Laura Francis: The Granite NTAP, we have approximately 18 more months left on the Granite NTAP, it’ll go through October 1, 2025. And what we’ve been doing is looking at the utilization of the NTAP with Medicare, seeing strong utilization on that NTAP. And so, what that’s going to help us to do is to quantify the value of Granite and pelvic fixation in these particular cases. And so right now we’re looking at a number of different ways in order to make sure that the incremental payment continues after the NTAP is complete. It could be with a new code, for example, or it could potentially be with an increase in the existing code or pointing to a higher value code. Those are all three different options that we have right now. But we’re midway through this, we do think that reimbursement is important.
We have always focused as a company on ensuring that we have covered lives across the United States, US building the SI joint fusion market. When I started in 2015, there was no coverage and now we have complete coverage and SI-Bone and our clinical data was a very big part of the work in order to build that reimbursement for SI joint fusion. I see Granite and pelvic fixation in a similar way to that. And we expect to continue to focus on using our clinical data and as well as the health economic data in order to support incremental reimbursement for pelvic fixation with Granite.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Sam Brodovsky of Truist Securities. Your line is now open.
Sam Brodovsky: Congrats on the good quarters, especially the solid EBITDA result. I’ll just ask a quick one to start on gross margin, a little bit above the high end of the guide for this year. Just how should we think about that progressing through the year?
Anshul Maheshwari: On the gross margin side, it is still early in the year and we’re really pleased with how the quarter played out in terms of coming on some of the high end of the gross margin range. But again, we’re just holding onto our guidance for 78% gross margin. At this point, the key reason being we are going to put more surgical capacity out there, especially as we get into the second half of the year. And that might have a timing impact in gross margins. So, we want to see how it plays out again in the first half of the year before we make any changes to the guidance there.
Sam Brodovsky: Got it. And then I’ll just ask a bit of a broader one, thinking more long term, but the two to one ratio rep growth to OpEx growth, is that something we should think about happening this year? Is that, a consistent operating model? We can think of the Company being able to hold onto for a while here? Thanks for taking the questions.
Anshul Maheshwari: Sam, thanks a lot. I mean, look, we haven’t provided long-term guidance in terms of how OpEx leverage would work out. Our view is our top line growth is going to remain strong with all the tailwinds that we have in 2024 plus like we’ve talked about, we’ve got a pretty significant investment in R&D, so we expect new product launches to come out. So, our focus on leverage is going to be more driven by how do we drive more product through the call point? How do we drive more density or more procedures per physician? And that should translate into sales force leverage. And like Laura said earlier, our next milestone is sort of getting to that 2 million, but we’ve got reps that do more than 2 million today with additional ancillary support, whether it’s junior reps or coverage agents.
So, we think leverage will continue. We feel really good about that. We’ll just stay with what we’ve provided for the year at sort of that two terms leverage, but we don’t think its end of the leverage. We think it’ll continue at a pretty healthy clip going forward.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Ross Osborn of Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is now open.
Ross Osborn: Just one with regard to the smaller diameter Granite launch, which you discussed feedback or level of early adoption within the pediatric population?
Laura Francis: Yes, we’re actually excited about the expanded indications for Granite 9.5 and including pediatric deformity as well as in the S1 pedicle as well. So, we have got into inquiries from pediatric deformity surgeons that would actually like to use a smaller Granite implant with their patients. And we think that Granite 9.5 is going to be a potential solution for them. So, we’re happy to be able to address that particular need for those surgeons and for those patients. But the S1 pedicle opportunity is quite significant for us too. That’s a significant part of the market that we’re not addressing at this point in time and with our previous product. And so, some of these newer surgeons that we talked about in our prepared remarks, they’re starting to use the product already for that purpose.
And then that’s the second area of focus. And then the third is that we did get some feedback from surgeons that just said that the 10.5 or 11.5 product was just larger than what they wanted to use, or they felt uncomfortable using stacked implants or two implants on both sides, which provides both pelvic fixation and fusion. And so, the smaller diameter implant also provides an opportunity for surgeons who are currently using two implants instead to use four implants. There’s a lot of opportunity that’s here with the Granite 9.5 product, whether it’s pediatric deformity, as you mentioned, whether it’s the S1 trajectory that I talked about or whether it’s surgeons that previously felt that they needed a smaller implant or finally those that have said, I’d like to use four, but I want something that’s a little bit smaller.
So great opportunity for us going forward. Just getting started. Just had those first few cases done in April. Going to see some acceleration into May and June, and really excited about what we can do in the second half of the year.
Operator: Thank you. I’m showing no further questions at this time. I’ll now like to turn it over to Laura for closing comments.
Laura Francis: I just wanted to say thank you for your participation in today’s call, and we look forward to seeing you. Those of you that are going to be at the Bank of America Healthcare Conference, we will see you there. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Operator: Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.
