Brett Sandercock: Yes, absolutely.
Operator: Thank you. Next question is coming from Mathieu Chevrier from Citi. Your line is now live.
Mathieu Chevrier: Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Simple one, when do you expect to be fully transitioned the AirSense 11 platform?
Michael Farrell: Mathieu, a very simple question, but rather complex answer in that we sell in 140 countries worldwide, and each of them most of them have their own regulatory pathway and often very different and complex and obviously, labeling language customization of the product for all regulatory requirements needed in all those 140 countries. So we clearly launched in our top countries were launched in the U.S. many countries in Europe. We just got Japan last quarter, the quarter before and we’re starting to ramp up there. And you saw that in the good growth numbers in devices in Europe, Asia and other in the quarter of 16%, there was some good sort of starting that ramp there in a place like Japan, which, as you know, is a fleet driven market versus a by-quarter driven market.
And so great to see Japan – the citizens of Japan to be able to get access to the best in the world technology in the AirSense 11. But look, we’ve got hundreds of countries – over 100 countries, we still have to go there. And so we’ve got to get regulatory country by country. And we care about people suffocating in all of those 140 countries in the same way. And so our regulatory and quality team with Dawn Haake, our Chief Quality and Regulatory Officer working intensely with all the regulatory authorities in those countries and we have to ramp that up. And then in addition, we’re ramping up supply. The good news is that we have the second best platform in the world in the AirSense 10, and that is completely unconstrained. So you do suffocate and get a prescription in the country that AirSense 11 is not cleared yet, you can get access to incredibly small, quiet and efficacious therapy in the AirSense 10 platform and our best in the world mask platform.
And so there’s no simple answer to when it will be completely done in 100% in all countries because I think as indifferent to maybe the AirSense 7 to AirSense 8, AirSense 8 to AirSense 9 and AirSense 9 to AirSense 10 generations is that we have a pretty unique situation with our global citizenship here. We are the global leader, and we’ve got a different responsibility to maintain our second best platform, which is the second best in the world for a little longer. And so that will be out. And I’m not going to give a defined end date now, but I will tell you this. We’re going country by country, we’re driving regulatory and we’re scaling manufacturing as fast as we can on AirSense 11 because it is better technology, is low cost to make, and we are able to have a premium for it in pricing.
So it makes sense for us, the customers and for our shareholders.
Operator: Next question today is coming from Matt Taylor from Jefferies. Your line is now live.
Matt Taylor: Hi. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to ask a follow-up question on the SURMOUNT study. I think you outlined a lot of the high-level stuff there really well. My question is a little more specific. I wanted to ask about what you thought you could see in terms of comparing the two arms of GLP-1 versus CPAP plus GLP-1? Do you think you’ll see a difference there what would you make of their results if there is a different one way or the other?
Michael Farrell: Yes. Thanks for the question, Matt. And so for those of you who haven’t read through the nih.gov, feel free to go. But my reading, I’m a visual learner. There’s a split chart that the top half of it on the trial is a GLP-1 side and the bottom half is a placebo side. And so they have this 600-odd or less than 600 patients split between those two in a certain proportion. And then within the GLP-1 arm, they split to those on CPAP and those not on CPAP and the same within the placebo. So there ends up being four arms if you look at it. But if you go to the end of it, there’s an arm that’s placebo, no CPAP. So I’d just call that the placebo arm. And then there’s placebo plus CPAP arm and then there’s GLP alone arm and GLP plus PAP arm.
So you start to get down to the subanalyses, it gets less powered. I actually – I’m reading what you are on nih.gov. So my presumption is at the highest level, they want to show that a GLP-1 is better than placebo for lowering weight and improving AHI. I think they’ll achieve that primary outcome. I mean all the data show that there’s 10%, 20%, 30% weight loss reduction and that should correlate to significant AI reduction. So I think they’ll show that. As opposed to then the sub-studies of CPAP versus no CPAP within each of those, look, we’ve got 35 years of history knowing that CPAP doesn’t half treat, right? I mean, the best that I’ve seen from weight loss reductions in bariatric surgeries and the best the GLP-1 prelim data is that it can half treat, right?
Maybe 50% reduction in AHI. I’d call that half treatment. I don’t think any pulmonary physician in the world would be happy with half treating an AHI with positive airway pressure. Frankly, if you’re not turning the AHI to less than five, you’re not truly treating the patient. And if it’s higher than five, it might be residual centrals and you have to move them to a bilevel or it might be complex sleep apnea have to move them to adaptive servo-ventilation. So there’s so many options between CPAP, APAP bilevel ASV that the physicians should walk through, but they wouldn’t be happy unless the AHI is less than 5%. I think the probability – and don’t trust me and my quote on this, Matt. Again, the primary investigator on the study, Professor Malhotra said, the idea that weight loss alone can treat sleep apnea is preposterous.
