AtriCure, Inc. (ATRC) November 9, 2026 Conference Transcript

All righty. Oh, goodness me. That was powerful. Welcome. Thanks, everyone. It's Patrick Wood on the UBS MedTech team. I'd appreciate everyone for joining us. And big thank you to Angie, CFO of Atrocure, for agreeing to do this and spend a bit of time with us today.

Thank you for having us.

I really appreciate it. I mean, maybe we could start a little bit big picture with the evolution of Atria Cure. I mean, obviously, people can think about it primarily as a surgical AF business, but you actually span quite a bit more than that today. Maybe just the level set people in the room, how much the business has evolved from there to where we are today.

Yeah, so the company was founded really focused on treating patients who are undergoing cardiac surgery, treating their AFib. So you're going into cardiac surgery and you already have pre-existing AFib diagnosis. That's about a third of the patients globally who go into a cardiac surgery procedure and they have AFib. And we said, look, there's something we can do for those patients with an ablation, with managing their appendage that will help reduce their AFib burden. Since then, I'd say the company has looked at minimally invasive therapies, so you would never open a patient's chest just to treat your AFib, to think about standalone AFib therapies. That also was what led us into pain management. So you think, an AFib company, how do you get into pain management? It was, in most thoracic procedures, that's incredibly painful. When you're accessing the thoracic cavity by spreading the ribs, incredibly painful procedure. We developed a device to reduce that pain that you feel in a thoracic procedure, and we thought it was going to grow, our AFib business. We thought this would be beneficial to our standalone AFib therapy business. I mean, it took off like gangbusters just for broad-based cardiothoracic surgeons who said, look, there are a lot of other procedures where patients are feeling that pain, and this shows a benefit there. So I think what's interesting today, started in AFib, it kind of led us to pain management. Our cardiac surgery market now is entering kind of a revitalization, I would say, because you're looking at not just doing something for AFib patients, but also those patients going into cardiac surgery who ultimately have a higher likelihood of developing postoperative AFib or clinical AFib long-term as a result of having that procedure done.

Yeah. I mean, to your perspective, do you view a lot more stenotomies through economies and things like that going on just because we're doing a lot more surgical interventions, driving a lot more AFib? How material is that for you for your growth? Because you guys are also disrupting other parts of the market, and that's a big part of your growth. How much is the base market relative to the idiosyncrasies of HQR?

Yeah, I think the base market has fantastic opportunity. I mean, you are talking, if our management team were sitting up here 10 years ago, we would have talked about a billion-dollar market opportunity. Where we sit today, we are eyeing 10 billion plus, and I think still have designs on how we can expand and use kind of our power strengths, which are our ablation technologies, and also being, finding unique markets where our tools benefit a patient and starting to really cultivate and develop those markets.

So you guys are growing mid-teens, which is definitely the upper end of our coverage universe. How much of that is, you know, I know encompassing things like that are growing well, but how much of that is that product side and penetration within the market overall?

Yes, within our cardiac surgery business, you see a strong growth between ablation and our appendage management technology. And the U.S. in this past quarter encompasses a big driver behind our open ablation growing 21%. That's a fantastic number for our franchise, our appendage management franchise kind of in the mid-teens area. So both of those areas are, and these are still primarily focused in on AFib patients. So we see great potential once you start talking about opening the market up to the other two-thirds of patients who could benefit from the technology. Clearly the biggest growth driver in our company today, and you've seen that all year long and last year, too, is our pain management business.

We definitely want to touch on that shortly. Obviously, the AFib-treated patient pool has been, in the U.S. especially, growing very durably and very quickly. For those who are maybe less familiar, could you touch on why you think that is between better upstream diagnostics of patients relative to lifestyle changes, that whole construct?

Yeah, I think AFib is an aging disease, so that's been proven time and again. So it's interesting, when you go to one of our training courses, the surgeons presenting would say, If we all lived past 100 years old, every one of us in this room would develop AFib. It's part of the aging process. I think diagnostics are better, which says patients who are going into surgery have a better chance of being treated. I think what has been a game changer for treatment is the Encompass Clamp. So to treat a patient with AFib, if you use the original AsiaCare technology, you're talking about a pretty robust procedure. It worked incredibly well. You were adding on 45, 50 minutes in a pretty technically difficult procedure to do. So that was, if you're thinking about, I'm a cardiac surgeon, I'm doing a valve or bypass procedure. This is secondary to that. Do I want to extend the time? Do I want to take the risk? It's a technically difficult procedure. Is there something else I could be doing to benefit that patient? Encompass kind of took away that pushback, made it incredibly easy to be able to do an ablation. And with our H-Eclip devices, I think they've always been the best technology on the market, super easy to use. But the Encompass clamp, I think, ultimately has driven the kind of more steady and increased penetration that you've seen more recently.

I had an old colleague who had a very young guy who was like 27, had idiopathic AFib, and they wanted to ablate him, but they didn't know what was wrong with him. So he was just like, I think I'll stick with the beta blockers.

But he was so young, it didn't make any sense.

I mean, you know, the other part of the AFib market that we've all been talking about, you know, in general is obviously PFA and how that fits in, and how do you see that intersecting with your business and how patients are treated?

Yeah, I think our hope when you think about standalone treatment of AFib, I think our hope with the Converge trial was that it could become a first-line therapy for the sickest of sick AFib patients. You've been in AFib for a long time. You've got longstanding persistent AFib. You may have failed other catheter ablations. With the dawn of PFA technology, it has been a pressure point for that area of our business. I think realistically, we look at it today and say, it's still a fantastic option for those really sick patients who have failed multiple catheter ablations, so it's relevant clinically in the market. It does provide a difference to patients. It probably just isn't a first-line therapy at this point.

But if we're capturing more patients upstream, you know, AFib, in a way, is a quasi-progressive condition because you get older, right? We're capturing them so great, we're doing a single shot, you know, for the paroxysmal first-timers, but presumably, eventually, those are going to come back in some capacity, some of them at least.

And we believe that. I think you just have to have the EP community willing to refer on to a more robust procedure and one that involves a surgeon.

From the EP's perspective, How do the economics stack up of the relative different modalities for you guys as well?

Yes, a similar thing. It's interesting about the converge procedure. It never contemplated getting rid of or eliminating the EP portion of the procedure. It basically just said, EP, you should really focus on the parts of the heart where you get great access and can do that minimally invasively, right? You do that, the surgeon's going to come in and do the bulk of the work on the posterior wall. Harder for you to access, and when you think about the technologies that EPs are using, you can get a great set of ablation lines through a minimally invasive surgery, and it basically tells the EP, focus on your area, which makes it easier. It makes them more, so from an economics perspective, this was never disruptive to kind of their overall flow.

And so, you know, you're talking about first line and things like that. Have you guys noticed, from what you can tell from your procedure pool, have you moved more into some of the more, like, persistent, complex cases? Is it being used more frequently there rather than just that kind of very vanilla de novos?

Yeah. Typical patient for a converged procedure has failed multiple catheter ablations. This is not a – and they are a patient who has had AFib for quite a while.

Yeah. Maybe we could switch to pain management just because it's such a, it's a big part for you and, you know, open-ended questions for you. How large do you think cryosphere can become ultimately?

I think it could be huge. I think back to when we initially started this area of the business and thinking about, you know, what it could be. We were very focused just on the thoracic cavity. And saying, look, in thoracic procedures, there's a benefit there. What we have progressively seen over time is the experimentation, surgeons saying, look, there's another procedure where I think it could benefit. You go back to our core AFib surgeons, which led us to sternotomy. Sure, you're opening up a patient's chest and they're having heart surgery. They're going to experience pain, but the benefits are similar to what you see in a thoracic procedure. So that led on to the addition of another market, which is thoracic plus the sternotomy cases. Through the use of the device, I'd say, in a couple of key centers, they also said, wait a minute, another procedure that I'm doing is amputation. It's a surgical procedure where you're exposed to large nerves. You're interrupting that nerve. This might work there. And I'd say the experimentation led to the idea behind the Cryo XT device, which we launched last year, specifically designed for amputation procedures. And I think about that and say progressively we've continued to add and expand market opportunity. What other procedures are out there? This is what we're looking at today. Where could you benefit? The surgical procedure where large nerves are exposed or interrupted, I think that's where we have an incredibly sweet spot.

Do you think there's more of a focus as well on pain management after we had all the opioid-related issues and just the willingness to engage with other forms of pain management?

I think that is very top of mind. That's where a lot of surgeons will start. When they try the device, they're looking at patients who had a past dependency and say, look, this could benefit to the patient long-term. Our best surgeons, though, the ones that treat, say, I'm going beyond just that patient profile because I think that there is a benefit to a broader set of patients.

And if you're the surgeon, obviously, you know, if you're going to have a stenotomy, you always needed to have a stenotomy. But maybe there are some less extreme procedures where maybe the patient is preferring having the procedure because they're worried about pain. Is this a tool that ultimately could allow the surgeon to pull forward a little bit of procedures where maybe the patient was unsure because they were anxious about pain and this is giving them some reassurance or stretching?

It's a great example. One of the areas where we have probably the highest market capture of a specific procedure is called the NUS procedure. It's done in children when they have a sunken chest. The procedure itself is pretty barbaric. You're putting in bars, iron bars to pop out the chest. And what we heard is there are patients who said, look, we want to defer the procedure. You're looking for a specific timeframe where a kid is off of school. They can have the procedure not interrupting their lives. Or they hear the procedure and say, I'm just not sure that that's for me. You know, maybe I'll wait it out here. Today, we are 90-plus percent penetrated in that area, that particular surgical procedure. And now what we hear is there's no longer a NUS season. It's not, okay, you're going to start when it's right out of school, finishes here in the United States. It's at any point in time because the patient, the amount of time it takes out in terms of their recovery and their ability to get back to their lives. I think that's a great example.

So interesting. And as you're thinking of the success that Cryosphere has had so far, how would you delineate it between, you know, A few surgeons who are using it very deeply versus very wide. I mean, is the incremental growth coming from spreading horizontally or down, if that makes any sense?

No, it does. It's a bit of both. So in any one quarter, we're asked this question often, kind of the same store sales concept, right? In any one quarter, I'd say new accounts are a very small component of the overall revenue. The majority of the revenue increase is being driven by existing accounts. And one thing that we're looking for is do accounts kind of follow that continuum, start small, right? I'm looking for a specific profile of a patient, but do I continue to add on and continue to grow? And the trajectory within this franchise has been incredible from that perspective.

It might be a naive question, but for some of these procedures, once a clinician has won over the cryosphere, So why wouldn't they use it? Is it a question of the dependency patients, or is it like, why wouldn't they just use it in all of the patients that have got that procedure?

Yeah, every surgeon has their own kind of point of view of how they manage pain and the benefits of the device. I think that there are some surgeons who tend to be selective, think it's a certain profile of a patient. There are others who see it and say it's broad and use it pretty broadly, and they see the broad-based usage. Probably the biggest push back that we get is relative to the cost of the device. No specific reimbursement. So inherently, you're thinking, okay, where does it make sense? Where can I fight for the benefit relative to the cost of the device?

I get that. The purchasing decision, where do you think that sits? Is that really the surgeon, or does this go through a vaccine anyway?

It did initially. So it did initially, and I would say our best advocate is a surgeon in the care team who've experienced it in procedure.

Presumably, like, for the patients then. I don't know, length of stay, maybe a touch lower, all those kind of things.

In some procedures, you can prove length of stay reduction. Not every procedure, which is why you've got to think about kind of what the benefits are for a patient, but in many of them, you can.

And when we're thinking of the opportunity that you're saying, you know, around amputation, things like that, you know, you guys, you have the relationship established already on the cardiac side, essentially, whereas presumably you have less of that this side. So how are you thinking about the go-to-market of reaching the surgeons, I guess?

Yeah, so when you think about amputations, the majority are done by vascular surgeons, which has not been a call point for us. As we launched the device, we said start each one of our cryo-nerve block reps. Start with an account that already kind of believes in cryo nerve blocks. So the concept is within the hospital, and you've got a champion within that hospital system. Then you identify the surgeon who is doing the amputation procedure. And this is an interesting technology that we have in that you can give a device and say, try it on a patient and tell us the results that you see. It has been the best. I think for us in terms of launching the therapy because you get an immediate feedback loop. They're going to see in the recovery process as they're monitoring their patient, they will see a difference and a benefit to that patient. So that has been kind of the initial starting point. We did also look at specific amputation-focused reps. So think about one complimentary rep, one resource, kind of a therapy development person within each of the areas of the country that we operate and saying, your job is to work with the area, the reps within this area, and really start to find ways to accelerate the business. And I think you started to see that within the third quarter.

I'd love to pivot. This is obviously a massive franchise for you guys. I think grew, again, mid-teens pretty much last quarter. How much runway is there remaining for patients who have diagnosed AF and are undergoing cardiac surgery?

Yeah, if we talk of the U.S., it's the most penetrated market that we operate in, so you're close to 70% penetration. AFib patients undergoing cardiac surgery who have their appendage managed, this is part of the importance behind both the BOX and the LEAPS trials. This is expanding, will show the benefit of managing the appendage and in BOX also with ablation for a broader patient set. But if you were to go to any other country outside of the U.S., you're talking about penetration rates that are significantly lower. So my summary answer would be we still think there's a pretty long runway for penage management.

Presumably for boxes, I hope that that will then change clinical guidelines and practices. Is there something that you think needs to be in that readout specifically that is a threshold to enable that to happen?

Yeah, I think for the box trial, it's powered to show a 10% absolute differential. We obviously need to hit that end point. We were having the discussion with an investor earlier today. Obviously, the bigger differential that you can show, I think, would impact your adoption rate and the acceleration and velocity at which we see that. So I think you want to see clinical differentiation for the devices.

If the trial were successful, I'm aware that that statement is a nebulous one. What does success mean? You know what I mean? But nebulously, if it's successful, how would you think of the market opportunity and the speed of the expansion within the existing pool?

Yeah, we already have quite a few customers, surgeon customers, who manage the appendage already today prophylactically, so don't have an AFib diagnosis. I think the benefit will be in growing the Encompass clamp. So you would see starting to see continued adoption. And to state the obvious, that's one of our higher price devices. So I think that the momentum that we may get out of that is incredible. We're pretty excited about the trials.

I mean, it's always interesting with healthcare companies because there's an unknown and quantum to the trials. How do you think about when to pull the trigger on investing ahead of a trial, if you know what I mean? When does that decision happen?

Yeah, I think that's interesting, specific to these two trials. It was confidence in the ability to win so that the company can make the investment. And, you know, Atricure for a very long time was not a profitable company, so timing that right, I think we kind of hit the sweet spot in terms of turning towards profitability, and we're able to fund both of these big trials and big investments here and do that all very organically with our business.

I'd love to switch to Encompass for just a little bit. You guys are taking a lot of share there. How much is there left? To what degree do you feel like that's a durable, can you defend your position there?

Yeah, I think Encompass, we are pretty much the cardiac surgery ablation technology on the market today. Edtronic has a small portion of procedures, and there are others that are interested in getting into the market. What Encompass did, I touched on this earlier, Encompass made a procedure that was difficult to do. It made it fairly easy to do. You're talking about most surgeons can do an ablation eight to 10 minutes, and you're done. End to end on the procedure, you've taken the guesswork out of all of the dissection and everything that you needed to do. So we look at Encompass and say, incredibly long runway. You've made something very easy to do, so you've democratized treatment in this area. And we also are making investments within our Encompass device platform, dual energy, adding the best of both worlds. You know that you've got exceptional outcomes with RF, incredibly safe. PFA may bring some speed to the equation, too. So we're pretty bullish on long-term the ability to continue to penetrate this market and remain the leader.

That's been one thing that's been fascinating to watch is going from a, you remember early days, everyone thought 100% of everything would PFA convert before realizing RF is critical in some instances. Like deeper lesions and narrower lesions and things like that?

Yeah, the risk that you have in a catheter-based technology with RF, very different in open-heart surgery. It's been proven incredibly durable, incredibly effective, and most importantly, very, very safe. You just don't have kind of the safety outcomes that you're worried about when you're working inside of the heart. So I think that the benefit of PFA may be a little less obvious, I'd say, in open-heart surgery. But if you can speed things up, again, if you're working on a secondary procedure, Your primary reason the patient is on the table with their chest open is to do something to help their structural heart problem. If you can make it easier, quicker for a surgeon to be able to do the AFib treatment or avoiding postoperative AFib treatment, I think that that's an important factor.

If we're thinking of the continuation of growth for Encompass, how much of that is bringing more surgeons on, or how much of it is more eligible, like concomitant procedures? What's the mix there?

Yeah, I'd say at this point, you're talking about surgeons treating more, as opposed to, we do add accounts, but we are pretty close to hitting almost all of the cardiac surgery centers in the U.S. So I'd say at this point, it is surgeons who are doing more. They're looking at each one of their AFib patients, and now Encompass has made it easier for them to make that decision to treat.

What are you, big picture, what are you hearing from your customers and, you know, the hospitals on that side? It's a question we've been asking everybody because you remember through the year. Have you ever been anxious about ACA reform and all these sorts of things? These are older patients, and this is disproportionately Medicare-based anyway. But, you know, health of a hospital, health of a customer, just big picture question. I'm curious if you're hearing anything.

Because our procedures are attached to something that is emergent, I think we're fairly insulated from the pressures that you may be hearing otherwise. Yeah.

And the reimbursement codes are generally pretty generous.

Very generous in cardiac surgery.

Do you ever worry about that just because the codes are fairly high in the margins? They're making it pretty good, or is it just a tricky procedure?

I think it's a tricky procedure. I think any time you're doing particularly an open chest procedure, I think it warrants the level of reimbursement that's there today. Good news for Atricure is we were successful before there was even any kind of reimbursement for our technology. So I think you're talking about the ability to show a differentiation for a patient, show a benefit for a patient, and you benefit from an overall reimbursement landscape that's helpful because you can tuck that technology into it.

Obviously, the US has been the vast focus for very good reasons. How are you thinking, though, more about the international markets and the opportunities there?

Yeah, the international market opportunities are sizable. I think in every one of the countries that we operate in today, you are talking about penetration rates that are less than 30%. So wide opportunity across the landscape. Reimbursement is trickier. So thinking about the technology and kind of the resistance on pricing is a bit trickier outside of the U.S., but we look at this and say most of the guidelines. Follow or are similar to the U.S., so there isn't a question of whether or not you should be doing the therapy for the patient. I think it's just making sure that we're entering each market and thinking about the pricing and how we can grow and expand in the right ways.

Yeah, grew up in the UK, familiar with the fewer options available, let's just say. How do you think about the reps on that side of things, the sales force and the investment both in the U.S. and over U.S.?

Yeah, I'll start with the U.S. market. So we've got three primary teams, a cardiac surgery team, very focused. Hybrid team, they have relationships with EPs, and then our pain management team don't need to add to the hybrid team today. They're really focused on what they're doing and are really focused on, okay, when PFA doesn't become an option for your patient anymore, we're really relevant with our convergent procedure. Pain management continue to add reps. They tend to become proficient fairly quickly, so it's an easy one to lean into. And then on cardiac surgery, we've got a great cardiac surgery team, a sizable force. We're in almost every account in the United States. As we think about box and leaps, we are taking a step back to, say, in areas where you may have done a territory split that you would have held off. With the opportunity that you're going to have, the incremental patients, we're starting to look at kind of right-sizing territories, and we'll start to make some of those investments in 2027 in anticipation of a PMA in 2028.

Right-sizing in the sense of you don't want too few reps covering a broad area because, yeah, there's so much to do.

There'll be so much more. Their opportunity is effectively doubling and tripling with the box and leaps so that they've got the ability to treat an even wider set of patients. And being very present with that surgeon customer, I think, helps drive that adoption. Outside of the U.S., we've made quite a few investments in the direct countries that we operate in with our sales team, more so a cardiac-focused team with a limited number of select reps for hybrid and cryo-nerv block. Looking at that, we'll continue to make investments where it makes sense.

And presumably for you guys, because you are quite fast growing, you have a good opportunity to hire great reps in general, but it's also quite a competitive category. And everyone's also trying to get in in that way. Where do you find you guys are sourcing people from? Are they shifting over? Are they competitive? How are you finding the environment to hire reps?

Yeah, I think it's a competitive hiring environment. I'll say that. I would agree with that. I think you find people who have a love for cardiac surgery. They tend to be very clinically oriented. You know, this is less about selling a widget. They really like spending time in an OR. They like the interaction with our surgeon customers, and they tend to be folks who want to go very, very deep clinically. So that's the profile of a person that we tend to hire, and it can be from competitors. It can be people who are former PAs, former nurses. We've got some success in converting folks over who say, look, I feel like I just, I love this therapy. I love this area and want to kind of dedicate my life to it.

I have to ask some dorky finance questions.

I love dorky finance questions.

I have to. You know, gross margins are going north of 77% now, and EBITDA is growing way faster than the top line.

Yes.

Has that been, is that leverage, is that product mix, is that, you know, can you break us down for that, how you guys imagine that?

Yeah, so I'd say with gross margin, biggest benefits. More contribution from U.S. sales and with our newer product launches, which tend to come with a higher gross margin, you're seeing as those continue to take off, driving gross margin north. So I think that that mixed benefit is incredibly apparent in our results so far this year. We will take a bit of a step back with the new manufacturing facility, but remind everyone the reason why we're doing this new facility, because we've got eyes on significant continued growth and have to be able to support that. So I think it's only a matter of time before we're back talking about 77% plus margins for our business, gross margins. On the leverage side, it's interesting. I think one of the hardest things to judge. is how effective your sales team can be and how much you can kind of stretch your resources and where you start to see leverage. If you go back several years, Atricure invested pretty heavily. SG&A was an area of growth that paced with or above top line, right? As we sit here today, we're starting to see the leverage of having made those investments in the team. And even with some expansion as a result of the trial and anticipation of the trial, I would continue to see us thriving leverage through SG&A. It puts us in an enviable spot. You asked the question about funding the two clinical trials. It puts us in an enviable spot, that whole equation, to say we can fund. Big clinical trials and also be profitable and expand profitability.

You're cash flow positive as well. So you presumably you're kind of done with funding needs in a big way, at least, unless you're planning to do something larger, which is helpful. I mean, how, you know, how are you having those discussions internally around, like, resource allocation? Because you obviously, you're a lot of different high growth babies. It's not a phrase, but I'm going to roll with it. Is there a big debate, like, internally on how much each gets?

So it's less of a debate now, given where we're at, than it was five or 10 years ago, because there's only so far. You could, so many mouths to feed and only so much food on the table, so to speak. I think where we're at now, we are in an enviable position to be more progressive with the investments, particularly as you think about product development, the pace of product development, the ability to fund big clinical trials. That's been our recipe for success, not just developing devices, but then putting clinical, really robust clinical data behind it to drive adoption, and then complemented by a third area, which is physician education is a foundation for Atricare. You want to make sure that your physician customers, APPs, everyone who is surrounding the patient has the right kind of information about both the therapies, the disease state, and that we're there to support them.

And presumably the investment in narrowing the territories down gets stronger relationships with the clinicians and just defends your position as well.

Correct, yes.

Out of interest, how does it work practically internally for the forecasting side? Is it the reps who are giving numbers in internally and expectations and then finances cashing them? I came from industry, so I just... Okay, all right.

No, I'd say we do both bottoms up and top down build. So a bit of the one thing about our business is you don't have a long runway to know when procedures are going to happen. So you're really looking at your account and saying, what kind of life cycle are they in? Are they very early adopter? Where are they at on the adoption curve? What could adoption look like? So I'd say it's kind of a mix of both. Not one is more dominant than the other.

Presumably take some of the bottom up, and then you just cut it anyway, because you've got to give yourself a margin of safety. Yeah, yeah, that's what we did. I appreciate that. And so if you're, it's an impossible question, but because the business is growing so fast and changing so much, where do you think a sort of ultimate margin structure for the business looks like from an operating margin, like even just a range conceptually?

Yeah, so we did an investor, analyst and investor day, early in 2025. And said we gave targets for 2028 and then 2030. So if we think about the longer-term target, it said Atricure continues to be a double-digit revenue grower, that we've got gross margin expansion, and that we believe very strongly that we would be an adjusted EBITDA margin north of 20 percent. Where we sit here today, we have over-promised or over-delivered on those promises. We are pacing ahead of our LRP, and I think that that tells you with that kind of recipe, that top-line growth along with our gross margin and the leverage that we're seeing in the business, that we're going to be able to achieve those and could rival the best medtech companies when it comes to our margins.

Your starting point of high gross margins is incredibly helpful, but what are you seeing on cost inflation? I mean, the reps, presumably there's competition, and so that's going up, but then there's obviously all the other various inputs. What are you guys seeing in general?

Yeah, I'd say we'd see typical inflation. So I think people cost is a major area of investment for us, and we're seeing it there. I'd say we see a bit on the supply chain side, but that seems to have settled down in the last year or so. But, you know, cost pressure is there, I think, for every company. Atricure is not excluded from that.

That makes sense. And in your mind, how should we think about price mix as it relates to that?

Yeah, so this is a question we get asked all the time. Depending on the franchise, there is some pricing contribution. The most apparent one is in our appendage management franchise, where the more recent device launches, the Flex Mini Clip and the Pro Mini Clip come with a pretty sizable ASP premium. Behind all of that, though, I would tell you each one of our franchises is growing, you know, pretty strongly. Volume wins the day. Volume is the majority of the growth today. If you look at the third quarter, 15% company growth overall, it's less than two points on pricing overall. So that's telling you very strong volume demand and growth within each of our markets.

It's always a better way to be.

Yes.

You're obviously cash repositive. You have some cash on the balance sheet. How, what's the thoughts around capital allocation? Are there little tech bolt-ons that you would think about doing? Obviously, you've got a lot of different things going on at once, but you have a great access to a very valuable call point already. Right. So, any thoughts around that kind of thing?

I think we have so much going on internally. Organic R&D is our primary focus at this point in time. Fund those initiatives and continue to look at ways, you know, using our call points, using our technology in which we can win. That being said, we do look at companies that are out there, look at the landscape, what's emerging technology, things that may be very highly complementary. I just, I think the appetite and the need, I would say, to do something today is very small. So we'll continue to be super disciplined as we think about M&A, but we're in an enviable position where what you've got going on internally looks a lot better than what's out there externally.

Integrating companies is a pain in the ass, too.

And that, too.

Last one. You know, you do a lot of these events. You get all the analyst calls, all this stuff, and interface a lot with the buy side. Is there something that gets a lot of external focus that doesn't get a lot of internal focus, or alternatively, how you spend your time and your focus and your energy internally that doesn't get asked about or appreciated, if you like, externally as much? Because there's usually a bit of a disconnect.

Yeah, I'd say the one area... Maybe a little bit more, and there have been peaks. Converge and then Clip Competition are the two areas where I would say, of course, the company was very focused on it, but it wasn't the headline, the text of the story, and kind of the footnote, too. I think that this is one where we are looking. We've got a broad-based business. I think that's the thing that's been most misunderstood about H-Cure. Very broad-based business, a lot of opportunities to win in markets that are untapped. We've got a long runway in each one of our markets, which says you aren't, as a management team, you aren't just solely focused on one of the areas. Of course, you're thinking about competition. Of course, we spend quite a bit of time on that. And if you have a franchise that's under pressure, like our hybrid business, of course, you're looking at that. It just doesn't take over your entire kind of focus.

You know what the market is like. It likes to drill into one thing obsessively.

I would get that. We understand that.

I totally get it. Angie, thank you so much for spending your time with us. Really appreciate it.

Thanks.

We appreciate being here today.