Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line Jon Wood with Bank of America Securities.
Jon Wood – Bank of America Securities
Jost, could you give us a feel if new user interest in CEREC in the United States is picking up and then specifically did the price increase at the end of January catalyze new orders ahead of that event?
Jost Fischer
First of all we are encouraged from what we hear from our distributors and what we see in the field about interest in our CAD/CAM offerings. While we don’t talk about our January at this point in time we have not announced any pricing increase before January. We saw encouraging updates also in orders in the quarter that we are talking about but at the time when the price increase was not known in the market. Certainly as we do follow price increases frequently once a year there is usually some up tick ahead of our price increase on a general basis.
Jon Wood – Bank of America Securities
Has the reception towards to Compact milling unit the CEREC three has that changed at all in the US over the last few months?
Jost Fischer
Last summer when we took down our guidance we saw reasons because we didn’t sell a lot of those compact units as we thought we would that has now changed. As we have offered or Patterson has offered a discount of pricing to the Compact milling unit after a while it gained traction and as you know we wanted to give an offering to dentists that do not want to pay the sticker price of a regular CEREC in office system and we want to give him the opportunity to enter the market at a lower price range and I think this policy is gaining more and more traction.
Jeffrey Slovin
I would just add, Jost, you are exactly right in December and as well as January we are seeing the Compact pick up. I think there was slowness and I think the dual product strategy is working much better now as we see a differential in the price increase.
Jon Wood – Bank of America Securities
Just to make sure, the price on the Compact milling unit hasn’t been lowered, it’s just that the price on the new milling unit the MC XL has gone up, correct? There is a bigger differential in the price at this point.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
