Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions). Our first question comes from Tao Levy with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.
Tao Levy - Deutsche Bank
A very strong quarter and obviously, it seems like Teen is off to a very strong start. Your kind of tepid outlook for Q4, even though I think it's sequentially up -- is that around more the Teen adoption following the Q3 results, or is it on the GP side?
Tom Prescott
Well, I think there's a couple things. I think Ken highlighted very well the normal seasonality around Teen. We were able to compete for it, got a little bit more. And we're pleased with that. But historically if you look at the ortho starts, they're lumped. You know, 40%-plus of them occur in those months. So we expect a little less upside there. In general, we see the business solid going forward but without some of that uplift we had in Q3 from that seasonality.
Tao Levy - Deutsche Bank
If you look in the quarter, what's also a little bit surprising is to see some of the other products hold steady as a percent, especially Invisalign Express, about 15% of the cases. What's driving the growth with the Express product? We thought that it would taper down a bit.
Tom Prescott
I think we spoke about this a couple calls ago, when the mix for Express was moving around a little bit that our customers are working harder to get patients to start the case. They come in, they want a better smile. They're presenting them with a full range of alternatives. In some cases patients are electing not to undergo full comprehensive treatment, but to work more on the anterior smile and I think that continues. That underscores products like Express hanging in there pretty well.
Tao Levy - Deutsche Bank
Last question on the operating expense side, obviously you're showing very good discipline over there. And even in your guidance you're looking for things to stay kind of sequentially flat there. Is that a set budget, you said kind of like now or at the beginning of the quarter and you kind of stick to it? There isn't too much flexibility? And then, heading -- I know you're not going to give 2010 guidance, but heading into next year, is this sort of the operating margin structure that we should be thinking about for Align?
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