But the emerging markets were really driving all that. So — and that’s a long way around to — US is good solid share performance this quarter. Market was a little bit softer than we would have expected. But directionally, I think we feel very comfortable that, the way to think about this market is going to be kind of slightly better than historical growth rates. I do think that’s kind of in the US, 3% is a historical rate, so probably a little better than that normally. And I do think that internationally it’ll be better than that. So hopefully that gives you enough.
Veronika Dubajova: No, that’s very helpful. Thanks, David. And then my second one is for Tim. And Tim, thank you for the $0.20 FX headwind for fiscal ‘24. Super helpful for us as we anchor our expectations. Just curious if I kind of move operationally, installations obviously come down significantly. I’m just curious how you feel about your ability to drive that roughly 150 basis point margin improvement that consensus has in numbers at this point in time, and any sort of tailwinds and headwinds you’d call out to that at this point in time? Thanks, guys.
Tim Stonesifer: Yeah, so we’ll give formal guidance in February, but appreciate the fact that you guys are updating your model. So let me give you a little color. The FX, to your point, we wanted to make sure people understood that. And I’d say a couple of things. One, that assumes October rates hold. So keep that in mind. And the other thing that I would add is just given the phasing of the appreciation of the US dollar, roughly, call it, 75, 80% of that pressure will come in the first half of 2024. So as you update your models, take that into account. From a P&L perspective, I would say that revenue will grow — will continue to grow faster than the markets. We’re going to continue to invest in R&D. We’re going to continue to drive and improve our innovation pipeline.
That’s key to the revenue growth along with commercial execution. R&D, I would say, we’ve said since the spend 7% to 9% we feel is kind of the right range. Cost as a percent of revenue, we’d like to be at the high end of that range. So that depends on the project pipeline and what we have running. So that’s what we would shoot for. On the SG&A front, we’re going to continue to be disciplined around our costs as we have been in the past. We’re going to try to optimize that cost envelope and keep it at inflationary type levels. We’re going to continue to prioritize our investments towards customer-facing activities. That’s really what’s going to drive that revenue growth. And if we do that, then that should drive nice operating leverage to your point.
I would say, listen, the one thing I think we’ve been able to demonstrate is operating leverage and margin expansion. Now it’s been a little muddied up by FX, but if you go back to 2022, we’ve grown margins. We grew margins in ‘22 versus ‘21 by 240 basis points in constant currency. If you look at 2023 year-to-date, we’re up 250 basis points in constant currency. So we would expect that to continue. And we’re going to do that by investing in the top line and managing our cost base. And then the last thing that I would say is on the tax front, I would just keep pillar two in mind. So assuming pillar two is implemented in 2024, that has about 2 points of impact to our effective tax rate. So that’s how I think about next year, and we feel very comfortable with the long-term goals that we laid out.
Veronika Dubajova: Great. Thanks, guys.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Larry Biegelsen with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.
Larry Biegelsen: Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Two for me. One for you, Tim, on price. How much did price contribute to the ex-FX growth of 9% in Q3, and how do you see price in 2024 versus 2023? And I have one follow-up.
Tim Stonesifer: Yeah, price is a little bit choppy, as you know, Larry. It’s driven by, when we go out with the price increases, what the realization rate is. So I would look at it on a year-to-date basis. And if you look at year-to-date, it’s about a third of our revenue growth. As far as 2024, we’re going to continue to monitor the market, see what competitors are doing, see what inflation is doing, and we would expect to continue to toggle that price with inflation as we see that impacting the marketplace.
Larry Biegelsen: That’s helpful. David, one for you on implantables. How are you thinking about growth in the global implantable business going forward, given J&J, Bausch, and Rx site have new IOLs either here or coming. Can you grow that business, call it mid-single digit, like we saw this quarter and what’s next for Alcon and implantables? Remind us how far away you are with your tunable lens. Thank you.
David Endicott: Yeah, look, what we think right now is that the international markets in particular have real opportunity. And I would say that, as you look at penetration, which is really the main thing, I mean, let’s assume that, we’ve seen — there are mostly implantables that you’re talking about, we’ve seen in the international market. So there’s nothing really new coming into the US, save maybe one or two. And so I think our view is that penetration is going to continue to be the major driver for us. We’re looking at kind of 50 basis points a year would be a good result. I would love to see it better than that. But in this quarter, internationally, the penetration grew 120 points. So, 120 basis points. So that was a positive.
