Angie Wirick: Yes. So we received a 510(k) clearance recently and would expect to do some work around a limited release early in 2024 and then move pretty quickly after that into a full launch. Relative to pricing of the probe, I think the strategy at this point is to keep kind of consistent with the device that’s on the market. And I say that though there’s a benefit to us on the back end, which is the cost of the device. I think some of the engineering and the work done in as part of product development was able to lean out some of the cost. But the initial thought is maybe this is a go-to-market with kind of the equivalent pricing in part because we acknowledge that this is an area that there’s not separate reimbursement for. It has to be covered by the procedure and that’s kind of the preliminary strategy.
Mike Matson: Okay. Great. Thank you.
Operator: The next question comes from Marie Thibault at BTIG. Marie, your line is open.
Sam Eiber: Hey, good afternoon, Mike and Angie. This is Sam Eiber on for Marie. Thanks for taking the questions here. Maybe I can start on the sternotomy market been a couple of months now since you’ve been in that early rollout. I guess any early feedback hearing from customers, any differences between the thoracotomy market and should we still think about 2024 as really when this market might start to kick in? Thanks.
Mike Carrel: Yes. So, great question. Feedback we’re getting is the product works incredibly well. They’re seeing – they are definitely seeing some benefits from it. What we do realize, and we knew this kind of going in, it does take time. So the biggest question is how can we reduce that time? We’re hopeful that maybe with the rollout of the newer product that we’ve just talked about, with a more efficient energy source, I’m kind of hitting it. That could possibly reduce some of the time. In addition to that, we’ve got to work on some procedural items so that they can do it while they’re doing other tasks during the procedure. So the benefits are there. It’s easy to use, but we do have to figure out ways to reduce some of the time so that they’re comfortable doing it during their cardiac surgery cases.
We knew that going in to some degree, that should have some impact on next year, but not a tremendous amount of uplift on that side. But we still think we’ve got a lot of growth and a lot of opportunity there because there’s so many darn cases that are out there. But the initial feedback has been very positive overall.
Sam Eiber: Okay. Well understood. Thanks, Mike. And then maybe I can use my follow-up here on EPi-Sense and CONVERGE. Another strong quarter here on a tough comp. It sounds like the commentary is getting better in terms of what we’re seeing from maybe some of the best sites out there. So any indication in terms of how replicable this – that workflow is at some of those accounts? And as we think about next year, could we see this category maybe get closer to that corporate average?
Mike Carrel: Yes. I think you actually said it incredibly well. We definitely anticipate that the work we’ve done, we’re getting a lot more consistency across every one of our sites. It’s very replicable, and we’ve got a team of people that are actually around the country kind of helping out on all those fronts and that’s where a lot of our efforts have been. So we feel really good about that side of it. And we do anticipate that, as I mentioned, we should see an uplift in the growth rate over this year into next year. Not sure if we’ll get to the corporate average quite yet, but we’ll definitely see an uplift over where we are today, and we’ll give more specifics early on in the year when we give full guidance.
Sam Eiber: Great. Sounds good. Thanks, Mike.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Suraj Kalia at Oppenheimer & Co. Suraj, your line is open.
Suraj Kalia: Hey, Mike, Angie, can you hear me all right?
Mike Carrel: Yes, we can. Nice to hear you.
Suraj Kalia: Perfect. Likewise. Congrats on the quarter. Hey, so, Mike, a lot of questions have been answered, and maybe let me pose this to Angie. Angie, what was the contribution from price in the quarter?
Angie Wirick: Pretty modest pricing contribution, Suraj. It’s really the differential in U.S. open ablation between kind of the volume based growth that we saw that was about 13% and the 19.2% growth that the category reported overall. So, pretty modest contribution. Most of the growth that you’re seeing in the quarter came from volume.
Suraj Kalia: Got it. And Mike, following-up on my second question from your comments earlier. Mike, when you say Epicardial would be complementary to PFA, similar to like RF, I’m just paraphrasing here. What are the implicit assumptions being made in Epicardial being complementary to PFA? Thank you for taking my questions.
Mike Carrel: Sure. The reason that Epicardial is going to be complementary is because the catheters today are primarily Endocardial catheters that are being used primarily to go after the pulmonary veins and much like what you see with the cryo balloon or possibly with some RF and that’s really what we need to complete the kind of full lesion that we do relative to CONVERGE. So that’s why it’s very complementary. If you look at a lot of CONVERGE sites, many of them are cryo users. And many – so many of them are really going after just the pulmonary veins and maybe some sort of little wide area kind of around that. That’s really where you’re incredibly complementary to the work that we do on the back wall Epicardial that they don’t have as much success with because there’s like a disassociation between the Epi and the Endo portion of that in the heart.
So from that standpoint, that’s kind of why we think that it’s complementary. But there’s a lot to be learned. I mean, to your point, Suraj, I think that as it rolls out, as we’ve seen it roll out in Europe, as we see it roll out in the U.S., I think we’re going to learn a lot more about what that impact might look like and where there may be some benefits as well.
Operator: This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn it back to Mike Carrel, President and CEO.
Mike Carrel: Well, everyone, we really, truly appreciate your interest in AtriCure and you joining us today. Some great questions from the analysts that hopefully kind of clarified and gave you even more information about our exciting future. We’re just really excited about both this fourth quarter and coming into next year and what’s ahead. So thank you again for your interest. We look forward to talking to you over the coming quarter. Bye now.
Operator: Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.
