Moshe Mizrahy
Analyst · Barclays
Okay, hi, this is Moshe. I’d going to answer and I believe my colleagues will complement me. I believe we specified the three main reasons why we are a little bit short on what the market expects. First, I believe the seasonality, which is now normal in the medical aesthetic, as you probably know, in 2021 and ‘22 was COVID year and the COVID was in the beginning of the year and therefore Q3 was much stronger than expected and sometimes stronger than Q2. But that's not normal in the medical aesthetic. I've been in the medical aesthetic for 25 years all the way for me at C-Luminous, Syneron and now InMode. And it's always the case that the third quarter because summertime, because people don't want to get treatment during the summer and exposed to the sun on their vacation, it's a slower quarter and the fourth quarter usually is the strongest one. So this is one of the reasons and I mean we cannot avoid it. Second, as far as financing, what we said is that today a leasing cost is 14% to 15% annually. That's the interest rate of leasing company charging customers. So I'm sure that you will not take a mortgage with 14% to 15% interest rate. Although, this is a working machine that generates money, but the return on investment with this kind of interest rate will take longer. And of course doctors are afraid what will happen. The economy is slowing down. Everybody can see that. It's not just in the medical aesthetic or in the medical field. And therefore when the interest rate is still going up, or at least did not start to go down, and the leasing financing will cost 14% to 15%, I don't know for how long. We believe that doctors will think twice if they want to do it. Third reason is the fact that leasing company are tightening their procedure and their screening. They are afraid doctors will go bankrupt and they will not see the money. And therefore before the issue of purchase order to us to actually take the order, they do a very long, I would say, a very long processing time. Sometimes it takes two to three weeks. And when you have two to three weeks, some of our competitors are coming. Doctors think twice. They already think maybe I need to wait a little bit. All this process is taking place now. How we overcome it? I mean we have a lot of resources, especially we have a lot of money. And therefore we're working with the leasing company to come up with some solution. First, to optimize the processing. So it will not take three weeks. It might take a few days as it used to. We might do some other activity of in-house financing and other programs to ease the financing to certain doctors. The main project is to work with the leasing company to find solutions. We have some ideas. We already discussed with them when the process to implement that, hopefully in Q4, it will ease a little bit. Not ease the rate. The rate will stay 14% to 15%, but at least ease the process and work better. That's the only thing that we can do. In addition to continue R&D, continue marketing, continue development, on the third quarter, this third quarter with the slowdown, we had 1,000 doctors user meeting in Chicago in August. We have 400 doctors summit in Cyprus for 40 countries, OW. We actually continue to invest in IP and continue to invest in marketing. We participated in 12 medical conferences around the world. So we're not basically, we're doubling down. We're doubling down on any marketing, any sales promotion, R&D, we hired three more people in R&D in order to expedite coming with a new product to the market. We're not sitting down and cutting costs. That's the last thing that we will do. Although it's a challenging time, but the company DNA is different. We will not fire people. We will not lay off people. We will keep everybody. On the contrary, we're hiring people this quarter and we will continue to invest in marketing, in sales, in R&D, in regulation, in product development. We received two FDA approval this quarter and which will enhance our position in the fourth quarter and next year. So overall, although we're taking the slowdown and the situation seriously, but we're not sitting down and wait to see what will happen in the market.