Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Jacob Stephan of Lake Street.
Jacob Stephan: Maybe, could you just kind of give us an indication in the manufacturing segment, how have project volumes been trending? I know you said prototyping has been weak, but maybe just kind of overall project size, if you can give us a sense for that.
Brigitte de Vet: Jacob, thanks for the question. And when you say project size, you refer to an indication of what our average type of projects is in terms of the revenue driven by?
Jacob Stephan: Yes.
Brigitte de Vet: Yes. And it’s a hard one to say because the Manufacturing segment as such is composed of so many different components. I think in general, when we look at our core manufacturing segments, so the core 3D printing services that we offer, what we have indicated is that we want to make and we see the shift from prototyping to certified manufacturing. And in general, the certified manufacturing projects are slightly larger than our prototyping projects. Now I can’t give you an exact number but that is certainly a shift that we see and that we will continue to see going forward. Now if you then put in the mix ACTech and the other business lines that we have, it’s a very different structure in terms of the order size, et cetera. So I can’t give you an exact number on your question, honestly.
Jacob Stephan: Okay. You said that you shipped the first products in Q1 here from the Michigan facility. Is that correct?
Harriet Fried: In the Medical — well, so no, so we shipped the first products from our Michigan facility last year in August. And we started ramping up that facility. So we were up and running in 2023. What we now have done in the first quarter is access the trauma market that I was talking about. And those are products that require very short lead times. And we have done that out of our U.S. manufacturing facility now, which has enabled us to get into the U.S. trauma market. That’s essentially a type of a new product line in that facility, which gives access to that large market segment.
Jacob Stephan: Okay. And maybe you could just kind of give us a sense on how things are trending as we are a month into kind of Q2 here. But maybe just help us kind of think about where you’re seeing the most opportunity in that Trauma space?
Brigitte de Vet: Yes. So I think the Trauma opportunity remains a large one for the rest of the year in the medical business. The way you should look at that is probably to say that in the first quarter, we were cautious because we first wanted to make sure that we were able to deliver in those short time lines. We are seeing confirmation that we are able to bring that offering successfully to the market. So that definitely will stay a growth driver for the remainder of the year and beyond. And that is for that particular Trauma segment. I think the other one that I referred to in my remarks, as a growth driver is an important one, too, and it’s on the — more on the software side with more and more personalization being done in the market.
The parties bringing personalized cases to the market will face more volume. And with that needs system that helps them stay organized and do that in an efficient and effective way. And that’s what our Mimics Flow product does. So despite the fact that we’re still in a limited launch, we’ve seen traction there in the first quarter. And I would expect that as well in 2024 and beyond to stay, a nice opportunity for us for us the Medical segment.
Operator: [Operator Instructions]. Our next question comes from the line of Kieran McCabe of Cantor Fitzgerald.
Unidentified Analyst: I’m going for Troy Jensen. My first question was maybe you can — R&D was about 16% of revenue and continue to make investments for sustainable growth. I was wondering maybe you can set some details or color on sort of on the strategy plan for continued investments in R&D and sort of the time line of payoffs of those investments, where do we kind of see R&D going for the year and into next year and sort of the benefits from those investments, the timing of that?
Brigitte de Vet: Yes. So let me maybe give you a little bit of color on our high 16% R&D spending. So the R&D efforts that we’re doing at this point in time are really going into a number of our strategic priorities that I also refer to in my remarks. The first one is that on the medical — in the Medical segment, we still have significant untapped market opportunities where we have taken first steps, but we do believe that there is a significant market potential. I’m talking about markets like the respiratory field, the cardiovascular or structural heart field. Those are markets that are still relatively new for us and where there’s untapped potential of an R&D efforts going into those markets. The second main strategic priority is on the software side for our software units.
Specifically, I talked to the priority that we have to tap into the growth that is in the market for — in the area of manufacturing of end-use products. And that is where in terms of our product portfolio, we still make significant investments to bring appropriate offerings into the market to tap into that growth potential. I think that gives you a bit of color as to what are the — what type of R&D investments are driving, to a large extent, the 16% that we talk about. Now to your question, what is our view on those investments going forward? The new markets of that we want to tap into, we will certainly not be at the end of our efforts there in the next couple of quarters. I think there is still significant R&D investments going forward that we are planning to do.
We see those untapped markets and market expansions. And as a market leader, we want to take the advantage of being one of the first in those market segments and take the lead there. And therefore, I would expect our R&D spending to remain at least in the area of what we are spending today.
Unidentified Analyst: All right. And my other question was, I think you recently quoted an article talking about replicating some of the success that the Medical segment has had trying to replicate that in the other segments. I was wondering if you could provide any kind of details on the strategy or practices that you’re looking to apply to the other segments to really kind of replicate that success that you’ve seen in the medical?
