positioning helps us, but it doesn't mean that we do each and everything in every country.

In the U.S., there's Varian, Diagnostics and Imaging. There's no tariffs in the U.S. And if you export to Germany and then there's other business like computed tomography and many others, CT or Advanced Therapies that are more strongly influenced by tariffs.

And then there's a question, what happens if -- you -- if there's possibility to optimize in one position you saw. Yesterday, you saw the photon-counting center. If you try to replicate that in any larger geography, you lose efficiency and everything gets more expensive. And that is why it is a deplorable development that global companies that have to be global per se, that they are basically caught up in this trade war whirlpool.

Well, I don't want -- I can't add that much really. That's why, it's true that the entire industry is kind of standing together and they are working in the same direction and not a single one is saying, "Oh, it's cheaper for us in the U.S. market that provides more added value." Industry are standing together, and they're trying to avoid the situation that Bernd Montag just described that for structural reasons, you may be urged to make the system more expensive. Everybody tries to stay out of something like this. And then, when you look at our added value structure, you see that there is many historical aspects that play into it.

As a rule, we are producing in competency centers if you want, where R&D and manufacturing are closely connected. And they were developed over time. Mr. Röntgen had a workshop in Erlangen that would build the X-ray tube for him, and that's why Imaging takes place here. And the best super conducing magnets in Europe, where produced as in Oxford as a spinoff of the University of Oxford. That's why we continue building magnets in Oxford.

And Emil von Behring found the diagnostics plants in Marburg. And that's why plants continue -- diagnostics plants continue to be located in Marburg, because there's a lot of competency and manufacturing or production capabilities. That often has historical reasons.

There's some exceptions, structural movements towards China 20, 30 years ago to cater to these markets from structural reasons and also competencies in India. But everything else is primarily historically and also the U.S., we cater to the Western World in Molecular Imaging from the U.S. because there is the competency in Knoxville, Tennessee, you find the detective material in similar structures and complexities as in Forchheim for the CT -- CTs. And they work with the same enthusiasm and the same technological depth.

So this is not for geopolitical reasons, but we work on this wherever we have the competencies. And as Mr. Montag said, since we're not producing mass products, or sneakers or anything along those lines, but highly-developed technology. We have to really take a clear strategic glance if we wanted to relocate something. And you also explained why the tariffs EU to the U.S. are the largest headwind, because X-ray Technology and CT are mainly built, manufactured in Europe and sold to the U.S.

So, now two questions. I would like to mention two things, namely Lab Diagnostics. A year ago, we talked about it. And that Siemens Healthineers has two core centers, the Imaging and Lab Diagnostics. Would you still see it identically? And what about 12 months' time? Will there be a second course still or because recently, there's been information that possibly there is first preparations for a sale?

And then, a second question about the photon-counting computed tomograph. Can you explain about the further rollout? And when will it reach a significant share -- revenue share is, so 10% like with Imaging or whatever you consider significant?

In Lab Diagnostics short history about the two core topics, sounds nicer in English with the two cores that it does in German. So there's often a question, is this a core business?

And the question we cling to this, we're sticking to it, which is a strange question per se, because every business always has to be -- has to stand the test just like combustion engines. So, at a certain point, we're not core business anymore, even though at VW 10 years ago, they would have said so. So, this wording came up that we said, okay, we have two core topics and there is one Siemens health in your core, which is a clearly bigger one, namely Varian, Imaging and Advanced Therapies that pay into each other very strongly. And then there's another business, Diagnostics business, that has very little synergies with the other three. And this is a message that we've always stressed.

We never said that in Diagnostics, we would rock the world. Because it's -- if connected to Imaging or that Imaging or Varian would be better, because we also do laboratory diagnostics. This is the situation that Diagnostics business is part of a larger company without being synergetic.

With the rest, is something you see in the entire diagnostics industry is the same with Bosch where it's combined with pharmaceuticals, with Apple, where it's combined to pacemakers or with Danaher, where it's combined with life science tools, even with Hologic, this is true where it is combined with mammography.

So, it means for these companies, just like for us, the question is, does it make sense to keep it this portfolio together, even though there are no synergies. And in Healthineers, this question is asked a bit more noisier because Diagnostics has gone through a difficult phase and because there is a combination of a market-leading business and another business that's undergoing a transformation period. That's why I understand your question.

I think it's very good that the Diagnostics business has been brought forward and that the speculation that was voiced 3 months ago. And by the way, 3 years ago, that also happened, that we transformed the business and continue to transform it. So that, you can see this is the core for something where that can be transformed to become even more.

And then, you can see whether this takes place within Siemens Healthineers or whether it's better for that business to develop within the partnership. But we're not at that point as yet. So, the photon-counting CTs, that when it comes to the revenue expectations, to quantify it. Imaging is a EUR 12 billion business and computed tomography of it takes up 25%. So, it's a EUR 3 billion business. And in this EUR 3 billion business, there's roughly 40% service. So, that's the equipment business of the computed tomography, which amounts to EUR 1.8 billion.

And I assume that the turnover is 20%, 30% of photon-counting. Well, not that much probably, but order intake at least. And I think, it's important to see that also in terms of profitability, it contributes massively. I don't want to be too extensive in my answer, but it's important to understand this between CT, between the high end and the entry level, so the upper end and the entry level, there's a factor 10 in customer price. So, it's something like EUR 200,000 compared to EUR 2 million.

At the same time, the gross profit for the top -- in the top class is twice as high as in the entry class -- at entry level. So selling photon-counting CT generates 20x as much profit as if we sold an entry-level CT.

So, here, we not only have to look at the volumes. And then when it comes to the forecast and view of the future, we have clear visibility. So, the cost points of the existing price points that the classical CT products with photon-counting CTs can be made in the course of the next couple of years. So, what a customer is willing to pay for middle class or entry-level CT in the long term, that is -- so in these devices, this new technology can be integrated, and we will employ economies of scale that is reducing costs here for these devices. And our target is that by 2040, all CTs will be photon-counting CTs and that by then 1 billion people will profit from this -- will have profited from this technology.

Next question, Mr. [indiscernible] and after that one more. My colleague already asked one question that I wanted to ask, but I still have two more questions.

First one on stock price. It's not just that it went down today by 8%. I don't know if you expected that. Maybe you have an explanation for it. But we also talked about the fact that in the past couple of years, it moved sideways after the high in your last strategy. Maybe you can analyze that a little bit? And how can you get out of this box, so to speak, again?

And second question on the U.S. In September, there was an examination on imports of medical equipment. And that also was showed in the stock market or was reflected. So, actively engaged with policymakers was said back then. What about you? Did somebody approach you? Do you talk to the U.S. government about such developments? Or what -- how does that work?

I will start with the last part. Section 232 investigation is what you were talking about. We are in a dialogue in exchange individually and also in the context of the Industrial Association. And we're actually quite optimistic. But it's also one of the points that is important in order to take potential decisions when it's about a shift of value creation.

And I would like to reiterate what Jochen Schmitz already explained very well from my point of view. It's an illusion to think you have supply chains that can completely be nationalized in our sector. It's almost like the idea that every country in the world will be able to produce vaccinations for pandemic emergencies. That's wishful thinking. That's not any of our business. And that's why I think it's extremely important to make policymakers understand that what we do is not PPP masks. It's high-tech which you cannot simply produce in any random country of the world and have a complete value creation chain in that country just to feel better. It would be extremely expensive. It's not possible, simply said.

Now on price development. I'm going to start and maybe you can add something. We are not satisfied with the development of our shares, short term and also not looking back over the past couple of years.

In my speech, I already tried to emphasize at the end, the topic that in the past 4 years we managed despite a lot of unexpected headwinds. We managed the 6% growth, two-digit EPS growth. That's something we achieved, nevertheless, but there is a big but, and the but is inflation, supply chain crisis, a Chinese market that is not the way it used to be or was at that time not the way it used to be, and that continues.

And at the topic of tariffs. And now maybe potentially as well an overhang through the speculations coming from Siemens. These are topics that are a burden on the share prices. And we're not on our own here. I think, if you compare us to mid-tech Europe, that index, for example, we are quite parallel, but it's not a satisfactory picture for us.

And the reaction today, I think, was a bit stronger than we expected. We'll observe how that will continue. But I think that's one of the points. We have to be able to explain how this balance between operative strength. And we clearly say in the next fiscal year, we will continue to have an EPS that is -- that will be increased in a two-digit range, but there are headwinds from tariffs and currency rates, et cetera. And I have the feeling that not every analyst and every investor has completely understood what these special effects actually are.

Maybe one more aspect that I would like to add. If you're looking at our -- the development of our share prices, since the initial public offering, we pretty much until the Capital Market Day in 2021, that's how long it took. That was the highest we had achieved until we got the evaluation or assessment standard of the European MSCI Healthcare Equipment and Service Index until we had reached that MSCI index. We were always structurally below that. And in that year, we achieved it for the first time.

And ever since that point, we were -- have always been in the range of the sector, sometimes it's a little bit higher, sometimes slightly lower, but always in that range. That means, in other words, the entire sector is under pressure. It also means that the framework conditions in which investments are moving in this area have not improved during that time. Inflationary points -- of course, also the pandemic, the corrections after the pandemic. It was China. Now it's the tariffs.

So, accordingly, it's not just something coming from us. It's also an impact coming from the industry, and you have to take that into consideration as well.

On the other hand, I agree to Bernd Montag completely, not just today, that the development of our share price is something we're not satisfied with. I think, it's clear that our ambition is, and I think I had that on one of my slides for the Supervisory Board as well, it needs to be our objective to become better than this index. That's our objective for sure. And I think we have all the ingredients, all the means that we need. And to this end, I think it's a clear decision -- that a clear decision from Siemens will be helpful. That's my EUR 0.02 on the topic.

Mr. Rudolph [indiscernible] newspaper, I think you are the next one.

Yes. My name is Rudolph, like you said. Mr. Schmitz, a clear decision could mean an end consolidation. And I would be interested what this would mean for the refinancing. Are you already in touch with rating agencies? What could be an independent rating of Healthineers? Are you talking about this?

If Siemens is deconsolidated, Siemens has the right. I don't even know how to say that in German to have the term, loans, to have the financing to terminate it with across a certain period of time, which would make us pay back and then we have to refinance the whole thing. So, once a week, I would say I am receiving from all banks, you know I get a letter, a comfort letter, telling us that they would like to support us no matter what kind of financing we would be looking at. So, we're getting a lot of support. I think, it's a proof that they are trusting us, that they are trusting in the stability of this company as an independent company as well. That's the first point.

And secondly, of course, we're in touch with rating agencies. We talk to them. We have discussions with them. We must do this. We must prepare. We don't know what the Siemens decision will be at the end of the day. So, we are in touch with these agencies. I think that's no news to any of you. I think it's on the first slide that we ever had publicly shown before the IPO. I think that the phrase was a little bit tricky, but we called it a solid investment-grade rating type of financial structure. That's what we want. And all discussions I'm having are confirming this initial plan that we put on that slide. And we are low A and high B, if you like.

One last question here in the first row, Mr. [indiscernible] Sorry.

Yes, one more question on the shares. What is the midterm dividend strategy. In the past 5 years, we were looking at 3.5% on average. Now you are suggesting 5% on top. And what do you think will the coming years look like because that will also make or that also has to do with the attractiveness of the share, and if you want to make it attractive again?

Well, that's one of the topics One of the big topics in the financial world influenced the impact on the dividend policy on the attractiveness of a share. I'm sure you will find studies telling you all different kinds of things, giving you all kinds of answers.

Our dividend strategy has been 50% to 60% of the annual net income that we are giving out. That's our policy, our decision. And looking back on the time, we started with EUR 0.70. We are now adding -- or we are now suggesting EUR 1.

I think your calculation with 3.5% growth is hopefully correct, but I can't check it now. Because we are actually adhering to what's coming from politics or I think, looking back, that's a stable/progressive dividend policy. And I don't see any reason to deviate from this policy that we've been using so far, which has been working and has been strong.

Okay, just on time. Thank you, Jochen. Thank you, Bernd. I think we've talked for long enough this morning. Thank you very much for this very vivid round of questions. And one more time, I would like to say you can find everything on the press side of our website. If you have any additional questions, you can get in touch with us at any time.

And with that, we would like to close today's press conference. The 17th of November, our Capital Market Day in London, you can dial in at 11 a.m. European time, 10:00 London local time, we would be really happy to welcome you there or to see you again in quarter 1 in February.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Siemens Healthineers' Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to the safe harbor statement on Page 2 of the Siemens Healthineers presentation. This conference call may include forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the company's current expectations and certain assumptions and are, therefore, subject to certain risks and uncertainties.

At this time, I would like to turn the call over to your host today, Mr. Marc Koebernick, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome to our fourth quarter 2026 earnings -- '25 earnings call. It's great that you are tuning in again today. At 7:00 a.m., we published our Q4 results, and the materials for today's results are all available on the IR section of the Siemens Healthineers website.

It is common practice that our CEO, Bernd Montag; and our CFO, Jochen Schmitz, will be presenting to you what you need to know about our Q4 of fiscal '25 and about the outlook 2026. After their presentation, we will have a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Additionally, please note that a full transcript and recording of today's call will be made available on our Investor Relations website. Again, thank you for being here. And now I'll turn it over to our CEO, Bernd Montag.

Thank you, Marc. Dear analysts and investors, welcome to our year-end earnings call. Many thanks for joining. We closed fiscal year '25 successfully with a solid quarter and achieved our guidance. Growth came in at the upper end of our outlook range, and we grew in all regions, except China. This broad-based growth was fueled by healthy global demand and our leading position in the market reflected in the book-to-bill of 1.14 for the fiscal year '25. We are very satisfied with the performance in terms of adjusted EPS, which is well within the upper half of the outlook range. Excluding tariffs, adjusted EPS would even be above the upper end of our initial outlook provided back in November '24. I'm also very happy about the development of our free cash flow throughout the year, improving our leverage to 2.8x EBITDA. So we have finished this year strongly, as indicated early on, all resulting in a proposed dividend increase to EUR 1.

Let me briefly also run through the highlights of our segments. Imaging, Varian and Advanced Therapies taken altogether increased revenue by almost 8%, driven by excellent performance in Imaging with continued margin expansion from scale, excluding tariffs.

I'm very proud to see that Varian since the combination has grown every single year by at least high single-digit percentages, the margin expansion in Varian, excluding tariffs reached the upper end of our initial segment assumption of November 24.

And Advanced Therapies contributed solid growth by keeping margins stable after a step-up in margin last year. With a successful and diligent implementation of our transformation program in Diagnostics, we have achieved another step change in profitability despite market challenges in China in fiscal year '25. And most importantly, we have prepared the business for future success.

With this, I would like to hand over to Jochen.

Yes. Thank you, Bernd. I will start with some color on the strong equipment book-to-bill of 1.12 in Q4. Book-to-bill was again clearly above 1 in Imaging, in Varian and in Advanced Therapies, which underlines the healthy growth trajectory. The businesses in all segments is well on track.

Equipment book-to-bill in China continued to be around 1%. Revenue in China also continued at around the EUR 620 million mark in Q4 as in previous quarters. And there is still no sign in our numbers of a sustained market recovery in China. And this has implications also for our outlook. I will comment on China towards the end of my presentation again.

Aside from China, we saw revenue growth across the board with excellent growth in the Americas and EMEA continued to grow on high absolute levels. I'm particularly happy with the solid revenue growth for the group in Q4. At this fiscal year, we successfully rebalanced the load over the quarters, taking some burden of Q4.

In the first 9 months of fiscal year 2024, we grew by 4.3% and then had a strong finish with 6.5% ex antigen in Q4. This fiscal year, we grew by 6.8% in the first 9 months and finished the year with a solid 3.7% in Q4. On earnings, the year-over-year margin development was mainly impacted by tariffs.

Excluding tariffs, the Q4 margin expanded by more than 100 basis points, driven by the strong operational margin expansion ex tariffs in the segments. Earnings per share, including tariffs, were at the prior quarter level. Excluding tariffs, EPS would be around EUR 0.74, i.e., growing by 10% year-over-year.

And now let me run through the segment performances, starting with Imaging. In Imaging, our PETNET business and Photon Counting CT stood out as growth drivers again this quarter. Lifting Imaging revenue by 6.5% versus tough comps of 8% in the prior year quarter. Imaging's adjusted EBIT margin in Q4 phased roughly 350 basis points of headwinds in total from tariffs, unfavorable business mix and negative impact from special items. The special items were headwinds versus the excellent margin in the prior year quarter, for example, in the shift of government grants from Q4 to Q3 or a provision increase necessary for service field inspections.

And now to our segments focusing on Therapy, Varian and Advanced Therapies. Since '23, Varian has had a cascade of double-digit Q4 in revenue growth. Based on that, Varian grew 1.4% on very, very tough comps. The lumpiness from prior year quarters is reflected in this year's Q4 growth rate with very consistent revenue delivery in absolute terms over the whole fiscal year and over the quarters for fiscal year 2025.

Margin development, though, is very good at Varian. Excluding tariff impacts, Varian achieved a strong 21.5% margin, driven mainly by favorable business mix. Advanced Therapies showed solid revenue growth of 3.8% and generated a solid 19.5% margin, excluding tariffs on the strong level of the prior year quarter.

And now let's complete the segment run through with Diagnostics. Diagnostics posted flattish year-over-year revenue due to volume-based procurement in China. We have already pointed to this impacting the second half of this fiscal year and that this will carry over into the next fiscal year until the impact is fully annualized in revenues as a new baseline.

This expectation materializes as indicated. Nonetheless, the margin expansion in Diagnostics is still very well on track. The margin expansion benefited from a weaker prior year quarter. We said last year that the Q4 margin in fiscal '24, excluding negative effects related to prior year periods was around 7%. Taking this into consideration, the year-over-year margin expansion in Q4 was driven by operational improvements despite a negative effect of roughly 100 basis points from tariffs.

Now let's have a look at the revenue margin performance of the group in Q4. With Q4, we grew year-over-year revenues ex foreign exchange each quarter for the third consecutive year, a strong testament to our revenue growth performance. Excluding tariff, this track record also holds for group margin expansion. Year-over-year and sequential margin expansion for the third consecutive year. A strong proof point that operationally, we consistently turned our strong revenue growth into operational earnings growth. And this brings me to the outlook for fiscal year 2026.

We expect our growth trajectory to continue this year. In fiscal year 2026, we expect comparable revenue growth of 5% to 6%. As in the previous year, we have decided to be prudent in terms of assessing growth opportunities in China.

We have been saying throughout 2025 that we need to see a sustained recovery to become more optimistic. We have not seen this so far and have hence decided again to assume flattish revenue in China for fiscal year 2026. Beyond this, we expect our good operational earnings performance to continue.

However, in fiscal year 2026, we expect earnings growth to be negatively offset by the current macro challenges, particularly a strong euro and the tariffs, including these macro headwinds, we expect adjusted earnings per share to be between EUR 2.20 and EUR 2.40. I will break down the macro headwinds and the operational improvements in more detail later.

But first, let's have a look at what the key assumptions for the segments and the other reconciling items are. On the top line, we expect Imaging, Varian and Advanced Therapies to continue on their growth trajectories. We expect Imaging to continue its strong trajectory after 8% growth in 2025 with very decent mid-single-digit growth in 2026. We expect also Varian to continue its growth trajectory in the high single digits as well as Advanced Therapies within mid-single digits. Diagnostics, we expect to be flattish due to the annualizing of volume-based procurement in 2026.

On margins, you can obviously see the headwinds from foreign exchange and tariffs in the assumptions for the segments. However, when you exclude the headwinds from foreign exchange and tariffs, we see margin expansion in every segment. For Imaging, we assume that due to FX and tariff headwinds, margins will slightly decline. Those effects are even more pronounced in Advanced Therapies because of its higher exposure to foreign exchange and tariffs.

We assume Varian and Diagnostics to face less tariff headwinds and no material headwinds from foreign exchange due to the different value-add structure. For Varian, we assume that the underlying margin expansion compensates for the tariff headwinds, broadly resulting in a year-over-year flat margin development. And for Diagnostics, we assume that the underlying margin expansion overcompensates for tariff headwinds leading to a minor margin expansion.

Below the line, taking the guidance midpoint for financial income and tax, we assume year-over-year slight headwind in financial income net. This is mainly due to refinancing at higher rates and the lack of one-off gains from fair value accounting of smaller venture-type investments from a slightly normalized tax rate.

It feels like many moving parts. But if we take it to the group level, it is not as complex as it seems. Hence, you find on the next slide, the main moving parts for EPS development from 2025 to 2026. I will talk you through the key effects from left to right.

In foreign exchange, we assume a headwind of around EUR 0.15 year-over-year, primarily driven by the U.S. dollar depreciating versus the euro and many other currencies also depreciating against the strong euro, leading to a significant foreign exchange headwind.

For example, in Q4, the difference between reported and comparable revenue growth was around 4 percentage points with the euro being around 6% stronger than in the prior year quarter compared to the U.S. dollar. We expect the foreign exchange impact on translation to continue with even more than 4 percentage point headwinds on nominal growth rates in our fiscal Q1 and Q2, where the weaker U.S. dollar of today compares to a period of a stronger U.S. dollar in the prior year period.

And we expect a similar pattern in many other currencies compared to the euro. From annualizing tariffs in fiscal year 2026, we expect around another EUR 0.15 of year-over-year headwinds. We saw around EUR 200 million impact in fiscal year 2025 and expect around EUR 400 million in 2026.

Fiscal year 2025 includes the first mitigation measures like early shipment and lower tariff rates before the 15% deal with the EU, which have paid off by now. Fiscal year 2026 includes mitigation measures like optimized sourcing, selected pricing measures. However, it does not include further mitigation from better pricing or potential shifting of value add.

And as outlined above, there are EUR 0.03 year-over-year headwinds in financial income in 2025 from one-off gains from fair value accounting of smaller venture-type items, which cannot be expected for fiscal year '26. Excluding these 3 headwinds, we expect an underlying EPS growth of around 10% net driven by the operational improvements in the segment.

We expect fiscal year 2026 to be the year that will be most affected by tariffs. Assuming a tariff environment like today's persisting, we expect the impacts from tariffs to become less each year based on our mitigation efforts. We expect tariffs to be fully mitigate it over the medium term. The 3 main mitigation levers are: market adaptive pricing, tight cost control and if this is not sufficient, shifting value add with our global manufacturing setup and our strong footprint in the United States and other places in the world, we have all the means to shift value add if necessary.

We are evaluating the multiple options we have, and we will pull the trigger when these -- when there is planning certainty and if it makes obviously economic sense. Before I close, let me share our latest view on Q1. We expect revenue growth in Q1 to be below our outlook range of 5% to 6%, we expect Imaging and wearing growth in Q1 to be roughly around the assumptions for fiscal year 2026. That means mid-single digits and high single digit, respectively. However, we expect Diagnostics to be slightly negative due to the volume-based procurement impacts. Also, we expect Advanced Therapies to have a slightly softer start to the next fiscal year due to tariffs and foreign exchange, we expect margins in Q1 to be below the prior year quarter.

And with this, back to you, Bernd.

Thanks, Jochen. This Q4 not only marked the end of our fiscal year but also concluded the so-called new ambition phase of our strategy. We launched new ambition after the closing of the transformative Varian acquisition at our last Capital Market Day in November 21. After that, the environment became much tougher.

There were unexpected macro challenges like the extended duration of the pandemic, the inflation shock, the supply chain crisis, the anticorruption campaign in China and geopolitical tensions. Last but not least, higher tariffs came on top. Nonetheless, we have delivered around 6% revenue growth and double-digit EPS growth per year since '22 and what's maybe even more important than looking to the future. We have widened our innovation lead with breakthrough technologies like Photon Counting CT, our low helium platform in MR and HyperSight, RapidArc and perfect kinetics in Varian.

We have grown our clinical relevance in cancer by combining imaging and therapy under one roof and being at the forefront of theranostics. We have increased our relevant in vascular interventions by developing new partnerships with device and robotic companies, and we are becoming more relevant in the nascent field of diagnosing and treating Alzheimer's.

We have grown our C-level relevance with more than 200 value partnerships to date, a testament to this unique strength and new way of doing business and creating recurring revenues. We have further strengthened our leadership in AI with over 110 AI-supported products and techniques like Deep Resolve and MRI, which powered more than 30 million scans since its introduction in '22.

Lastly, but no less, importantly, let me highlight the great turnaround our Diagnostics team has achieved from negative margins in the year of peak inflation and supply chain disruptions, they have taken Diagnostics to high single-digit margins, and they will not stop there.

So what's next for Siemens Healthineers? As you are all aware, we have our Capital Markets Day coming up, and we have received a lot of interest in the event. We will present the next phase of our strategy and update you on our financial framework and the midterm financial outlook.

All our business segments will be presenting their growth strategy, innovation road maps and plans on how to further improve profitability. And at a special highlight, we will give you a deeper look into our AI machine room. So coming to London, on the 17th should be worth your while, and I look forward to seeing you there in person.

So I think it's me now. Thanks, Bernd. Let's go to the Q&A. [Operator Instructions]

And we have the first question or caller on the line, this would be Veronika Dubajova from Citi.

I will keep it to one, maybe with the hope that I can come back again. But just looking at the guidance for fiscal '26. I was hoping you could both talk to sort of what gets you to the top end versus the low end, a slightly wider range than usual. It's obviously contemplating a lot of moving parts. So I kind of love to understand how you're thinking about it. And maybe at this point in time, I know it's very early, but where within the range do you feel most comfortable? That's my question.

Veronika, it's always -- it's a great question. That's when you start off the year and say, okay, what bring you to the upper and the lower end. Obviously, conceptually, it has something to do with top line obviously being more at the upper end of the range in top line helps you to get further up in bottom line.

I think that is more than logical. Then you also know that we have a certain spread of profitability levels in the segments, which can also make a difference depending on, I would say, how the growth trajectories will play out precisely amongst the segments.

And I think what I'm saying here is not a surprise, yes, if Imaging is stronger relative to what we initially thought. For example, you see that moving this will give, I would say, a positive segment mix into profitability as an example. We have not built in, as I said, we have not built in any aggressive assumptions on China, flat China. If that assumption is -- would be too conservative is a thing -- is a topic.

Otherwise, I think these are the, I would say, the main moving parts, I would say. Maybe one last aspect you didn't about it, but I still want to say it. Where we were very, very happy with what we saw on Varian. On the margin side, we are seeing that the 20%, we were always guiding for over the midterm is really inside. And you can see what large revenue quarter despite the fact that the growth rate was not super large can make of a difference. So with this, back to you, Marc.

Good. So we move on to Hassan from Barclays.

If you could talk a bit about the contribution of Photon Counting CT to, a, the Imaging revenue growth in the quarter, and b, the CT order book. I appreciate it's relatively early in your lower-priced launches. But any color around existing customers versus competitor replacements on the order front would be very helpful.

Yes. First of all, when we highlight segments or businesses or products in our earnings call for Imaging, then they obviously grow faster than the average. That is the reason how we do this, yes? That means Molecular Imaging and Photon Counting CT were highlighted. And because they grew faster than the average and the average was already strong with 6.5%. On Photon Counting, we see, in general, an ongoing strong interest in the market for everything around this topic.

I think when you just hear and maybe that's even more important, if you hear the buzz in the industry about this, every serious competitor is talking about this technology and that they want to have it desperately. But we are leading the camp by far.

We have, as you know, the 3 product lines meanwhile out there. We have very, very good price points in place. Meanwhile, for Photon Counting CT, and we are very, very happy with what we see with regard to the demand patterns. And the demand patterns because we talk here revenue, the demand patterns are not only order intake and backlog development, they also transfer well into revenue, and that is a very, very promising and very, very happy about this.

For many customers, who so far have not been in our camps, I would say many, there are not too many, but because I think, especially in the high end, we have also a very high market share. I mean in general, it is for many of those who so far have not been in the camp, the reason to switch to our camp. And this can be hospital chains. This can be academic medical centers, not only because they look at it as a CT scanner, but as a means to offer new kinds of care, the preventive applications of early detection of coronary artery disease is something the frontrunners develop at scale. And there simply is only one company, you can do that with here.

So maybe also to add to that. We don't want to steal Andre's show totally in 1.5 weeks. When we have the CMD, so should maybe look forward to some more transparency on that topic then. Going on to the next call online, that will be David Adlington.

Yes, just a question on China, please. GE's decision to sell their business there feels like a bit of a watershed moment. I just wondered how confident you were on the outlook for China isn't permanently diminished? And if we don't get a recovery there, are you still committed? I suppose following on from that, do you get an opportunity to pick up share following GE's exit?

So first of all, David, I mean, I'm not sure whether there is a GE exit. I mean I didn't follow their earnings call, but from my understanding, they were very positive about China. But I'm not invested into them. So you need to ask experts. So I take the question more as how do we look at the Chinese market, yes? So I mean, as Jochen said, there's basically 2 aspects here. On the one hand, we see in the next year, no reason to go into the year with a more bullish assumption of short-term growth in China. While we are confident that the market will return to mid- to high single-digit growth rates, it is an attractive market for us. It is and remains an attractive market for us. It is a market in which we were able to defend our market share.

So when I say, defend our market share, while in the rest of the World, we have a very strong track record of market share increases. In China, we are on the same level as a couple of years ago, which is a success since basically, we are the only multinational company, which with the scale, with the local presence we have built with the 8,000 employees we have in the country, which is best positioned to withstand the challenges of a bit of uphill battles now and then from a regulatory and government environment point of view, but also when it comes to the rising strength of local competitors, yes.

So that's basically the story. And I believe in when looking at different angle, so you didn't ask this way, but looking at the 6%, close to 6% growth we had in the last fiscal year and a similar guidance for the current year. It is a message here that we can achieve this without China contributing, which also means here that China is important from a mix point of view, but on the other hand, it's also just whatever, "12% to 15%" of revenue.

And then we're moving on to Julien Ouaddour from Bank of America.

So my question is about the Imaging guidance. If I remember correctly, I think last year, you guided already for mid-single-digit growth for Imaging, you achieved standing 8%. Would it be fair that mid-single-digit growth this year is also kind of prudence? Can you confirm the drivers such as PETNET Photon Counting will continue to drive some growth. And if we can have any color on the specific growth you expect from CT and Molecular Imaging this year? I mean are we talking high single digit, double digit for these 2 businesses, that would be helpful.

Julien, first of all, we are very happy with what we see in Imaging with 8.5% growth for the full fiscal year. I think that is a stellar number. And therefore you celebrate this, but this forms the basis for next year. That's always, I would say the flip side. On the other hand, when we look at order backlog and everything we achieved from an order intake order, I would say, secular growth drivers we have in this business, and you mentioned most of them, and maybe you did not talk touch about MRI, which is also a very, very strong foothold for us and with dry magnet and everything we will do there.

I think we will see also this as a very, very old healthy growth driver in that business. Molecular Imaging with PETNET Photon Counting CT, obviously, will remain growth drivers also for this year. And I'm not sure if you listened -- I mean most of you listened very carefully to what I said, but I even had a word in front of mid-single digits which was decent mid-single digit. And yes, we are very happy what we see and decent mid-single-digit means that we are very, very confident about this.

And so like does it mean that Photon Counting and Molecular Imaging, I mean, are growing double digit, I mean, 2025, and do you expect it to continue into 2026 just for these 2 businesses?

Yes, I would say, Julien as Marc nicely said, we should keep some thunder left for Andre for the week -- in 12 days, but when you grow 8.5% and we highlight Molecular Imaging and Photon Counting, I think the math is relatively easy to be done.

So going to the next caller on the line, that would be Oliver Reinberg from Kepler.

It would be on top line, could you just unpack a bit the kind of 5% to 6% assumption for next year? I mean I understand the kind of base effect you just talked about and obviously, the kind of China assumption, but can you just provide some kind of color what do you assume on pricing and in particular also in Americas where we've seen very strong growth if there's a kind of a tough comp for next year? And if I may bid on that, it sounded that on pricing, you're not willing to do more to offset the kind of tariffs. Can you just provide a bit of flavor why that is? And how quickly you expect this kind of headwind to offset?

Maybe I'll start with the latter one. I think we -- I think we are -- since tariffs are a topic relatively clear about the, I would say, the levers how we want to offset tariffs in the midterm. And pricing and smart pricing was always the topic in this regard. But you might recall from the inflation times that there is obviously a time lag to revenue with pricing.

And we also have to have this in mind, yes. Therefore, we will look at pricing and pricing -- our pricing excellence, our pricing, sometimes we have maybe a bit more than excellent. We have also certain pricing power will be a driver to compensate the tariff impact over the midterm, yes? Very clear message.

But -- and I think that's also an important topic, but we will do this, as I said, in a smart way because we are very, very mindful about our market share gaining strategies, which brought us where we are today in Imaging, where we are today in Varian, where we are today in Advanced Therapies. Therefore, we need to strike that balance. But I think we have a clear plan in and it's also built in to our EUR 400 million mitigation -- net effect from tariffs this year.

And with regard to, I would say, to the 5% to 6% growth for Siemens Healthineers, when you look at segments, I think the picture is relatively similar to what we have painted, what we have seen last year. And from a market standpoint, I'm not sure, Bernd, if you want to say something to the market or should I do? Whatever. Okay. I think we expect to see when you look at backlog development, we expect to see, despite having tougher comps in the United States or North American market, we expect to see strong contribution from the North American market, which is very healthy. Europe is growing again, which I think is good. And we also see, I would say, very, very good development in APJ and as we said, China, we have derisked. We have not built in growth tailwind from China into our numbers.

Yes. And maybe some more comment on the healthy development of the -- continued healthy development of the U.S. market. I mean we see that the technologies we provide are at the core of dealing with of treating and detecting early many, many, many diseases. So I mean, you can look at it in 2 ways when double clicking on Imaging, on the one hand, you can look at what's the growth of radiology and radiology is a profit center for institutions.

When you look at -- from a hospital point of view. But on the other way to look at it is whether it is early detection of Alzheimer's, whether it is early detection of coronary artery disease with Photon Counting CT, whether it is planning minimally invasive surgeries, a lot of new treatment schemes require imaging.

So it's a business in itself "for our customers", but it is in addition, center piece for delivering modern and state-of-the-art care. In addition, people continue to build out their ambulatory facilities, which means that there is also the need for additional sites of care, which triggers another growth, especially on the -- in MRI, CT sometimes also Molecular Imaging and also when it comes to the interventional market in AT.

Maybe just obviously, also have in mind that the PETNET business is largely still a U.S. business, and that's been growing very, very strongly. So that also contributes to the strong U.S. growth. Maybe going on to Falko from Deutsche Bank now.

My one question is in case the Siemens Group announces an exit from their stake in your company at their event next week, could you remind us of the potential financial implications for your company, if there are any? I'm thinking of the financing rates, for instance.

Falko, I think I said that already several times, when we look at our financing structure, it is at arm's length per se. When I look at if and when we need to refinance ourselves, I would expect us to be in a very, very healthy rating environment. And I don't expect significant impacts on our interest expenses just from the fact that Siemens may decide on their stake or to deconsolidate their stake in Siemens Healthineers.

I think what we need to be mindful about is that we financed a lot of the Varian deal at a point in time when interest rates were low -- very low. And as you might know, we have to refinance any way independent of any stake development, a lot of money in the next calendar year, calendar year '26 more than EUR 3 billion, for example.

And therefore, I think we will have, to a certain extent, if the interest rate environment stays as it is any way to deal with higher interest expenses, but not due to the fact that Siemens deconsolidates potentially. This is a very, very minor impact.

Moving on to Julien Dormois from Jefferies.

It's actually relates to Varian. So obviously, Q4 was a bit weakish and you explained that because of the comps, and we see that probably the phasing effect considering the strong guidance for '26. But my question relates more to what you have done at Varian over the past couple of years on reducing the lumpiness on the margin side. Do you believe there is room also to flatten a little bit the growth curve at Varian in the future? Or is it just the nature of the business to see that sort of quarterly lumpiness in the numbers of Varian?

Jochen gave me a signal that I should answer that is difficult for me. No, no. no. So I mean, one topic is a little bit in the nature of the business. And it's maybe sometimes also fair to compare the, let's say, volatility of the AT business and the volatility of the Varian business. I mean, because what the 2 businesses have in common is that there is a limited number of units contributing to the equipment revenue per quarter. Yes, I mean, to give you a feeling roughly in both businesses.

It's about whatever, delivering 200 units, yes, per quarter, yes. I hope it's not too detailed number here, but imagine something like this, yes. I mean AT is the smaller business simply because the average price of our cath lab is maybe just half of the average price of linac. So -- and that simply this lack of the law of big numbers, contributes to -- is one reason for the higher volatility in the Varian and AT growth rates compared to Imaging, where we just have multiple businesses contributing CT, MR, MI, X-ray and so on and so on, where simply these effects smooth out more than in Varian.

And I mean -- and what we got wrong also in the more positive outlook which we gave in the Q3 numbers when we were hinting towards, let's say, a bit of a normal or to be expected growth rate in Varian for Q4, was the timing of a large deal, which starts to turn into revenue. Which is now pushed out by a quarter or will happen in the next quarter or will start in the next quarter. So you see these effects much more in Varian. We want to, of course, avoid this. Over time, nobody is happy when there are surprises like this, or volatilities like this. We still have the opportunity to further streamline the production.

We are switching step-by-step to a build-to-order philosophy. And I think another aspect which really helps over time is that the recurring revenue on Varian is very high. So that also step-by-step, the importance of 5 linacs more or less, doesn't show so much in the overall growth rate. On the other hand, I really -- I mean talking about Varian, I want to highlight still, I mean, while the top line was a bit below what we kind of guided for in the last quarter. Profitability was really an exclamation mark. I mean, as Jochen said, and I think it's worthwhile to repeat that.

So moving on to Hugo from Exane.

A quick one on China, please. I understand that the guide is cautious and Bernd, you commented on the fact that for the long term, it will be an important growth driver nonetheless. Curious, what are you seeing exactly on the ground there? Are you seeing some green shoots tenders slowly but surely moving in the right direction? That would be helpful.

I mean not -- what we don't see is the very clear green shoot. And as you know, we have clearly said that we don't want to base our assumptions on speculations meaning at some point in time, it has to go back here because I think there was a bit of a learning as you know, and I'm -- this is meant to be expressing our learning curve or you can also call it self critical, 2 years ago when we had to go in -- exactly 2 years ago when we had to give the guidance for the fiscal year '24. When that was a month or so after the anticorruption campaign started. We were -- basically our assumption was based on the -- let's say, our guidance was based on the assumption that something like the effect of the anticorruption campaign should take 6 months, 2 quarters and then things will go back to what we are used to.

But that was an unsubstantiated assumption in which we basically were betting on what authorities are doing and how purchasing schemes will be regulated in China. We don't want to do this again, yes, because I mean, in this fiscal -- the year '24 was, on the one hand, a good year for Siemens Healthineers because we could compensate that this assumption wasn't true by stronger business in the rest of the world, but it somehow was a cloud over the share price for quite a while in that year. So from that point of view, we have clearly said we don't -- we only changed the assumption on China when we really, really see signs of a significant new momentum in the market. And this is not what we see. Otherwise, we would have not built that guidance or that assumption into the guidance.

Moving on to the next caller online. That will be Oli from ODDO.

One question on Diagnostics. So there is the China NVP headwind which should be, let's say, phase out somewhere in -- after Q1, but can you also make a comment about what do you see from an underlying performance for Diagnostic, if you exclude the headwind for Q4, but also what do you expect more from regional perspective for next year?

Oli, I think, unfortunately, I would say your assumption on this is over with Q1 is too optimistic. Why is it -- I think we will see impact from this throughout the year because there is -- this is an ongoing process, and they go into -- they drive this volume-based procurement through the -- all the provinces and all the panels, which could be affected by this. And this is an ongoing process. I think when we started to seeing that this will happen, I think we talked about 1.5 years of impact at least, I think we said we expect to see this in the second half of fiscal year 2025, more pronounced and throughout 2026.

And that's what we expect, and that's why we also guided for only flat growth development. And when you look at the industry, I think we are obviously very much in line with what you see from others, even maybe slightly less impacted because our business in China is a bit smaller than some of the other main players in the industry.

When we look at underlying other, I would say, drivers of our top line development. I think it's definitely still the transformation, the transformation in, in what we call core lab solutions, which is the biggest portion of the business, where we drive, so to say, the installed base towards Atellica only. I think we are very, very satisfied with what we see on Atellica. The transformation is working well, but also as explained in the past, by switching and/or shifting the installed base towards Atellica and also winning new deals with Atellica.

We also look carefully into the existing installed base, and there are accounts, which do not cater I would say, perfectly for what we want to accomplish with Atellica, and therefore, we let them deliberately go. Therefore, there is also, I would say, a structural, I would say, clean up of revenue built into that translation. From a market standpoint, I think we see, I would say, generally speaking, we see healthy markets in Europe, in North America, but also in APJ. I think the only exception is China.

So we are slowly but surely coming to the top of the hour. 2 callers on the line left, Sam England from Berenberg.

Just around tariff mitigations post 2026. So if you look at the bridge you provided, can you give us a bit of a sense for what proportion of the mitigations on that from pricing cost control, which are presumably things that are easier for you to do versus shifting manufacturing around and around manufacturing. How are you thinking about the decision to move manufacturing now? What would need to happen you to take that step and what sort of time scale could you deliver manufacturing changes?

Let me first say, as always said, we report out a net number. Because from our standpoint, that is the most meaningful way of looking at it. Otherwise, you inflate numbers and then you inflate -- potentially you inflate mitigation measures and then you discuss things and it doesn't help.

So what comes from what? I think, when I would say the vast majority for mitigation comes also today from, I would say, smart pricing, but this will increase over time. As I mentioned beforehand, pricing takes a certain time before it finds its way into the P&L. What do I mean with this? You need to negotiate a deal, then you hopefully book a deal, and then you have a time lag between booking and rev rec.

And that is, on average, for example, in Imaging, between 6 and 9 months, just the time line between booking and billing just to give you a flavor. So therefore, it takes time. And as I said, we are not following here a brutal pricing way. We follow a smart pricing way. We look where our pockets of strength are, where pricing excellence plays a role, where pricing power plays a role. And we have, so to say, as a boundary condition for how we think about pricing is our market share gaining strategy. I said that several times already.

Therefore, we are very, very confident that smart pricing or market adaptive pricing will be one of the main levers to mitigate tariffs, but it will not only -- be the only one. Tight cost control, I think we are currently and we will announce that, and we talk a lot about this about our new strategic phase in 12 days from now. When you start a new phase, you also look into your own house, you look to clean the desk, yes. And we look for a period of -- also higher productivity than normal. You know that our normal productivity is around 5 percentage points of total cost, and we have a clear guidance in the team to go beyond that.

Also here for the next 2 to 3 years, yes, and we expect here, I would say, the major things kicking in more in 2027 and 2028 as we have to initiate those measures and then implement. That's why we also guided for a constantly lower impact from tariffs over the years under the current assumptions for tariffs. And that maybe leads perfectly over to your other question, value-add structure shifts. There are -- there is still uncertainty out there on tariffs. We see that on a daily basis, to be honest.

And making shifts is something we are happy to do, but we also need to be careful that we don't rush anything in this regard, because these are major decisions. And we also need to be mindful where to shift to. I mean it's because you can also think about United States sounds obvious. It's also a very attractive position to a certain extent. On the other hand, you could also think about different shifts and you think about other low-cost environments, which then maybe have a different driver behind. It's not that it doesn't directly relate or reduce the tariff, but it offers you other advantages, which fall more onto this under the topic of tight cost control and so on. So therefore, we are looking carefully in it, and we try to find a solution which is sustainable, which is long term, because value-add shift is not a short-term measure and has -- should have a long-term impact.

Moving on to the last caller for today. Closing off with Richard from Goldman Sachs.

Great. So just coming back to market share trends in China. Bernd, you mentioned that you've been successful at defending your share in recent years. But I'd be interested in your thoughts sort of on the forward, if anything is changing in the competitive dynamics as the market comes back post anticorruption?

I suppose sort of the context of my question is the results of some of the local Chinese competitors. It looks like their businesses have recovered ahead of the multinationals, and there's been some interesting product launches. So any comments on how you see those share trends evolving going forward would be very helpful.

Yes. Thank you. I mean when it comes to market share development, I mean, just to reiterate what I said, I mean, we said, we were able to keep our market share to defend it on the high level and also to maintain our #1 position in the market. Compared to the rest of the world, yes, the gap to others is not as high and compared to the rest of the world, we have not been gaining market share but defending market share in a market with a different set of competitors.

Now what is changing in the Chinese market is, on the one hand, the effects of the anticorruption campaign, but then I mean we talked about that in Diagnostics, which is not your question here, but we also see it in Diagnostics changes to this volume-based procurement. We see more and more experiments and I choose the word consciously to go with provincial central biddings for health care equipment.

As an experiment, this is also for the provinces, a learning curve to go through here because there have been provinces in which complete no name companies have won some of the tenders and it was simply based on price. And now the question is, can they deliver at all? What's the service and so on and so on. So there is a learning curve also an adaptation of what this means from a transformation of the business in this part of the market, which so far have been very much governed by using so-called business partners. So -- but overall, from a competitive dynamic, what we see is -- and this is high-level statement.

We defend our market share. The smaller multinationals are losing, yes. And with this, I mean, companies like Philips, like Canon, I have the impression that GE is also a bit weakening while local competitors are gaining share from this. And I think that one topic is here that is really, really important, and we benefit from having scale in China, as I said in the question before. We have 8,000 employees in China. We are very locally present. We have 1,000 engineers. We have -- we manufacture the vast majority of our products and for the local demand locally, and that is important to have. And if you are subscale in the market, it's tricky to maintain a position, but I believe we are very well positioned for the future.

So that basically brings us to the end of today's call. Thanks for all your questions. Thanks for dialing in. And obviously, looking forward very much to seeing all you in person at our Capital Markets Day on the 17th of November in London. So bye-bye, stay safe until then.

That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. A recording of this conference call will be available on the Investor Relations section of the Siemens Healthineers website.