3d Systems (DDD) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

3d Systems (DDD 1.30%)
Q2 2024 Earnings Call
Aug 29, 2024, 5:00 p.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Hello, and welcome to the 3D Systems first-half 2024 conference call and webcast. (Operator instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It’s now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mick McCloskey, vice president, investor relations. Please go ahead, Mick.

Mike McCloskey — Vice President, Investor Relations

Hello, and welcome to 3D Systems first-half 2024 conference call. With me on today’s call are Dr. Jeffrey Graves, president and CEO, and Jeff Creech, EVP and CFO. The webcast portion of this call contains a slide presentation that we will refer to during the call.

Those following along on the phone who wish to access the slide portion of this presentation may do so on the Investor Relations section of our website. The following discussion and responses to your questions reflect management’s views as of today only and will include forward-looking statements as described on this slide. Actual results may differ materially. Additional information about factors that could potentially impact our financial results is included in our latest press release and our filings with the SEC, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.

During this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. In our press release and slides accompanying this webcast, you’ll find additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including reconciliations with comparable GAAP measures. Finally, unless otherwise stated, all comparisons in this call will be against our results for the comparable periods of 2023. With that, I’ll turn the call over to our CEO, Jeff Graves, for opening remarks.

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Mick, and good evening, everyone. With our 2023 10-K filing and our 2024 earnings releases for Q1 and Q2 now complete, we’re hosting today’s call to discuss our results for the first half and our outlook for the rest of the year. Following my opening comments, I’ll turn the call over to our CFO, Jeff Creech, to take a deeper dive into the first half financials. We’ll then wrap up our prepared remarks and open the call for questions.

As a backdrop to our discussion today, I’ll comment briefly on our delayed 2023 annual report filing. On December 4th of last year, we announced that following a comprehensive months-long proposal and evaluation process, that our audit committee had ultimately decided to dismiss the company’s independent auditor following the 2023 year-end audit and moved to a Big 4 audit firm beginning in 2024. This decision was made upon — based upon many factors, including an assessment of each firm’s capabilities in the context of our growing size and complexity as a company. Having informed all parties of our decision last December, the 2023 audit ultimately took much longer than anticipated and with significantly higher costs incurred.

These costs, which we view as transitory, got a significant impact on our opex costs in the first half trailing into Q3. However, they’re expected to return to historically normal levels in Q4. Moving forward, we do anticipate realizing greater efficiencies in the years ahead. With that, let’s turn to Slide 5.

When we last spoke in February, we mentioned the weakness we were seeing in our end markets with respect to customer capex spending. We believe then and now that this was driven largely by a high level of uncertainty on the part of our customers in forecasting consumer demand in the face of high inflation and rising interest rates, combined with a tense geopolitical environment in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. These uncertainties translate into softer sales of printer hardware across virtually all of our major end markets, with sales reaching near nadir for our company in the first quarter. While indices that track consumer sentiment remain relatively weak in August with inflation rates now trending downward and interest rates poised to follow, our opportunity pipeline has consistently strengthened since it bottomed down in Q1.

This translated to meaningful sales growth in the second quarter, with revenues up 10% on a sequential basis. Provided this environment and capex spending trends continue, we expect continued sales growth in Q3 and Q4. While we won’t fully make up for the weakness of Q1, the trends are clearly moving in our favor. From an industry perspective, given the scale of our company across multiple end markets and the breadth of our polymer and metal technology offerings, I believe we have a unique perspective on the trends in the adoption of production scale additive manufacturing.

These trends can best be seen through the backlog of new application development requests we’re receiving from our customers. This backlog has never been higher, driven by both existing customers and new customers who see increasing benefits from the adoption of 3D printing on industrial scale. I believe this rise in customer interest can be explained very simply. The versatility, quality, and cost of producing components with additive technology, including both metal and engineered polymers, has become economically compelling.

This is true for our entire industry and across all markets. What does vary is the way in which adoption occurs. Each market has a unique balance of needs. Markets that derive the greatest benefit from an ability to produce novel component designs, often only available with additive techniques are the first and fastest to adopt this new manufacturing technology.

This is certainly the case for healthcare as we see in both our dental and orthopedic markets, as well as semiconductor equipment manufacturing, aerospace and defense and our industrial markets just to name a few. But even industries that manufacture billions of parts a day, such as electrical and automotive markets, often have a significant number of SKUs that are lower volume and higher complexity, increasing the value they derive from additive manufacturing. These higher complexity component volumes can, in some case, rise into the tens or even hundreds of millions in total demand, dwarfing even the largest current production levels for the entire industry combined. In addition, a very — a little recognized but significant trend is to use additive manufacturing to replace key process steps within an existing manufacturing process.

For example, a terrific but little recognized market for our company is the application of polymer printing methods to produce cores for metal castings. For decades, cores have been a difficult high-value element of the casting process. With our newest production printers and materials, we’re able to produce complex cores for casting at a very attractive cost, on demand to match the casting production rates. If we counted this in the metals technology category, the volumes would dwarf even the largest direct metal printing applications today, even that it serves a multibillion dollar market, highly distributed around the world.

This method, first demonstrated by the aircraft engine industry and more recently in large-scale commercial rocketry, has now become a standard element in the factory workflow for these systems. With advancements in technology to reduce cost, it’s now being adopted in even higher-volume production applications, such as automobiles and heavy construction equipment. So with the continued march of the additive adoption, what’s been missing in recent quarters is simply the confidence of our customers that they need to have in their end market demand to warrant new capex investments in their plants. It’s really that simple.

As we now enter a period of lower inflation and lower interest rates and as world becomes increasingly risky for extended supply chains, we would anticipate a rapid rise in printer demand and along with it the strong pull on consumables and services. This is why we’ve been consistent in our R&D initiatives and customer application support over this difficult period. With our global scale and an exceptional new product pipeline, we’re well-positioned to benefit from this acceleration when it occurs. While overall printer demand was weak in the first half, consumables were resilient and services strengthened.

Particularly in the healthcare space, materials and services grew significantly over the prior year. This helped offset weakness in printer hardware sales to some extent. Specific to the dental market, with the completion of our new long-term supply agreement in the clear aligner market, we expect year-over-year comparisons will turn positive beginning in Q3. Another bright spot in the first half of the year was our growth in services, which was up 6% year over year for the first half.

Services are critical to our customers in two capacities. One is taking care of our installed base of production printers, which is the largest in the world today. But a key second services element is the development of new component applications with our customers. This not only provides immediate revenue, but also supports a growing pipeline of printer and consumable sales for the future.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning our continued success in the medical device area, which is primarily focused on orthopedic applications. For many years, we’ve been a leader in supporting surgeons and their planning and execution of craniomaxillofacial procedures. Over the years, we supported thousands of surgeries by participating not only in the planning of restorative and reconstructive procedures, but also providing surgical guides and critical implants that are used to help sustain and restore our patients’ quality of life. Over the last few years, as our technology has evolved, we’ve extended this expertise to not only other parts of the human skeleton, but also into trauma environments, a new element of the market where both quality and response time are extremely important to patient outcomes.

These are the areas we commonly refer to as personalized healthcare, as the solution we provide is custom tailored to a patient specific needs. First-half revenues for personalized healthcare were up over 12% from prior year and over 54% from the first half of 2021. This marks the 10th consecutive quarter of annual growth for this business. With multibillion-dollar markets opening up before us in orthopedics, we’re extremely excited about the future.

Given all these factors from a timing standpoint, we would expect full company revenues to grow at mid-single-digit rates on a consecutive quarter basis in Q3 and once again in Q4, bringing our revenue to roughly $450 million to $460 million for the full-year 2024. Gross margins for the first two quarters continued their trends of improvement even in the face of volume weakness. This is primarily attributable to an improving mix of consumables and services and benefits of our manufacturing and sourcing. Looking ahead, we continue — we see continued room for gross margin expansion as printer volumes begin to recover and we do expect margins to strengthen from the low 40% range.

Moving to our opex expenses. In the first half, as I mentioned earlier, our G&A was significantly impacted by the extended close of our 2023 audit. Setting this aside, we executed well on our restructuring efforts that were announced in Q4 of last year. As a part of this effort, we closed and consolidated over 15 sites around the world and reduced our non-finance-related workforce cost significantly while maintaining our most critical investments in R&D and sales.

These savings will become apparent when the cost associated with the 2023 close abate in Q4. We expect to deliver operating expense under $60 million for that quarter. With the transient cost and G&A receding in the second half, we would now expect to approach adjusted EBITDA breakeven levels for Q4. And finally, over the last several months, we’ve taken decisive action to derisk our balance sheet.

We’ve reduced our long-term debt by over 50%, opportunistically buying back our convertible notes at a substantial discount. We continue to have one of the strongest cash reserves in our industry, enabling us to face uncertain economic times with the confidence of continuity in our most critical investment areas. This strength, coupled with the widest range of additive solutions across the industry and our global sales and service infrastructure, inspires confidence in our customers that we’ll be there to support their long-term growth needs. From this position, we are now intensely focused on enhancing profitability without any compromise to mission-critical growth R&D and services investments in order to maximize shareholder value.

Let’s now shift to some of our key announcements from the first half that are important drivers to continuing our positive momentum in the quarters ahead. I’m now on Slide 6. Within our healthcare markets, 3D Systems leverages a culture of innovation that was born when our chief technology officer, Chuck Hull, invented 3D printing and founded the company over four decades ago. This pioneering work, which was recognized last year by President Biden when he presented Mr.

Hull with the National Medal of Innovation and Technology, would later span the entire additive manufacturing industry. From these roots, our healthcare business has emerged with two strong cornerstones today, dental and medical devices. For the dental side of our healthcare business, 2024 has already been an exciting year. In June, we unveiled a significant expansion of our market-leading technology portfolio, which will now target all four major facets of dentistry, including alignment, protection, repair, and replacement of teeth.

In conjunction with this strategy update, we were proud to announce the award of the largest contract in our company’s history with an estimated value approaching $0.25 billion. This five-year agreement positions us as a key supplier for the indirect manufacturing of clear aligners for years to come. Building upon this 20-year heritage in the aligner market, for the last several years, we’ve been pursuing the next wave of innovation in orthodontics, that is the direct printing of clear aligners. We believe this technology will expand the market for clear polymeric aligners, allowing full customization of the product to enhance effectiveness and positioning of teeth, while opening new options for the delivery of the products to the patient.

We’ve made significant progress in this area and are targeting commercial introduction in late 2025. From a teeth protection standpoint, we’re in the final stages of developing an advanced direct printed night guard solution to be launched through our expanding partnership with Glidewell, a recognized global leader in the supply of advanced dental technologies. For teeth repair, we’re building upon the outstanding materials portfolio of our NextDent products, which are increasingly being adopted by customers utilizing a broadening range of printing techniques. And lastly, we’re extremely excited about our first-to-market solution for single teeth, multi-material jetted dentures, for which we anticipate regulatory clearance later this year.

Our denture technology, which will be the first introduced to the market with our launch partner, Glidewell, offers a unique combination of great aesthetics with outstanding performance, including the critical characteristic of durability, which we believe sets a new standard for the dental industry. This comprehensive approach to the dental market, which builds upon the technologies we pioneered over the last 20 years, positions the company for significant growth and value creation in a global dental 3D printing market estimated at over $15 billion by 2032. On the medical device side of our healthcare business, our primary focus is orthopedic applications as I described previously. Our ability to offer the full orthopedic treatment workflow to surgeons in the U.S.

and Europe spanning from the digital image to the supply of custom finished hardware for the patient, combined with our quality focus and regulatory expertise, is unique in our industry. It enables us to thrive in the complex healthcare environment of today, offering products and services that support improved patient outcomes, while complying fully with the ever-changing regulatory requirements of individual countries around the world. In an exciting development, last April, we announced FDA clearance for the world’s first 3D-printed PEEK cranial implants. PEEK, more formally known as polyetheretherketone, is an engineered medical polymer that has performance characteristics very similar in many ways to human bone, while being transparent to X-rays and having excellent biocompatibility.

These characteristics make it ideal for craniomaxillofacial reconstruction applications, a market that’s anticipated to exceed $2 billion by the end of 2030. While PEEK itself has been in the market for some time, the ability to 3D-print custom PEEK implants using our self-contained cleanroom environment EXT 220 printing technology is unique. By directly printing custom 3D PEEK implants, lead times for the product are reduced and there is a cost savings of up to 85% versus traditional manufacturing methods. Additionally, with a cleanroom-based printer architecture and simplified post-processing operations, it’s now even possible to execute this entire workflow within the hospital itself, further reducing response time for the implant and opening the application window to even include trauma situations, where response time is so very important to a patient’s recovery.

Since our first demonstration of this technology last year, it’s been used successfully in 50 cranioplasties throughout Europe. And now with FDA clearance secured earlier this year in the U.S., we’re excited to now bring this exceptional orthopedic technology to United States. Turning to Slide 7. Our industrial solutions cater to a wide breadth of markets with tremendous potential to adopt additive manufacturing into their production workflow.

Our team of over 80 application-focused engineers are partnering with customers in key industries, such as aerospace, transportation, semiconductor, energy, jewelry, academics, and service bureaus to deliver value-added innovations to the manufacturing floor. Just last month, we were very pleased to announce a strategic partnership with Precision Resource to advance metal additive manufacturing initiatives. Precision Resources is a leader in the production of critical components for the automotive, heavy-duty aerospace, and medical device industries, a perfect match for our broad portfolio catering to both industrial and healthcare applications. With Precision’s purchase of two of our metal DMP Flex 350 Dual laser systems, they’re receiving best-in-class environmental control and delivering exceptionally high-quality parts with unmatched accuracy.

Also in July, the metal DMP Factory 500 and the DMP Flex 350 Dual printing systems, along with our Polymer SLS 380 solution, were purchased by the National Additive Manufacturing & Innovation Company, also referred to as NAMI, in Saudi Arabia. NAMI’s mission is to bring additive manufacturing technology to the Saudi Kingdom, localizing the manufacturer of critical components for a broad range of industrial markets. As an example, NAMI will use 3D printing systems to produce critical components for the Saudi Electric Company, with the overall objective of building an increasingly resilient supply chain architecture for this critical infrastructure. Not only does this example speak to additive’s increased role in the energy sector, which is expected to grow to $17 billion by 2032, it also demonstrates the positive effects of localization and accessibility for additive to continue catalyzing innovation.

The announcement also lends credence to our joint venture with the Saudi Arabian Industrial Investments Company and its pivotal role in realizing Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, which aims in part to bring additive manufacturing production capability to key industries throughout the kingdom. With that, I’ll turn things over to our CFO, Jeff Creech, to step through the financials in more detail. Jeff?

Jeff Creech — Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

Jeff, thank you, and good evening, everyone. I’ll begin our revenue summary on Slide 9. For the first half revenues of $216 million, we see a decline of 13% from prior year, almost entirely driven by software printer sales with materials largely flat and a partial offset in services growth. However, when unpacking the individual quarters of 2024, revenues grew sequentially from Q1 to Q2 by over 10% and across printers, materials, and services, as well as across both healthcare and industrial business.

Within healthcare, total first-half revenues of $94 million declined 14% from prior year. While healthcare materials and services performed very well in the first half, this was more than offset by a decline in printer sales, as Jeff referred to previously. For our industrial markets, first-half revenues of $122 million declined 13% from the prior year, driven by declines in both printers and materials, again with a partial offset from services growth. Within industrial submarkets, we saw strong first-half growth in key areas such as semiconductors, aerospace, and defense.

However, this was more than offset by weakness broadly throughout most other major end markets. Now turning to Slide 10, let’s speak about gross profit. Non-GAAP gross margin for the first quarter was 40.1%, improving 110 basis points from the prior year. Second-quarter non-GAAP gross margin of 40.9% improved 200 basis points from the prior year.

Collectively, for the first half, this resulted in margins of 40.5%, a nearly 160 basis point improvement from the first half of last year. Margin performance was primarily driven by favorable mix in materials and services and benefits from our in-sourcing activities, but was partially offset by unfavorable absorption given our lower sales volumes. I would also add that gross margin includes the negative impact associated with an increase in inventory obsolescence reserves taken in first quarter of this year, representing approximately $2.8 million. On Slide 11, you’ll find an overview of our operating expense.

Non-GAAP operating expense for the first quarter was $66.3 million increasing $3.6 million from prior year. For the second quarter, this was $64.2 million, a $2.1 million increase from the prior year. Relative to our initial expectations, external audit fees and outside services related to the 2023 audit were approximately $5 million and $2 million higher, respectively, than originally planned in Q1 and Q2. As previously mentioned, while its impact is declining, we also expect the extended audit to create a headwind to operating expenses in the third quarter, albeit to a much smaller extent.

And as Jeff mentioned earlier, we expect fourth quarter opex to more meaningfully represent the impacts of our previously announced restructuring initiatives and we’re targeting to deliver opex below $60 million for Q4. Now, I’ll speak to the P&L on Slide 12. We reported adjusted EBITDA of negative $20.1 million for the first quarter and negative $12.9 million for the second quarter, declines of $10 million and $6 million, respectively, from the same periods of 2023. Declines in adjusted EBITDA primarily reflect lower sales volume and the increases in operating expense just discussed.

In line with my commentary on expected opex savings and sequential revenue improvement throughout the year, we are expecting a significant improvement in adjusted EBITDA in the second half of the year as it compares to the first, with the expectation for continued sequential improvement moving forward. Factoring in these cost improvements, we should approach breakeven on an adjusted EBITDA basis. For the first quarter, we reported fully diluted loss per share of $0.12, compared to a loss per share of $0.23 in the prior year. Non-GAAP loss per share was $0.17, compared to a loss per share of $0.09 in the prior year.

For the second quarter, we reported fully diluted loss per share of $0.21, compared to a loss per share of $0.22 in the prior year. Non-GAAP loss per share was $0.14, compared to a loss per share of $0.07 in the prior year. Now to Slide 13 for our balance sheet. We closed the quarter with $193 million in cash and cash equivalents, compared to $332 million at the end of last year.

The decline included a roughly $87 million payment for the repurchase of $110 million of our 2026 convertible notes. In the aggregate, on March 24th and December 2023 note repurchases reduced our debt by over 50%, delivering attractive yields while further derisking our balance sheet. Those transactions — we’re in position to support critical R&D investments for new product releases that we believe are essential as the market begins to strengthen in the months ahead. Looking forward, we continue to see inventory as a strategic source of cash and expect to drive positive working capital performance over the second half.

Now, Jeff, back to you.

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks very much, Jeff. So I’ll conclude with our remarks on Slide 14. While the broader economic climate remains challenging, our businesses started to sequentially recover, and we’re encouraged by the view ahead. Sales pipelines are increasingly robust and the growth in services from our applications in years lays a healthy groundwork for expected new customer growth ahead.

We continue to launch new product innovations such as our EXT 800 Titan Pellet Printer in June, with more stage for release in the near future to meet a rising demand. From a cost standpoint, we have a clear path for operating cost reduction going forward and options for significant organizational optimization in the future. Within our software portfolio, we are now concentrating our Oqton platform exclusively on the industrial markets that place a high value on quality and assurance of supply, many of which have a regulatory element as well. We have key commercialization efforts in place such as last year’s announced development agreement with Baker Hughes, which is designed to accelerate innovation in the energy sector with the Oqton industrial MOS system.

In our regenerative medicine initiative, we remain tremendously excited about our partnership with United Therapeutics, and specifically our lung development program. This program not only is opening an entirely new market, but is also spawning incredible technology innovations that will impact our company and the world for years to follow. From a 2024 perspective, considering the weak start to the year, there was evidence of strengthening in the second half, we are updating our full-year 2024 revenue projections in the range $450 million to $460 million. With this revenue outlook, we anticipate non-GAAP gross margins of 40% to 42%.

Given the effect of our restructuring efforts and declining G&A costs related to the 2023 audit, we now expect full-year opex to be in the range of $248 million to $253 million and adjusted EBITDA improving such that Q4 approaches breakeven performance. We thank you for joining the call today, and we’ll now open the line up for questions. Kevin, if you’d open the line, please?

Questions & Answers:

Operator

Certainly. (Operator instructions) Our first question today is coming from Troy Jensen from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is now live.

Troy Jensen — Analyst

Hey, gentlemen. Thanks for the time. I’m excited to talk to you. It’s been a while.

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Troy.

Troy Jensen — Analyst

Hey. I just want to say, the — I thought results were decent given kind of what we kind of knew. So congrats on what you could do. But quickly, there’s challenge a little bit on dental, I guess.

I’ve heard more questions about the direct printing of aligners and has more to do with the cost of materials, and — so how the total cost reflects versus vacuum casting. But thoughts on that. And just kind of rank order in dental, is it dentures or night guards or are these direct printing of aligners that you’re most excited about?

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, great. Two great questions, Troy. So let me — I’ll talk to both of them in that order. So the direct printing method has been challenging, that’s why it’s taken us a couple of years to develop it.

The niche I believe it will carve in the market, Troy, is an ability to move teeth more effectively. So basically, it should broaden the market for clear aligners. I think working with the leader in the field of clear aligners, we’ve gotten the cost down to be more attractive year over year for a long time. So it sets a big hurdle for direct printing method.

But what we’re finding is direct printed aligners can deal with more difficult — if you will, more difficult cases. And it also opens up multiple channels to market, because with these smaller printers, you could actually disperse them geographically, you could put them in major cities, you could even potentially put them in a dentist office. So it offers more channels to market, more ways of delivering the product more quickly to patients. And I believe it can — it has the potential at least to move teeth more effectively.

And it’s a different — it’s obviously a different cost structure. So we’re excited about the technology. I still — we’re looking for commercialization in late ’25. It’s a high bar to displace the indirect method, but I do believe it will carve a niche in the market.

So I wouldn’t tell you it’s our — we’re envisioning it to be our highest revenue product in dental, but it will have its home and I think we’ve got very compelling technology to offer. In terms of what we’re most excited about for the denture stuff is fantastic. It’s made by a jetting method that’s very fast, the aesthetics are beautiful, and the durability of the material we can produce is outstanding. So if you put yourself in a patient’s shoes, you could treat these dentures exactly like you treat traditional dentures.

You can drop them, you can fling them across the room, you can do that and they hold together and they’re beautiful. They’re actually quite attractive to look at. So — and I believe they’re going to be very cost effective. So if you look in, there’s roughly 4 million of dentures sold a year in United States, if I remember the number right.

So there is a big market. 3D printing is a great way to go because it eliminates a lot of difficult manual labor that today honestly is sent — largely sent overseas for execution. So you got long lead times. You’ve got a big labor component.

3D printing is an excellent way to make teeth. So I’m truly excited. And working with Glidewell is fantastic. They’re technology leader.

They do a great job. They’ve got a big distribution network. So we’re very excited to have them in partnership with us. And we’ll open up the rest of the market over time.

But it’s — I’m really excited. And we expect FDA approval of that here in the second half at some point. We’re very optimistic about that. So we’re good to go.

Troy Jensen — Analyst

OK. And if I could slip one more question in, just on the pipeline comments, I’ve always said, in a downturn, pipeline always looks great, right? Because all the old deals are still on it and you’re adding some new ones, right? So pipeline grows, but what’s changed in the pipeline? And is it defense driven? Or any more color on kind of just kind of recent activity would be helpful.

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, sure, Troy. You, obviously, have been following our industry for a long time and ask good questions. The pipeline is — and we’re trying to get better at quantifying it, but I can tell you just qualitatively it’s never been bigger in over the last few years, it’s running up, and it’s because the economics or the value of these parts that we’re able to print now out of more and more specialized materials is going up and up. We delivered a part for the Navy for naval application not long ago, and it was a part that does well in saltwater, OK.

So it was a unique but accepted material for the U.S. Navy. And what was the selling point on that component and why they’re moving into production is, it gets us out of drydock and back to the ocean quickly. So the comparison to making that through traditional casting methods, which it could be, it was not an exotic design, but the traditional casting methods would have put that lead time at over 400 days.

We got it turned around, Troy, in four days, we got it back. So it’s an example of what can be done. So I would tell you the pipeline for defense applications is very strong and we’re really excited about that. The semiconductor industry, we’re doing a lot of exploratory work in metals for the semiconductor industry for semiconductor fabrication.

So the folks that make that equipment, which is very expensive, complex equipment, they drive great benefits from 3D printing, first of all, in the design of the product, but also in the economics, many of those components are assembled, but you can put together now into assemblies — into one assembly if you will, one large component if you want, instead of a dozen. So excited about defense, excited about semiconductor, but there is a lot of polymer applications with our portfolio materials. You’ve got now flame-retardant materials that are UL certified that we can go to market with, that opens up a lot of exciting market in electronics for example that have to have flame-retardants. So industrial markets, Troy, I generalized defense and specialty industries like semiconductor is great.

But more and more, Troy, we’re tackling the industries that have a long tail to their SKUs. So you’ve got some real high runners there, their thought of as very high volume industries. They make a lot of certain components. But most of these companies have an annoyingly long to them, annoyingly long tail of components that are measured in hundreds.

And you can produce those so much more cost effectively with 3D printing once you get the process and material down. So we have a lot of discussion with electronics, a lot of automotive discussion for specialty components, especially in hotter environments. And then, you’ve got the natural ones in metal, which are aerospace and semiconductor are big ones. So I might have beat that question to death, but I’m excited about it.

The guys — well honestly, Troy, we’re happy to come up with ways to prioritize the work. We’ve got 80 applications engineers, and they’re busy every day of the week, long days and it’s because people look at the economics of 3D printing and say this is going to work. Now, they’re not buying — in fairness, they’re not buying a lot of machines yet. So when the capex environment gets better, I think you see a lot of those guys turning and say, “OK, sell us printers.

Sell us materials.” And it’s not there yet, it’s a leading indicator, but I am tremendously excited about it.

Troy Jensen — Analyst

OK. Awesome guys. I wish you the best. Good luck.

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Troy.

Operator

Thank you. Next question is coming from Greg Palm from Craig-Hallum. Your line is now live.

Danny Eggerichs — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

Thanks. This is Danny Eggerichs on for Greg today. Appreciate the comments on kind of the pipeline and just being that the pipeline has strengthened and it sounds like momentum kind of built in Q2 and is expected to for the second half as well. Just kind of curious if you feel like visibility has improved as well or just for pipeline conversion or just being cognizant of overall macro, do you feel like maybe it’s still kind of too early and you’re glad that interest is coming back, but it’s still kind of a wait-and-see game?

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, Danny, first of all, it’s good to hear your voice as well. Thanks for the question. It’s probably more of a latter, Danny. I mean, I’m really encouraged that customers are bringing it out and modeling the economics, looking at the part — quality of the parts, all of that.

The proof in the pudding will be then placing orders for equipment which requires them to up their capex budget. So I wouldn’t get exuberant about it. I mean, we’re projecting, as we said, continued growth from Q2 to Q3 to Q4, and we put that kind of the mid-single-digit levels, which we’re happy to see the trend. Maybe we’ll do better than that, but it largely depends on the outlook our customers have for end demand.

So hopefully, the world will see continued — the inflation coming down. And then, I’ve been encouraged by the Fed’s comments about lower interest rates. I think that will be a strong push for more demand for our customers, more capex spending in their plants. When that happens, you should see a direct flow through to our business.

So that’s what we’re waiting on. You see the same public metrics that I do. So you kind of get to hold your breath. And then, we’re coming into an election and we’re in a volatile world.

So all those caveats, but I’m encouraged with the trend. It is a big pick up in interest from Q1 to Q2, but very pleased with that. And we’ll see where Q3 and Q4 go, but right now it looks positive.

Danny Eggerichs — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

OK, understood. Then maybe on dental and maybe more specifically this large aligner contract, the simple math implies kind of like a $50 million average annual value. Is that the right way to think about it, or is there a way to think about maybe the cadence of that throughout its lifetime and then just being that average annual value is quite a bit lower than maybe that business has historically done? Is it safe to say all the things you’re doing elsewhere in dental are kind of aimed at filling that hole?

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. I might phrase that a little bit differently, but yes, I mean we’re excited about — fundamentally, Danny, the dental industry is converting to 3D printing broadly. And that’s why we rolled out our strategy about participating in all four elements, basic elements of the market. So in terms of modeling that contract, it’s very hard to predict year-to-year noise, but the overall value of the contract was our best shot at saying what it’s going to be.

And if you knew nothing, you draw a line through the points and say that’s where it’s going. I guarantee you that won’t be right. It will be — it will fluctuate from that. So you can listen to the public players that talk about end demand and you can get a sense for how that demand flows through to us.

It’s hard to be precise in model, we haven’t attempted that. We’ve just set a cumulative value over the five years. And we have no real further insight than that. I think it’s a safe bet, it’ll be in that total range, but the timing will depend on the end demand.

And that’s driven in part, Danny, by the inflation pressures consumers are feeling. They don’t tend to buy as many aligners when food is expensive and gas is up. So hopefully, that’s all coming down and you see that rise. The other markets for dental, you can view it as kind of filling the gap, but in their own right they’re very exciting.

I mean dentures have been made by hand to-date, so largely by hand. And you’ll see a complete conversion to 3D printing in the — over the next several years. And it’s a big market, not only in U.S. but in Europe and even parts of Asia.

So we’re thrilled to be in it. We’re committed to it. It looks great. Night guard, we were still gauging the size of that market.

The performance requirements are little less than having to straighten teeth, but there’s some interesting work going on to improve the intelligence, if you will, of aligners or night guards to help with sleep apnea and help other — with other issues. So I don’t know where that will take the market, but certainly, it lends itself to 3D printing. And then finally, you have tooth repair, the standard tooth repair that we’ve been in that business for a long time. So those are four big pieces of dental, and we’re heavy player in all of them today, probably the biggest, and we look forward to getting even bigger overtime as the market converts to 3D print.

Danny Eggerichs — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

OK. Great. Excited to see all that take hold. I will leave it there.

Thanks.

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks so much, Danny.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Jim Ricchiuti from Needham and Company. Your line is now live.

James Ricchiuti — Analyst

Hi. Thanks. Good afternoon. So —

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Hey, Jim.

James Ricchiuti — Analyst

Hello. Sequential growth, you’re anticipating Q3, Q4. Is that — talk to us a little bit about how you might see that playing out in both healthcare and industrial? Are you anticipating growth in both those sectors sequentially in the second half?

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes, we are Jim. We should see growth in both of them. The sustainability of growth in healthcare looks very high, and so I’m very pleased about that. Again, there was a drop off in printer sales in healthcare, where we’re selling printers to like contract manufacturers that are making implants, things like that, that was soft, again driven by capex.

But the rest of healthcare was, if you will forgive me, very healthy. So we saw growth there, expect that to continue. We expect to see some rebound on the industrial side, primarily from recovery of printers with capex spending become boosting up over the rest of the year. So those are the basic drivers, Jim.

James Ricchiuti — Analyst

OK. And that ties into the next question, Jeff, just in terms of how we’re thinking about Q3, Q4, is it going to be driven the sequential growth? How much of a recovery are you anticipating in systems, or is this materials and services that’s driving some of this improvement?

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. I would expect both, but the biggest recovery, Jim, are probably in printers. Again, that’s really what’s held us back. That’s what bottomed out in Q1.

And Q1 was a really tough quarter and Q2 was up 10%. Most of that was driven by improving printer sales. And I would expect the rest of the year will be that, too. But the installed capacity, it’s being worked pretty hard.

So material pull-through in services should be good. And remember, part of services are our application engineers that are doing new product development with customers as a part of our sales process. So those 80 engineers are very busy. We include that in the services number and I would expect it to continue to grow.

James Ricchiuti — Analyst

Got it. Thanks a lot.

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Jim.

Operator

Thank you. Next question is coming from Brian Drab from William Blair. Your line is now live.

Unknown speaker — — Analyst

Hey. Thanks for taking my questions. This is Tyler on for Brian. I was just wondering if you could give some direction on how dental sales performed in the first and second quarter? And then, I’ll have a follow-up.

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

So overall, dental sales — certainly materials for dental sales were strengthened throughout the quarter, materials utilization. And again remember the aligner market is a big one for us. So we saw strengthening there. The rest of the market was so-so, I mean it basically mirrored a lot of the performance of the rest in terms of printer demand.

So you saw Q1 was a weak quarter, Q2 improved kind of along with the broad market and we would expect that trend to continue. So again, materials pull-through should remain pretty healthy for the rest of the year and grow. And then you’ve got increasing printer sales. So those are things that should drive the rest of the year in dental.

Unknown speaker — — Analyst

OK. Thanks, Jeff. And just kind of wanted to touch on the night guard situation a little more. I think you mentioned that this will be a direct print.

Was it made by hand before or was it kind of made with a mold that you could 3D print as well? Just kind of like the opportunity there. I know you said you guys are kind of observing what the op may be and I’ve also heard about it a lot, too. It just assists with sleep apnea, etc. So it’s pretty interesting device to get into.

So just any more details you have there?

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, Tyler. There is two advantages to 3D printing them. Today, they are formal form, OK over a dye. And because you don’t — you’re not trying to move teeth at night, you’re just trying to protect it, the price points can be pretty low for standard protectors in your mouth.

What 3D printing allows you to do is number one, obviously, create more complex aligner if you wanted to do other things like participate in straightening or address sleep apnea and things like that, you have more design flexibility. The other thing though, which I think will be really interesting to see play out is, you use dual materials. So you can have a hard surface where the protectors mate with teeth, you have a soft surface around your gum for comfort. So I think the ability of 3D printing to make dual materials, which is unique is a real attribute.

And then, for consumers that are concerned about a better night sleep and they don’t want to wear the traditional night guards, I think it’s a really interesting extension of that market. We are — that is our newest segment, if you will, in the dental market. And we’re still kind of feeling our way along with Glidewell in terms of the market potential, but I can tell you we have an excited partner and we’ll see how fast we can move. Certainly, the technology is there and we’ve got to make sure that the cost-effectiveness works as well, OK?

Unknown speaker — — Analyst

Yeah. Just kind of following up really quick on that, is that kind of — does that fall into like the discretionary bucket just like aligners would or is this more of a need for patients?

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Tyler, I laugh, because if you go back 20 years, who would have thought aligners were critical to life, but they became critical to people and people view it very high on their priority list to have really straight teeth. And so, it’s really moved up the list. Night guards are kind of similar. I mean, a lot of people grind their teeth at night and I know many, many people — next time — I challenge next time, you’re at your dentist, ask him how many night guards they’re selling to people, very high percentage of people buying night guards these days.

The overall consumption is certainly larger than dentures and have to replace their teeth and it’s because people are living longer, their teeth wear down at night because they grind and they’re wearing these aligners. So as those advanced now with 3D printing, we can look at doing it basically a better aligner if you will, more — one that conforms to your mouth better, that’s more comfortable and potentially even later on in life put instrumentation in there to monitor sleep, to monitor stresses, things like that are all on the drawing board. But 3D printing helps up the option for all of that.

Unknown speaker — — Analyst

Great. I appreciate answering my questions. I’ll pass it along.

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

OK. Thanks, Tyler. Take care.

Operator

Thank you. Next question is coming from Ananda Baruah from Loop Capital Markets. Your line is now live.

Ananda Baruah — Analyst

Yeah, guys. Welcome back. Good to see you back online with you guys again.

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Good to hear your voice, Ananda. Thank you.

Ananda Baruah — Analyst

Yeah. No doubt. I guess, apologies if you went through this. I jumped on when the Q&A started, because there’s a couple of calls going on tonight.

But did you — Jeff, did you talk about where across the portfolio the pipeline you are seeing pipeline improvement?

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. It’s — Ananda, it was first and foremost in the market, I don’t know if this makes sense, that absolutely need 3D printing. So military and defense, aerospace, those are strong, OK? The specialty markets like semiconductor equipment, we’ve been working at semiconductor equipment for years and it’s finally paying off for us. We’ve got enormous amount of interest in metal parts for the semiconductor equipment industry.

And if you think of the CHIPS Act and all the manufacturing coming down the pipe on that, we’re really excited about that, because we can save them a lot of money by consolidating assemblies into fewer numbers of parts, and you can have a much higher performing part in some of the critical components in those systems. And some of them — if you’ve ever been close to a manufacturer of semiconductor equipment, some of them are incredibly difficult applications to survive in. And so, you can do that with 3D printing a lot better than anything else. So there’s been a big demand in those kind of areas, especially equipment things.

So we put all that in the industrial category. On the medical side, orthopedics is really doing well. Our personalized self-service doing very well. We’re bringing the cost down at good reliability for — a very good reliability and obviously quality in a regulated situation for patients.

And so, people basically going through bone repairs for either cancer treatments or damage to bones. It’s becoming very economically viable to make those kind of implants now with 3D printing. So we’ve been in that market for a long time with modeling first years ago, the (Inaudible) aids for surgery and now the implants, all of those are now growing nicely for us. So very pleased with that.

And then, dental, it was off to a slow start at the beginning of the year, but is increasingly interesting to people. We’re doing a lot of trials with new materials things like that. So we’re broad based both industrial and healthcare.

Ananda Baruah — Analyst

OK, cool. That’s super helpful. I appreciate the context. And a quick follow-up.

Do you by any chance have any sense for kind of like what the apples-to-apples installed base is, or maybe the apples-to-apples incremental kind of rev dollar looks like relative to 2020 when the revenue bottomed out? I’m just trying to get a sense of where it is today relative to that, if there is any useful context you guys have?

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. No, Ananda, I apologize. I don’t have any numbers at hand, but it’s a great question. I’m sure the installed base has grown.

I know, for us, it’s grown meaningfully. And I would expect that’s true for the whole industry. So that’s a good point. We’ll see if we can come back with some numbers for you.

I don’t have them sitting here today, but I’m sure it is up, and obviously, I’m optimistic for the future, and it will continue to rise.

Ananda Baruah — Analyst

All right. That’s helpful. Thanks, Jeff. Good to connect with you.

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

All right, Ananda. Yeah. Good to hear your voice. Please take care.

Operator

Thank you. We reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I’d like to turn the floor back over for any further or closing comments.

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Kevin, and thanks to everybody on the call and webcast. I appreciate your time and interest. We look forward to updating you on schedule after our third-quarter earnings release, and we’ll give you a feel for both the market and our performance. Thank you so much.

Take care.

Operator

(Operator signoff)

Duration: 0 minutes

Call participants:

Mike McCloskey — Vice President, Investor Relations

Jeff Graves — President and Chief Executive Officer

Jeff Creech — Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

Troy Jensen — Analyst

Danny Eggerichs — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

James Ricchiuti — Analyst

Jim Ricchiuti — Analyst

Unknown speaker — — Analyst

Ananda Baruah — Analyst

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