Insulet Corporation Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Insulet Corporation (NASDAQ: PODD) Q1 2025 Earnings Call dated May. 08, 2025

Presentation

Operator

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Insulate Corporation first quarter earnings call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. Later we will conduct a question and answer session and instructions will follow at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press STAR then zero on your touchtone telephone. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, June Lazaroff, Senior Director, Investor Relations

June Lazaroff — Senior Director of Investor Relations

Good afternoon and. Thank you for joining Insulet’s first quarter 2025 earnings call. I would like to welcome Tim Scannel, Chair of our Board of Directors to our call as well as Ashley McAvoy, our new president and Chief Executive Officer. Joining Ashley is Ana Maria Chadwick, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Also joining us for the Q and A portion of today’s call is Eric Benjamin, Chief Product and Customer Experience Officer. Both the replay of this call and the press release with our quarterly results and guidance will be available on the Investor Relations section of our website. Also on our website is our supplemental earnings presentation.

We encourage you to reference that document for a summary of key metrics in business updates. Before we begin, we remind you that certain statements made by Insulet during the course of this call may be forward looking and could materially differ from current expectations. Please refer to the cautionary statements in our SEC filings for a detailed explanation of the inherent limitations of such statements. We will also discuss non GAAP financial measures with respect to our performance including adjusted operating income, adjusted ebitda, adjusted tax rate and constant currency revenue which is revenue growth excluding the effect of foreign exchange.

These measures align with what management uses as supplemental measures in assessing our operating performance from period to period and we believe they are helpful for others as well. Additionally, unless otherwise stated, all financial commentary regarding dollar and percentage changes will be on a year over year reported basis with the exception of revenue growth rates which will be on a year over year constant currency basis. With that I will turn the call over to Tim Scannell, Chair of the Board of Directors.

Tim Scannell — Chair of the Board of Directors

Thank you and good afternoon everyone. It is a pleasure to join today’s call and share our excitement at the Board level for welcoming Ashley McAvoy to insulate as President and CEO. I would also like to thank Jim Hollingshead for his leadership of the company over recent years. Ashley is a battle tested operator who comes to Insulet with a track record of driving durable growth and value creation in market leading businesses. She brings over 15 years of leadership experience at Scaled Consumer Franchises complemented by more than a decade in senior leadership roles at Johnson and Johnson where she successfully restored five multi billion dollar global businesses to above market revenue growth and and competitive margins.

Ashley brings an exceptional combination of strategic vision and operational discipline to insulate. He understands what it takes to lead at scale and do it with speed, accountability and a relentless focus on execution. We appreciate that this transition has raised some questions regarding timing, but we are extremely confident that now is the right time with Insulet positioned for substantial further growth into type 1, type 2 and international markets to bring her leadership to the company. The Insulet team is already executing well as is demonstrated by our recent results and the guidance raised today in moving forward.

Ashley and the Insulet leadership team have the boards both support and confidence to continue driving the company’s strategy to lead with differentiated technology and improve the lives of more people with diabetes globally. We believe Ashley’s leadership will ensure we continue to execute on that strategy, drive performance at global scale and deliver value across our team, partners, customers and shareholders. We are proud of Insulet’s success and performance over time and we look forward to supporting Ashley’s leadership success during Insulet’s next phase of growth. With that, I will turn the call over to Ashley.

Ashley McEvoy — President and CEO

Thank you Tim and good afternoon everyone. Let me start by extending my gratitude especially to our team for the warm welcome. I’m thrilled and honored to join you today on my first earnings call as the new President and CEO of Insulet. I want to share with you my excitement for this opportunity as well as my background and leadership philosophy to drive Insulet to its next chapter of growth and innovation. What excites me most about Insulet is its unique position at the intersection of consumer health and med tech. I come to this business as a seasoned operator with a passion for growing businesses in both the consumer and healthcare sectors.

I have a deep appreciation for the consumer’s increasing role in and healthcare decisions and understanding that it’s especially relevant to a wearable technology like Omnipod. What excites me about med tech today is the incredible progress and innovation towards smarter, less invasive and more personalized solutions. We’re witnessing a shift where technology is improving clinical outcomes and reshaping the patient experience to become more intuitive effortless. I also have a passion for scaling businesses not just in terms of financial performance, but through a relentless focus on growth, innovation and people. That’s what makes this space so energizing. The opportunity to build something that matters and to do it in a way that meets the evolving expectations of Patients, providers and the broader healthcare ecosystem.

Taking input from 2 billion in revenue and 500,000 global patients to have a substantially greater impact will all be about our people, our culture, our innovation agenda and our capabilities. Developing portfolio roadmaps, making strategic capital allocations and executing on our plans will be particularly important as we continue growing within the type 1 market, expand our new type 2 indication and advance globalization. I look forward to working with the team to strengthen our business practices, ensuring that we are operating with agility and sophistication required of a world class leader while maintaining our entrepreneurship and ingenuity. We are already a pioneer in advanced automation.

There’s even more work we can do to invest in and optimize our capabilities globally. Further, we will sharpen our focus on brand activation and direct to consumer strategies, leveraging the power of Omnipod to reach both healthcare professionals and patients directly. We’ll also harness our unique wealth of Data with over 365,000 customers cloud connected today to improve the prescriber and patient experience with Omnipod as we work to improve engagement, retention and outcomes. My leadership philosophy is really centered on three pillars purpose, people and performance. I believe that living our purpose, which is profoundly impactful here at Insulet, serving people within the diabetes community and by empowering our people further, we will deliver superior results.

Insulate is already a standout success story. We are one of the fastest growing businesses in medtech, increasingly profitable and delivering positive free cash flow. This success is driven by winning technology and continued investment in market leading innovation. With significant tailwinds at our back, now is the time to envision what it will take to expand from a med tech platform with emerging global strength to a durable world leader in diabetes management, an engine of profitable growth and cash generation at scale. I plan to dive into our drivers and strategy with the support of our team and board of directors over the coming weeks and months.

In the meantime, I can assure you that our strategic priorities, namely to advance innovation, drive strong growth in the US type 1 and type 2 populations and expand internationally. Our are fully intact as Ana will discuss shortly. We are executing as well as ever, evidenced by 30% growth in the first quarter and a strong set of catalysts ahead as we bring Omnipod 5 to more lives globally. We look forward to giving you a more specific sense of our multi year roadmap during Investor Day when the time’s right. For now, my focus is going to be on learning the fundamental building blocks of this business.

I’m energized by the strength of Insulet’s strategy and power of our differentiated technology and just two weeks in, I’ve hit the ground running with our passionate, talented team. I plan to spend more time with our people, our partners, our customers, our potters, and all of our folks on the manufacturing floors in the days and weeks ahead. I couldn’t be more excited about this journey and the opportunity to share it with all of you. With that, I will turn the call over to ANA to discuss first quarter results and guidance.

Ana Maria Chadwick — Executive Vice President and CFO

Good afternoon. Before I get started, I would like to welcome Ashley to our team and thank Jim Hollingshead for his leadership over recent years. Turning to our first quarter results, we entered the year with terrific momentum and are excited to see that continue. Our team did an outstanding job growing new customer starts on a year over year and sequential basis on both the US and international. Also within the US new customer starts grew for both type 1 and type 2 in the first quarter. Consistent with last quarter, over 85% of our US new customer starts came from MDI.

Also, over 30% of our US new customer starts were type 2. This is proof of the value and simplicity we bring to people living with diabetes. Revenue for the total company was $569 million and grew 30% over prior year. This strong performance was driven by by total omnipod growth of 29% on a reported basis. Foreign currency was an unfavorable impact of 100 basis points. Our estimated global utilization was stable with prior year. Our annualized retention rate remained steady in the US and improved slightly in our international markets. Driven by the launch of Omnipod 5, gross margin was an impressive 71.9% and adjusted operating margin was 16.4%.

I will provide further color on margin later in my remarks, but I would like to take a moment now to discuss tariffs. As the market leader in automated insulin delivery with a global customer base of over 500,000, it is of utmost importance that we continue to provide product to our customers without interruption. We have invested over $1 billion in automation, engineering, quality management and global facility expansion over the last decade. We now have manufacturing sites in the us, China and Malaysia forming a strong diversified position and resilient supply chain. Further, we support the majority of our US Sales through our ACTA Massachusetts facility as true pioneers in advanced automation.

Given our actions and investments, along with the exemption in place for certain medical devices, we are well positioned to manage through these uncertain times and execute our plans while maintaining strong gross margins. Based on latest announcements by US administration, we are estimating an impact of approximately 50 basis points from tariffs to gross margin this year. However, given our unique strength, we are able to more than offset this impact through underlying scale and efficiency. In fact, we are raising our gross margin guidance today. I will provide further details shortly. Now turning back to our first quarter results, US Omnipod revenue grew 26% above the high end of our guidance range driven by strong commercial execution.

As demand for Omnipod 5 continues to build, US Omnipod revenue growth benefited by approximately 700 basis points from a prior year stocking dynamic which we have discussed on previous calls. Partially offsetting that benefit was an approximate 450 basis point headwind related to the timing of rebates which we had anticipated and which we expect to be neutral on a full year basis. We continue to make great progress advancing the Omnipod 5 platform and brand through innovation and reach in the U.S. we are seeing strong adoption of Omnipod 5 with Dexcom’s G7 and early traction with Abbott’s Freestyle Libre 2 sensor.

We continue to receive positive feedback on the Omnipod 5 iOS app with G6. Over 40% of U.S. omnipod 5 eligible customers are now using the iOS app as their preferred connected device, an increase from over 25% in the fourth quarter. Continuing our cascade of launches, we are now deploying a limited market release of iOS with G7, with the full market release expected before the end of the second quarter. We are seeing strong traction from our commercial investments in the US and continue to make great progress on our expansion strategy. To elaborate on key recent investments in the first quarter, we continued growing our sales force to engage more patients and prescribers.

As we augmented our reach into type 2, we have filled all of our expanded sales roles and have trained over 90% of new hires. This team is hard at work to increase the number of US HCPs engaging with type 2 patients and prescribing Omnipod 5 therapy. Today, nearly 25,000 US HCPs are writing scripts for Omnipod 5. This is up over 20% from a year ago and our team is just getting started. Additionally, we are advancing our DTC efforts and driving higher customer conversion, bringing more people into our customer base who express interest in Omnipod5. Turning to international, our team delivered another outstanding quarter, achieving revenue of 36% above the high end of our guidance on a reported basis.

Foreign currency was unfavorable 390 basis points over the prior year. International growth was primarily driven by strong demand for Omnipod 5 and customer base growth, including as we launched in additional markets of note, we recently launched Omnipod 5 in Canada and Switzerland, bringing the total number of international market launches to 13. Next, we look forward to bringing Omnipod 5 to the middle East. We’re also advancing our sensor integration roadmap beginning with the rollout of G7 now live in both the UK and the Netherlands with more markets to come. We have said in the past that the power of Omnipod 5 is that it wins everywhere it goes.

This could not be truer in our first quarter results in addition to our strong revenue growth, we delivered significant gross margin expansion. In the first quarter. Gross margin was 71.9% up 240 basis points, primarily driven by improved manufacturing and supply chain efficiencies and to a lesser extent volume. Operating expenses increased as we continue to invest in our business and pipeline of innovation. A few examples of our recent areas of investment and resulting success include the completion of our Radiance study and its presentation at attd, ongoing enrollment in our STRIPE study, our work to advance sensor integrations and the seamless expansion of our commercial team.

We are also continuing to expand our platform through the limited market release of Omnipod Discover in the US we are in the early stages of leveraging the power of our data to drive further ease of use, engagement and retention. Adjusted operating margin was 16.4% and adjusted EBITDA was 23.5% in the first quarter. Our team is executing well across our growth objectives and reinvestment plans which have together generated meaningful operating leverage. Our first quarter non GAAP adjusted tax rate was 22.6%. During the quarter we took several steps to strengthen and de risk our capital structure. We have successfully issued $450 million senior unsecured notes.

We are using proceeds from these notes along with cash in hand and proceeds from unwinding our capped call options to pay off our convertible notes due in 2026. To date we have extinguished 420 million of the convertible notes and we expect to retire the remaining 380 million by the end of the year. During the quarter we also upsized our revolving credit facility from 300 million to $500 million and extended the maturity from 2028 to 2030. These proactive and strategic actions improve our financial flexibility through greater access to liquidity and lowering our cost of capital. Turning to cash and liquidity, we ended the quarter with approximately $1.3 billion in cash and the full $500 million available under our credit facility.

Now turning to guidance, we are pleased to introduce strong second quarter guidance and raise Our outlook for the full year Given the momentum across our business Starting with our outlook for second quarter revenue, we expect total company second quarter growth of 23 to 26% which aligns with our expected total Omnipod growth. As a reminder, our revenue growth guidance is on a constant currency basis. We assume a 100 basis point favorable impact from foreign currency to total revenue for the second quarter. For US Omnipod we expect second quarter growth of 22 to 25%. For international Omnipod, we expect second quarter growth of 27 to 30%.

On a reported basis, we now assume a favorable foreign currency impact of 500 basis points. Now turning to full year 2025 outlook for the full year, we are raising our total Omnipod revenue growth guidance to a range of 20 to 23% and total company revenue growth guidance to a range of 19 to 22%. We now assume a 100 basis point favorable impact from foreign currency to total revenue for the year. For us Omnipod, we are raising our revenue guidance range to 18 to 21% driven by strong Omnipod 5 adoption. As we continue to grow our brand and reach in type 1 and type 2, we expect demand trends to continue benefiting from our differentiated Omnipod 5 platform relative to MDI.

We remain confident in our expectation for year over year growth in new Customer starts in 2025 and as a reminder, our US growth guidance assumes similar trends in pricing, utilization and retention for 2025 relative to 2024. For international Omnipod, we are raising our revenue guidance to 27 to 30% on a reported basis. We now assume a 200 basis point favorable impact from foreign currency. We expect continued growth in the uk, Germany, France and the Netherlands as those markets benefit from new sensor integrations and customer upgrade from omnipod dash to Omnipod 5. We also expect our newer markets to ramp throughout the year.

We anticipate international new customer starts to grow year over year in 2025. While volume is expected to be the primary driver of our international revenue growth, our guidance assumes a modest benefit from pricing as customers upgrade from omnipod dash to Omnipod 5. Additionally, we are assuming stable utilization trends and based on first quarter performance retention trends improving slightly for 2025 relative to 2024. Turning to gross margin for the full year, we are raising our gross margin guidance to approximately 71%. As mentioned, our full year gross margin guidance now assumes an impact of approximately 50 basis points from tariffs mostly related to production from China.

Given our strong manufacturing position and efficiencies from scale, we’re able to absorb this impact and raise gross margin guidance for the year. From a timing perspective, we now expect gross margin to be roughly stable from the first half to the second half, primarily influenced by timing of tariff impacts for the year. We are also reaffirming our adjusted operating margin guidance of approximately 16.5% which reflects 160 basis points of expansion over prior year. As we previously communicated, our guidance includes plans to continue investing in R and D and sales and marketing. From a timing perspective, consistent with what we communicated last quarter, we expect operating margins to be higher in the second half of the year as compared to the first half as we grow revenue and achieve operating leverage.

As I have emphasized in the past, we have many catalysts for growth in 2025 and considerable opportunities to drive further margin expansion over the near and long term. Even as we make continued investments in our robust innovation pipeline and commercial efforts, we continue to expect to drive over 100 basis point of operating margin expansion annually. Looking at a few items below our operating income, we expect our 2025 net interest expense to be approximately 30 million higher than 2024 and largely due to our recent debt transactions and the renewal of our interest rate swaps for the year, we still expect our non GAAP tax rate to be in the range of 20 to 25%.

We expect the 2025 ending balance of our diluted share count to be around 71 million, which is approximately 5% or 3.5 million shares lower than prior year. In addition, I would like to highlight that our Board of Directors recently authorized a program to repurchase up to 125 million of common stock through December 31, 2026 to offset dilution from stock based compensation. From a cash perspective, we expect to continue to increase our free cash flow over prior year. Annual capital expenditures are expected to be slightly higher versus prior year as we continue to expand and optimize our manufacturing and supply chain operations and support global expansion.

We remain focused on driving growth, margin expansion and increasing profitability and free cash flow as we continue strengthening our overall financial profile and supporting the long term value creation. I will now turn the call back to Ashley.

Ashley McEvoy — President and CEO

Thank you Ana. As we wrap up, I want to reiterate just how excited I am about the future of Insulet. You heard today about our exceptional performance in the first quarter with 30% growth, an impressive 70% plus gross margin, the highest in the diabetes technology space, and our strong operating income and cash flow generation. This performance is a testament to our team, our technology and Our strategy and with well over a billion dollars in cash on our balance sheet, we will continue investing to drive growth and expansion. We are the number one prescribed automated insulin delivery system in the United States and we will continue building significant commercial and brand strength, particularly as we expand our focus on the type 2 market.

Our global launches are gaining momentum and the advantage we hold with Omnipod 5 is undeniable. We’ve also made and will continue to make significant investments in manufacturing and advanced automation, providing us with economies of scale and most importantly, expanding access for more patients around the world. Our pay as you go model has provided a significant first mover advantage of and our relentless focus on innovation and supply chain strength will become increasingly critical differentiators in the long term. We have a strong track record of performance and we are focused on continuing that momentum as we build up commercial capabilities, particularly in type 2 diabetes and as we expand additionally into more global markets.

Our updated 2025 guidance reflects our continued confidence in in the path ahead. Finally, I’d like to take a moment to congratulate Team Insulet. Your passion for improving patients lives, deep commitment to innovation and persistent hard work have brought this company to where it is today and I am thrilled to embark on the next phase of our growth and impact together. Thank you. With that operator, please open the call for questions.

Question & Answers

Operator

Thank you. If you have a question at this time, please press the star then one key on your touchtone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press star one. Again we ask the participants limit themselves to one question and one follow up. As a reminder, the speakers available for Q and A today are Ashley Nakuboy, Ana Chadwick and Eric Benjamin. Our first question comes from Travis Steed from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Travis Steed — Analyst, Bank Of America

Hi everybody and congratulations Ashley, on the new role. I guess I’ll start a question there. Just kind of curious what excited you about the role at Insulet and what you’ve learned the first couple of weeks in the role and how you’re thinking about the vision for the business. I know you’ve kind of talked about taking this business to 4 to 6 billion in revenue and globalizing the business. So just kind of curious your strategy behind that. And then also another important topic is kind of your view on margins and business and how you think about is there going to be a change in the longer term margin targets for this company over time versus kind of the last CEO?

Ashley McEvoy — President and CEO

Yeah. No. Thank you Travis. It’s awesome to be here with some very humbled as well. And I would first start with the space diabetes. Extremely passionate about diabetes. It’s one of the most impactful and innovative rich areas in healthcare and we know it has a vast population that can benefit from better med tech. I come with a huge amount of humility with going to honor my prior two predecessors, both Tracy and Jim. You can see the business has remarkable momentum and as I mentioned, I think that insulin plays at this unique intersection of consumer health and med tech.

And we know that it has the absolute best insulin delivery platform on the market, no question with a highly differentiated form factor and ease of use. So you know, early takeaways I’d say, you know, day nine, unbelievably talented team, very patient, centric. I’ve got over 100 different emails on day one from the Potter community. Walked the Acton plant. Unbelievable. Advanced automation just invested in our line four there. And I would just say listen, the strategy’s intact. I think that the, the company has a very, very clear pathway to go achieve future value creation. And in the near term I think we’re going to honor that strategy because it’s working.

I think. You asked a question Travis, about margin and you’ll hear Anna, this is a very fast growing asset. You heard us talk about raising gross margin and operating margin this year is growing about 160 basis points versus last year and a continuation of continuous operating margin improvement year over year. Thank you for the question, Travis.

Operator

Our next question comes from Robbie Marcus from JP Morgan. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Robbie Marcus — Analyst, JP Morgan

Oh great. And I’ll add my congratulations. Two for me. One. Ashley, maybe just to follow up, there were lots of street notes post published over the past few weeks since you had the meet and greet with the sell side and I felt it inappropriately took away that you were going to focus on the top line at the expense of margin expansion. Just wanted you to have a minute to comment on that specifically given margin expansion and free cash flow has been such a critical part of the story the past few years and then any comments you have on type 2 pump adoption in the US, how the launch is going and how you see that playing out versus expectations.

Thanks a lot.

Ashley McEvoy — President and CEO

No, thank you Robbie. And again I would say that the, you know, the business strategy as well as the financial strategy are going to really remain intact of, you know, double digit growth. You heard Anna mention that continued improvement, you know, 70%, 71% gross margin, continuing improvement on operating margin and that obviously results into very strong free cash flow. So on that I’m going to invite Eric to talk a bit about our Type two what we’re learning.

Eric Benjamin — Chief Product and Customer Experience Officer

Hey Robbie, thanks for the question. We are really pleased with how the Type 2 launch is going and we’re executing the three part strategy that we’ve described. First, we’re bringing the secure T2D data to our current call point and driving activation of our HCP partners in the that call point by just helping them see how impactful Omnipod 5 can be to improve the lives of people who live with type 2 diabetes. That’s going well. Second thing, Anna described our Salesforce expansion. Our US team completed hiring and is about 90% of the way through training those expanded roles.

As a reminder, that brings us to calling on about 40% of the population who live with type 2 insulin intensive diabetes from 30%. So pretty significant expansion in the HCPs that we’re reaching through that salesforce expansion. And our team did a terrific job delivering the quarter while executing those changes. And finally with the indication we’re pleased with how our direct consumer advertising effectiveness is going, we generate tremendous interest in Omnipod with our direct to consumer advertising. And now as folks reach out to us from more information we can serve them and help them get on Omnipod even more effectively.

Those three things together are what drove our new customer start portion. That came from type 2 diabetes over 30% in the quarter from about 25% where it was before we started the launch. So type 2 launch is going great.

Operator

Our next question comes from Jeff Johnson from Baird. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Jeff Johnson — Analyst, Baird

Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. And Ashley, again congratulations on the new role. Just want to ask two modeling questions. I guess when I look at the strength of the US to start the year, obviously nice upside versus I think what most of us were expecting for sure When I look at the guidance for mid 20% growth in the second quarter, you did mid 20% growth in the first quarter and then the guidance for the full year at 18 to 21, you know it would imply a second half kind of in that lower double digits, maybe even below the low.

Sure feels like conservatism there. But is there anything else going on in that back half implied guidance that we should be thinking about differently than how the first half of the year is playing out.

Ashley McEvoy — President and CEO

Jeff, thanks. I’m going to turn to Ana who will comment.

Ana Maria Chadwick — Executive Vice President and CFO

Sure. Hey Jeff, first and foremost we set guidance as you know, with the full intent to deliver. The trends of the business are really strong. We’re only in the first quarter. Especially. In the context of a new CEO transition. Our view is that the rate of the guide here that we did is very strong and we intend to deliver our guide.

Operator

Our next question comes from Larry Begelson from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Larry Begelson — Analyst, Wells Fargo

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question and congratulations, Ashley. It’s nice to reconnect with you. I was going to ask Ashley a big picture question, but I was, you know, surprised to hear, Anna, when you talked about new starts being up quarter over quarter in the first quarter, I think you said in both the U.S. and internationally, you know, looking back at our model, I don’t think we’ve seen new starts up sequentially, you know, in Q1, you know, for many years. So it looks like new start growth was quite strong, you know, on a year over year basis in the first quarter, you know, can you confirm that and any color, you know, on what the drivers of that, you know, strong new start growth were.

Ashley McEvoy — President and CEO

Thank you, thank you, Larry for the warm welcome. And I’ll turn it to Ana.

Ana Maria Chadwick — Executive Vice President and CFO

Great, Larry. Correct. Everything you stated there is correct. We’re seeing significant strength in our new customer starts quarter over quarter, sequential and year over year. I’ll pass it over to Eric to comment a little bit more.

Eric Benjamin — Chief Product and Customer Experience Officer

Hey, Larry, Anna said it. Well, I think what we’re seeing is just the differentiation of Omnipod 5 Pay as you go, wearable, disposable, affordable now with multiple sensor options and iOS phone control and the type 2 indication. It is what customers want. And that’s what we’re seeing in the market. You know, if you just look back over the last four quarters, we’ve grown quarter over quarter as there’s a couple of launches by our tube competitors and it hasn’t affected our business. And so I think, you know, what you’re seeing is just the category that we play in with.

The differentiation of Omnipod 5 is different and that’s what gave us a great quarter.

Operator

Our next question comes from Joanne Wunsch from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Operator

Good evening. Thank you for taking the question and. Absolutely thrilled that you’re in this position. So much to ask, but I really want to spend a minute on gross margins. We’re outside the lrp. I know we’re not going to have an analyst day to the fall, but what is your view of expanding gross and operating margins over the next couple of years and how do you balance those goals with the investments that you need to make to get to that much bigger organization that you have planned? Thank you.

Ana Maria Chadwick — Executive Vice President and CFO

Thanks Joanne, I’ll start here with the gross margin. First of all, we’re extremely pleased. We have in the low 70s here industry leading gross margins and it’s a power to the team.

They continue to execute manufacturing and supply chain efficiencies. We continue to see the strength and as it relates to the up margin, we are reaffirming here that 16.5% which is 160 basis points year over year. Our approach to investing has not changed. We put everything through our rigorous models here and we want to maintain that flexibility as we reach into this new opportunity that it’s really a green field Both in the US type 2, with the little penetration that’s out there, it’s our market to go reach and also as we expand international. So it’s about positioning and continuing our strategy.

Operator

Our next question comes from Patrick Wood from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Patrick Wood — Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Amazing. Thank you so much for taking the question. I’d love to as is a topic, dig into type 2. I’m just curious, you know, what feedback you’re getting from whether it’s the PCPs or the in terms of, you know, the patient flow and journey, you know, is this a multiple visit kind of thing to convince them to switch over or is it happening pretty quickly? You know, are there any sticking points like how’s that journey for the patient, the speed of conversion, I guess relative to how maybe you thought it would be at the start of this journey.

Thanks.

Eric Benjamin — Chief Product and Customer Experience Officer

Hi Patrick, it’s Eric. I can take that one, Patrick. I think the headline is it’s right on our expectations. And there’s, you know, both a healthcare provider side of that and there’s a patient side of it on the healthcare provider side. You know, the first thing that our team is working on is just helping the healthcare providers that we call on appreciate the value of bringing automated insulin delivery to their type 2 patients who use insulin. And that’s the first part is our team has to help them. We’re using the strong clinical data of secure T2D to make that case and we’re having good success.

Success once the healthcare provider is bought in. The journey is pretty similar by and large with what we see with type 1. Our team serves offices really well and there are actually, we’ve heard some heartwarming stories. I was in Pittsburgh last week and an office had just trained an 80 year old woman who initially had a little uncertainty about how she was going to do with the technology. She did tremendously reduced hypoglycemia. Really high time and Range was thrilled and our team was joking that they were going to get her to teach the next training.

So I think what we’re seeing is Omnipod 5 can be used really effectively by people with type 2 diabetes. And our coverage is good and our team does the same kind of work as we do with Type one to just help folks through the journey to get on products and have a great experience.

Operator

Our next question comes from Marie Thibault from btig. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Marie Thibault — Analyst, Btig

Hi, thanks for taking the questions and congrats on a great quarter. Wanted to kind of pick up on what we were just speaking about here and some of the trends that you’re seeing with some of these early type 2 users. I think you said the US guide assumes a similar trend in retention this year as you saw last year, and I’m just wondering what you’re seeing in the early type 2 users. Is retention the same as the type 1 users or is there any risk around that assumption in the guide? Thanks for taking the question.

Eric Benjamin — Chief Product and Customer Experience Officer

Hey Marie, Eric here. I can take that one. So our guide has, as Anna described, so stable retention and stable utilization on a portfolio basis, sort of full company. We are of course watching the really important metrics of utilization and attrition for type 2 as we ramp that launch. And right now they’re behaving just like we expected. So utilization is very similar type 1 to type 2 and retention is a little bit less. So attrition a little bit higher for type 2, but still very strong and again, both consistent with our expectations.

Operator

Our next question comes from Michael Polark from Wolff Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Michael Polark — Analyst, Wolff Research

A question about international and what’s ahead? The Middle east launches for 05 seem interesting to me. When are those expected? And can you remind us what is. The scale of the pod business in the Middle east today and kind of how would you dimensionalize that opportunity for the international franchise? Maybe compared to Germany uk? I don’t know, size it up. How excited are you about that one?

Eric Benjamin — Chief Product and Customer Experience Officer

Thank you. Hey Mike, Eric here. So maybe to hit Middle east first and then we’ll step back and look at the whole international opportunity. Middle east launches we expect sometime between end of 25 and early 26. We’re finalizing the details with local partners and local regulatory authorities. At this point, the majority of folks in our international market have access to Omnipod 5. So the middle east launches are smaller than the launches, are smaller markets than the launches that we’ve done already for Omnipod 5. If we just step back and think about the portfolio of opportunity that we’re pursuing in international.

We’ve really got markets at three different stages. We’ve got markets like the UK and Germany, which are approaching their second anniversary of the Omnipod 5 launch here in June and in August. And in those markets, we’re investing in evidence to help build access, commercial footprint and strength and innovation, all three of those to drive durable, profitable growth on top of the strength we’ve already driven with Omnipod 5. So we’ve built this playbook based on learnings in the us. We’re now applying it to our first two big markets, where we launched first internationally. Our UK team in particular has done a really nice job.

There’s some additional funding that’s just become available and that team is collaborating with Healthcare Systems to ensure that Omnipod 5 is the easiest option for folks, which has been terrific. So that playbook we’ve built, applying it now to UK and Germany, we’ve got other markets like France and Netherlands that are still sort of getting through the Omnipod 5 launch. We’ve got the nine countries we just launched at the beginning of 2025 that will be in launch mode all year. And as those start to mature, we’ll apply that same playbook for durable, profitable growth evidence to build access, commercial footprint and continued innovation.

So, as a reminder, international is about three and a half million people who live with type 1 diabetes. It’s only 20 to 25% penetrated. And so we’ve got a long Runway of continuing to improve lives with Omni Cloud.

Operator

Our next question comes from Matt o’ Brien from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Matt o’ Brien

Thank you so much for taking that question. I would love to just stay on this market acceleration topic for a second. Q1 has been really good for pretty much everybody that’s reported so far. And I guess the thing I’m curious about is what really is driving that? And I think about this industry. You know, type was kind of stuck at 25% penetration forever. It’s now up to about 45% in terms of pump utilization, whatever it is. Like eight years later, it’s about 20% increase or 20, 20 point increase in, you know, in utilization in type ones.

Can we get that kind of growth in the type 2 market over the same kind of timeframe? Can we go from 5% to 25% over the next, I don’t know, seven to eight years? And what would stop us from doing that? Thanks.

Eric Benjamin — Chief Product and Customer Experience Officer

Hey, Matt, thanks for the question. Look what We’ve said is that we see that type 2 penetration today is around 5%. And as a reminder, we’ve said we think that can somewhere between double and triple. Look, we are still quite early in the Type 2 launch and that launch is building and right now we’re making that market and so we need another few quarters to know how fast market penetration is really going to drive, really going to go. What we know is we’re on our plan, we’re executing well and we’re continuing to build the launch, which is great.

We also see the same thing that I think you were describing, which is that there’s been this technology renaissance in Type one that has helped accelerate penetration. And that same technology renaissance does apply to type 2. And this is sort of what we’re seeing in these early experiences in our Type 2 launch is that HCPs are really happy with the life changing impact. Both HCPs and PWDs are really happy with the Life Changing impact of Omnipod 5 for the folks who really need it who live with insulin intensive type 2 diabetes. So we have strong reason to believe we’re going to get there just too early for us to call the pace.

Operator

Our next question comes from Steve Lichtman from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Steve Lichtman — Analyst, Oppenheimer

Thank you. Congratulations, Ashley. And congratulations on the quarter. You talked about the continued Progress in type 2 and you highlighted the expanded commercial salesforce. Can you double click on the DTC efforts? You know, how deep are you into that work? Can you talk about sort of any return that you’ve seen on some of the DTC programs that you have put in place? Any more color overall on that effort would be helpful. Thanks.

Ana Maria Chadwick — Executive Vice President and CFO

Great. I’ll start with that one. And we’re super excited with the dtc. As we’ve talked about before, the same advertising that we put out there is now more efficient. It’s seen by people who now we can lean in and do those sales. What we’re seeing is not only more leads but also our ability to convert those leads. So we’re seeing higher conversion. We’re very excited. We continue to lean in into our DTC and we have that built into our guidance and our plan here.

Operator

Our next question comes from Bill Plavonic from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Bill Plavonicx — Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Hi, great. Thank you for taking the question. This is Zachary on from Bill today. Have you reaped any benefits of Abbott’s partnership with Epicara and can you give any details about what that partnership looks. Like is, you know Is there a. CGM being listed in the dropdown menu? Just what are you seeing there?

Eric Benjamin — Chief Product and Customer Experience Officer

Hi Zachary, thanks for the question. It’s Eric. I’m not familiar with the details of how their partnership with EPIC shows up in offices.

Operator

Our next question comes from Izzy Kirby from Redburn Atlantic. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Izzy Kirby — Analyst, Redburn Atlantic

Hey, good evening. Thanks so much for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the Malaysia ramp and the extent to which that impacted gross margins at all this quarter. And then just on manufacturing and capacity with respect to Paris. Would love to get updated thoughts on your volumes that are coming out of China. Any thoughts on potentially repositioning those to. Malaysia or Akron perhaps over the next few years? Thanks so much.

Ana Maria Chadwick — Executive Vice President and CFO

Thanks, Izzy. I’ll take that. Malaysia starting there is right on track. We have talked about being accretive to margins in the first year of operations and that will happen here as we move into the third quarter of this year. So we’re excited and the performance is strong from a tariff perspective. As I indicated, we are under the exemption for Medtech. So there are certain component parts and supply chain components that we bring in that are impacted and we expect a small amount of impact. 50 basis points here for 2025. And on top of that we had guided at the beginning of the year at 70.5% gross margin.

We have raised that gross margin to 71% including absorbing the 50 basis points points of tariff impact that we’re currently estimating. So the operations are going really well, the team is performing well and we’re very excited by having industry leading gross margins that we have.

Operator

This will conclude our Q and A section. I would now like to turn the conference Back to Ashley McEvoy.

Ashley McEvoy — President and CEO

Thank you so much for the warm welcome everyone for spending time with us tonight. Clearly we had a very strong quarter and I would just wrap that. I think you’ve heard that the strategy is intact and we are going to continue driving robust growth and doing so profitably on a global scale. And this company is all about having patients front and center. So my big acknowledgment to the insulent team and thank you for joining us tonight.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference. Thank you for your participation. Have a wonderful day and you may all disconnect it.