Welcome to Inderes TV. We have with us today CEO Sarah Hubar Fischer from Bioretec discussing the recent Q1 business update. Welcome Sarah and good to have you on Inderes.

Thank you so much. Good to see you again.

Would you start by summarizing the Q1 for us for Bioretec?

Sure. So Q1 was a solid start to 2026 for Bioretec. Q1 demonstrated some clear signals that the work we put in last year to set a stronger commercial foundation for the company was beginning to deliver results. We exceeded one million in net sales for the quarter, but more importantly, we delivered year over year comparison growth of over 400% in the U.S. and over 200% in the EU, which was a clear reflection of our intentional work. Work to focus on priority markets. It was also an active quarter with our company representation. We attended at least three major orthopedic conferences in the United States. We further established our key opinion leader network and hosted our first KOL roundtable in January. There were absolutely clear signs of interest in Bioretec coming from the market, and we participated in a number of PR-related interviews in the U.S., in particular, deepening our exposure and the awareness of the brand and Bioretec in the market. And then after the reporting period, notably, we obviously successfully completed a rights issue, which resulted in gross proceeds of approximately 12.9 million euros from the offering. This clearly strengthens our financial position and provides additional resourcing required to execute the next phase of our targeted growth.

Could you talk a little bit about the drivers in different geographies? So you mentioned strong growth in Europe and U.S. on the other hand the rest of world segment went down so what was happening behind those numbers?

Sure. So as we stated in previous interviews last year, you know, at the end of last year, we conducted what we called a full where to play analysis, both outside of the United States, but also regionally within the United States, really focusing on identifying and activating high priority markets globally. And the growth in the EU and the U.S. results from this intentional strategic direction that we set. With respect to the rest of the world, we're not seeing actually a decline in overall volumes despite the Q1 numbers. There's also been an intention in returning to a more routine ordering cadence with our customer base in contrast to perhaps the larger volume orders we saw primarily from China in Q1 of last year.

You didn't report separately on Remias sales, but can you comment a little bit about how much Remias contributed to growth in Europe and the US?

Sure, so you're absolutely right. Indeed, we do not provide the revenue splits per product line at the moment, but Remia's sales grew both in the United States and in Europe during the quarter. And in the meanwhile, of course, Activist still remains a consistent foundation for our sales, just given its broader portfolio offering at this time.

As you already mentioned, you had a big order from China in Q1 2025. Did you have something similar in 2026 that would kind of affect the comparability of the Q1 numbers?

No, indeed, our direction now is to ensure that we establish more routine order cadences rather than large volume orders into one particular quarter. So we've reestablished that cadence in 2026. We have indeed also, in fact, activated a few new distributors in targeted markets in Q1, which was in alignment with our where to play strategy and also based on distributor performance of the prior year. Here. These activations, however, as you say, did not result in one-off large stocking orders, but again, more routine stable ordering cadence in line with the committed annual quotas we're asking of them.

In your H2 webcast, you mentioned plans to possibly introduce Remus products in China in Q1. So has that realized?

Yeah, so the opportunity to introduce Rameos into China remains front and center, with clear interest from several parties to bring Rameos into the Chinese market. It's also clear to us now that this requires quite a thoughtful process rather than haste. So we are continuing to complete our full diligence review and plan to make a final decision this quarter now about our approach to the market entry with Rameos in China.

Also in that same webcast you mentioned in the US market having over 20 distribution partners. So are you happy with that number at the moment or are you looking to expand the distribution network further this year?

With the hybrid distribution model in the United States, you tend to have some distributors that stay and some distributors that you can immediately see, hey, maybe this was not the right fit and we move on. And it's quite transactional in that sense in some cases. So in our case, I would say right now we're continuing to look to increase the number of distribution partners that we have in select regions of the United States, recognizing that there's obviously a limit to the number of partners we can properly manage with the direct headcount that we have on the ground in the U.S. at this time. So as we further invest in the U.S. and in that commercial headcount, we'll continue to see adjustments to our distributor network in both geographical coverage, but as well as in the total number of distributors we have.

Headcount at Bioretec grew quite a lot last year, but compared to the end of last quarter it remained quite flat. So what's the outlook for your personnel count this year? Do you have a need to invest further and recruit more people?

Yeah, so we have several important recruitment needs before the end of the year, beginning with the additional commercial talent that I just mentioned in the United States in the form of regional managers that will help us continue to drive adoption of both our Remios and our Activa product lines. But with the upcoming transition as well of the CTO still ahead of us, we need to boost our product development, clinical affairs and regulatory capabilities. These are all key capabilities in the development of our business. However, I'd say we're being very thoughtful about keeping a very capital-efficient approach to organizing that talent, and these recruitment efforts are already underway.

Other than that, what are your operational priorities for the rest of the year?

Our operational priorities for the remainder of the year are really grounded in developing our commercial business, both in the U.S. and globally, as well as advancing the Remios product pipeline and preparing for those new product launches. But I mean, simply put, honestly, I think driving commercial growth, advancing launch readiness of our near-term priority that's in our pipeline and driving operational excellence are all at the top of our agenda this year.

Thanks very much for the interview, Sarah.

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.