Roy Jakobs
Analyst · Barclays
Thanks, Durga, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I will start with an overview of our Q1 results and our outlook for the balance of the year. Charlotte will take you through the quarter and our guidance in more detail. We started '26 with a clear proof that our strategy is delivering, growth, margin expansion and strong order momentum despite the volatile environment. At the same time, we remain closely connected to our customers and employees. This includes those impacted by the situation in the Middle East. We continue to prioritize their safety, support and continuity of care. Against this current backdrop, we reiterate our full year guidance. Looking at Q1. Order intake grew 6%, reflecting continued momentum. Comparable sales increased 4% with growth across all business segments, led by personal health. We also expanded margins. Adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 40 basis points to 9%, despite higher tariffs. This marks our sixth consecutive quarter of delivering on our commitments, even as we operate in an uncertain and dynamic environment. Disciplined execution and focus on what we can control underpins our progress. We are on track to deliver the full year outlook we set in February, which includes currently known information within an uncertain macro environment. Our strategy remains anchored in three pillars: focused value creation, innovation-driven growth and disciplined execution. Let me take you through the first quarter in that context. Starting with our first pillar, focused value creation. We execute specific strategies by segment. And we invest with discipline, focusing on interventional monitoring to drive growth. We also drive growth geographically with North America as the key engine. You can also see this in our Q1 results. Equipment order intake grew 6% and with solid growth across D&T and Connected Care. North America led the growth, building on strong prior year comparison. Europe also performed strongly across several modalities. Looking at D&T, Order intake increased in the mid-single digits. Growth was driven by sustained momentum in image-guided therapy as our market-leading Azure platform continues to drive strong demand. Precision Diagnosis delivered solid order growth outside China. Globally, MR order intake was solid, with increasing interest in our healing free systems. Last year, 75% of our MR systems shipped were Helium free. For our customers, resilience and MRI is being tested more than ever. Helium supply is tightening geopolitical developments in the Middle East are adding further pressure to that. Costs continue to rise. As a result, health systems are seeking uninterrupted imaging and reliable service in everyday clinical practice. Philips is leading the shift to helium-free imaging with our high-performance BlueSeal technology, we are setting the new industry standard in MRI resilience, enabling uninterrupted operations and reducing dependence on scarce helium. We have installed more than 2,200 systems globally, saving over 6 million liters of helium. Building on this, we also unveiled the industry's first helium-free 3.0T MR systems. We expect regulatory clearance in 2027, positioning us to transition to a fully helium-free MR portfolio and extend our lead over competitors. In CT, we are seeing a strong funnel for our spectral technology. In the quarter, Verida, the industry's first AI-enabled detector-based spectral CT gained traction following its launch at RSNA last December, with initial orders secured in Europe. The first system installed in Q1 is already delivering results. At Nuestra Senora de Rosario University Hospital in Madrid, it is demonstrating seamless workflow integration and clinically relevant insights and importantly, without added operational complexity. Turning to Connected Care. Order intake grew in high single digits, mainly driven by monitoring and supported by enterprise Informatics. Demand was broad-based across all regions with particular strength in North America and Europe building on a strong prior year comparison. We continue to expand enterprise partnerships with large integrated delivery networks. These customers are investing in enterprise patient intelligence medical device integration and cybersecurity. They are increasingly adopting our enterprise monitoring as a service model to improve clinical, operational and economic outcomes. This reinforces our position as a partner of choice for enterprise-wide data-driven care delivery. Moving to Personal Health. This segment delivered another quarter of broad-based growth, driven by strong consumer sellout and continued market share gains. We drove this through active expansion and diversification of our channel footprint, adding more than 3,000 distribution points in Europe. At the same time, we strengthened our presence with key global retail partners through increased listings and expand placement. This included IPL expansion broader distribution of interdental products and more than doubling on bay distribution in the U.S. Our second pillar, innovation, is another key driver of both momentum and growth. Across modalities and products, we are accelerating innovation towards scalable AI-enabled hardware and software platforms. And that is already translating into stronger regulatory momentum for approvals of new product introductions. In Q1, we received 20 510(k) clearances and premarket approvals, more than doubling year-on-year. In MRI, we received FDA 510(k) clearance for SmartHeart our AI-powered cardiac MR solution. Just like SmartSpeed is a clinical application that extends software and AI-led innovation across the installed base. SmartHeart automates complex planning workflows in 1 click and does that under 30 seconds, simplifying operations and boosting productivity. It also reduces patient breaths by up to 75%, improving patient experience in a big way. NCP, we received FDA 510(k) clearance for both spectral CT Verida and our Rembra Wide-bore CT. Launched at the 2026 European Congress of Radiology this platform features an industry-leading 85-centimeter bore. It is designed for high throughput environment with an AI-enabled workflow and improve diagnostic confidence. In Image Guided Therapy, we received clearance for DeviceGuide, an AI-driven solution, fully integrated with our Azurion platform. It enables real-time automated detection and visualization of mitral valve repair devices during minimally invasive procedures. We also launched IntraSight plus ,integrating intravascular imaging and physiology into a single system to simplify workflows and improve efficiency in the cath lab. Looking beyond product innovations to our future transformative interventional platform introduced at our CMD in February. We made progress in advancing clinical validation. Building on our ecosystem of more than 100 clinical partnerships, we added a share of our Research Consortium in Q1. Seven clinical studies are now underway to demonstrate the benefits of AI and robotics assisted workflows and minimally invasive treatments for brain aneurysms and liver tumors. In Personal Health, AI is embedded in our propositions. For example, the Philips High-end Shaver 9000 Prestige Ultra. It uses intelligent sensing and AI-driven adaptation to respond to each user skin and hair type. Delivering a more personalized shave every time. This innovative proposition not only won the TIME's invention of the year for the groundbreaking features, with also significantly increased sales and margin demonstrating our leadership in this domain. Since creating the hybrid shaving category, we have sold more than 50 million OneBlade handles and 100 million blades. This growing installed base supports profitable recurring revenue from consumables with strong replacement blade performance in the quarter. In Oral Healthcare, we infused new Philips Sonicare 5700 to 7300 series models in the U.S., featuring next-generation Sonicare technology. In China, we launched Sonicare 7000 at the South China Dental Show, reinforcing our position as a professional or care leader and strengthening momentum with the dental community. Across Philips innovation continues at scale throughout our portfolio. We remain the largest medtech applicant as the European Patent Office in 2025, a strong proof point of the depth of our innovation engine. And this is not just about today. This leadership is fueling the next generation of innovations coming through our pipeline and positioning us well to drive accelerated growth. In our third pillar, disciplined execution, it all starts with patient safety and quality, our top priority. It ensures we bring innovation to market with the high standards of patient safety and well-being. We're making strong and steady progress building on the improvements delivered over the past 3 years. And importantly, we are now benefiting from the work we have done to make Philips simpler, leaner and more agile, strengthening the foundation of our execution. Field actions were reduced by about 20% year-to-date. This is on top of a reduction of around 40% in 2025, reflecting increased discipline and process effectiveness. Importantly, these improvements in our quality processes are also enabling the innovation momentum I highlighted earlier. We also maintained close and constructive engagement with global regulatory authorities including ongoing leadership level dialogues with FDA and other regulatory bodies worldwide. This underscores our commitment to quality, compliance and continuous improvement in serving our customers. It carries through to our supply chain, a critical enabler of execution. Over the past 3 years, we have simplified, regionalized and localized our operations to be closer to our customers. Our focus is clear: deliver on consistently superior customer experience through a high-performing supply chain, day in, day out. During the quarter, developments in the Middle East increased volatility across logistics and input costs, including materials and components. Through active management of our logistics network, we maintained stable supply chain operations while stepping up cost mitigation activities, which Charlotte will further discuss. Importantly, customer service levels remain strong and in line with previous quarter and we remain vigilant in managing ongoing developments in supply and cost. And as we look ahead, we will continue to deepen the simplicity, agility and resilience as these are critical capabilities for navigating the increasingly turbulent environment. Turning to commercial and service excellence. In Connected Care, we saw further traction in our enterprise monitoring as a service. As health systems adopt enterprise monitoring, demand for enterprise informatics solutions is also increasing. These solutions now represent a growing share of both our order book and sales across various periods. In the quarter, we saw strong demand for capsule device integration and clinical surveillance across care settings driven by effective cross-selling across our enterprise informatics and monitoring platforms. In Diagnostic Imaging, we expanded our partnership with AdventHealth through a 5-year enterprise service agreement. It enables our full service model across modalities, while supporting a long-term imaging infrastructure focused on quality and performance. Turning to the regions. Fundamentals remain supportive across our markets, particularly in North America where demand remains strong and the landscape continues to segment. We continue to see stable activity levels across hospital systems with no signs of disruption among larger systems. Cost pressures and workforce shortages persist, driving further consolidation among larger health systems. Demand for secure productivity and cybersecure enhancing platforms is increasing. This reinforces our expectation that North America will remain a key growth engine in 2026 and over the medium term. In Europe, capital spending remained broadly stable with an improvement in some markets during the quarter. Demand conditions remain stable, supporting our execution in the region. Select international regions continue to increase investments in health care and digitalization as reflected with strong wins in India and Brazil. In China, centralized procurement continued to increase in Q1. particularly in modalities such as ultrasound and CT, which have shorter lead times. This is driving longer decision cycles and a more price-focused environment. As a result, we are seeing lower order conversion consistent with recent trends. These dynamics continued in the quarter, contributing to ongoing pressure on equipment demand. At the same time, underlying health care demand remains intact, particularly in procedure-driven segments. We remain focused on maintaining competitiveness, selectively driving our portfolio and executing with discipline in this more price-sensitive environment. In Personal Health, consumer demand remains healthy in North America, and momentum continues across several markets globally, even as geopolitical developments create uncertainty. We are managing these dynamics with agility while maintaining a strong focus on execution. Charlotte will now discuss our first quarter performance in more detail and our outlook for 2026.