Align Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALGN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

And so the technology I talked about in those 3 areas, first of all, whether it’s scanning, we get better on scanning every year. AI is a real important part of that because through AI, you can anticipate a lot of things move these scans through a lot faster. Inventions last year like IPP, Invisalign Personal Plan, those kinds of technologies really reduce the traffic and communications between a doctor and us in the sense of setting up treatment plans. And lastly, 3D printed devices, as I mentioned, has always been the holy grail because we’re the biggest 3D printer in the world, but we don’t really 3D print devices, we print molds, which you vacuum form over top of it. When you vacuum-form over top of a mold, you can’t control wall thickness as you can in 3D printing.

And all think this is really critical to move teeth. So all these inventions take a lot of time and money overall, but we just see a huge opportunity for us to be able to increase clinical efficacy, efficiency for doctors and patient experience, and that’s why we’re so excited about it.

Nathan Rich: Okay. Great. And then just a quick clarification. On the adult side, cases were up 7% sequentially and it sounds like you saw a modest improvement in North America. I think that was the case in APAC as well. I guess I didn’t hear reference to adult as you’re talking about EMEA. I guess, was the — kind of adult dynamic kind of more in — when thinking about the Western economy is more in North America. Just curious if you also saw the same thing play out in EMEA as well?

Joseph Hogan: If I get the question right, Nathan, I mean, EMEA was great, both adults and teens. We felt good about it. They came — you always go around, I call it, the dark side of the moon in Europe in the third quarter, right? But when they came out from the third quarter, we had a good fourth quarter from that. And so we felt good on both the adult side and the teen side in Europe.

Operator: Our next question comes from Kevin Caliendo with UBS.

Kevin Caliendo: I always struggle with this number that you really haven’t grown the number of docs and it’s been a while. And I understand that when demand is down, you don’t ship to docs every quarter. But even the ones that are registered Invisalign users haven’t really grown. And I guess my question is, is there an issue with that? Like why hasn’t that number really expanded over the last 4 to 5 quarters? And do you need it as part of your growth algorithm to keep expanding the number of doctors? Is it just a change in culture in the world right now? Or is it competitive pressures? Or is it just harder to find docs, who are willing to do this? Because the penetration of Clear Aligners would suggest there’s a lot of doctors out there that could be doing this.

Joseph Hogan: I mean, doctors both on the orthodontic side and on the GP side. I mean, obviously, you’re right about that. And obviously, we expand a lot globally, too. So everything you said is true. I’ll just give you one word on your questions on China. China is China is like — it’s down. We ship the thousands of doctors in China, we can’t ship to right now. And that’s the answer to your question since why it’s gone down. There’s no systemic overall issue in the sense of us being penetrated to the point that we can’t buy more doctors, it’s just we can’t escape the downdraft of China right now.

John Morici: And your equation is right. It’s new doctors, doctors ship to as well as utilization. That is — those are 2 key metrics that help us grow our business.