LMAT - NASDAQ
LeMaitre Vascular, Inc.
LMAT·NASDAQ
$91.64
+0.24%HealthcareMedical - Instruments & Supplies
LeMaitre Vascular, Inc. designs, markets, sells, services, and supports medical devices and implants for the treatment of peripheral vascular disease worldwide. It offers angioscope, a fiberoptic catheter used for viewing the lumen of a blood vessel; embolectomy catheters to remove blood clots from arteries or veins; occlusion catheters that temporarily occlude the blood flow; perfusion catheters to perfuse the blood and other fluids into the vasculature; and thrombectomy catheters, which features a silicone balloon for removing thrombi in the venous system. The company also provides carotid shunts that temporarily shunt the blood to the brain during the removal of plaque from the carotid artery in a carotid endarterectomy surgery; and radiopaque tape, a medical-grade tape applied to the skin that enables interventionists to cross-refer between the inside and the outside of a patient's body, and allows them to locate tributaries or lesions beneath the skin. In addition, it offers valvulotomes, which cut or disrupt valves in the saphenous vein to function as an artery to carry blood past diseased arteries to the lower leg or the foot; and vascular grafts to bypass or replace diseased arteries. Further, the company provides vascular and cardiac patches, which are used for closure of vessels after surgical intervention; and closure systems to attach vessels to one another with titanium clips instead of sutures. It markets its products through a direct sales force and distributors. The company was formerly known as Vascutech, Inc. and changed its name to LeMaitre Vascular, Inc. in April 2001. LeMaitre Vascular, Inc. was incorporated in 1983 and is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts.
At a Glance
Live SnapshotMarket Cap$2.09B
EPS2.5500
P/E Ratio35.94
Earnings Date08/04/2026
Earnings Call Transcript
LMAT • 2026 • Q1
Operator
Welcome to the LeMaitre Vascular Q1 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. As a reminder to everyone, today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Dorian LeBlanc, Chief Financial Officer of LeMaitre Vascular. Please go ahead, sir.
Dorian LeBlanc
Thank you. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us on our Q1 2026 conference call. With me on today's call is our CEO, George LeMaitre, and our President, Dave Roberts. Before we begin, I'll read our safe harbor statement. Today, we'll be making some forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the accuracy of which is subject to risks and uncertainties. Wherever possible, we will try to identify those forward-looking statements by using words such as believe, expect, anticipate, pursue, forecast, and similar expressions. Our forward-looking statements are based on our estimates and assumptions as of today, May 5, 2026, and should not be relied upon as representing our estimates or views on any subsequent date.
Dorian LeBlanc
Please refer to the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking information and the risk factors in our most recent 10-K and subsequent SEC filings, including disclosure of the factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. During this call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, such as organic sales growth. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP measures discussed in this call are contained in the associated press release and, if applicable, in supplemental materials, both of which are available in the investor relations section of our website, www.lemaitre.com. I'll now turn the call over to George LeMaitre.
George LeMaitre
Thanks, Dorian. Q1 featured 11% sales growth, a 72.7% gross margin, and 42% EPS growth. Grafts were up 20%, valvulotomes 15%, and carotid shunts 11%, as each category posted record sales. Our 3 geographies also posted record sales. EMEA was up 20%, APAC 18%, and the Americas 7%. Artegraft has become our largest product, and we're investing in its growth in 3 ways. Number 1, filing more international approvals. Number 2, making longer sizes available for leg bypasses. Number 3, proving Quick Stick claims for AV access. Worldwide Artegraft sales grew 36% in Q1. International Artegraft sales in Q1 were $2.1 million, and we expect 2026 sales to be $10 million versus $4 million in 2025.
George LeMaitre
Health Canada has approved Artegraft, and the launch is now planned for H2 2026 as we finalize Canadian-specific packaging validations. Additional Artegraft approvals are expected in 2027 for Korea, Brazil, Vietnam and India. We're also working to make longer autografts available. Because European surgeons use autografts for leg bypasses, our longest Artegraft, which is 50 centimeters, is now in high demand, and we know we could sell longer sizes. Unfortunately, our current packaging tube is just 53 centimeters long. The first step is to gain approval for a longer tube, and we plan to make these filings in the U.S. and Europe in H2 2026. First sales of these longer autografts could start in H2 2027. Separately, we've made a pre-submission filing to the FDA as we seek Quick Stick AV access claims on autografts U.S. labeling.
George LeMaitre
This pre-submission will help us collaborate with the FDA to develop the pathway for a PMA filing or to design a clinical trial. While Artegraft's current U.S. labeling restricts cannulation to 10 days after implantation, peer-reviewed literature indicates that Artegraft can be cannulated 1-3 days after implantation. RestoreFlow grew 25% in Q1, led by strong U.S. results. We currently distribute tissues in 3 countries: the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. German implants should begin in Q2, and we now expect to receive Irish approval in H2. Our Irish warehouse opened in April, and we'll begin shipping our core medical devices starting in June as we await an audit from the Human Tissue Act. This audit should enable tissue distribution from our Dublin warehouse to Irish hospitals in H2. Long term, this warehouse will be used for Pan-European distribution.
George LeMaitre
We filed for Australian approval in April. We plan to file in Austria, Holland, Belgium, Spain, and Switzerland in 2026. As for our RestoreFlow facility transfer, tissue processing is ramping up in Burlington. We should complete the project by year-end. We ended Q1 with 158 sales reps, up 3% year-over-year. We plan to end 2026 with 170-180. We currently have 16 open requisitions for new reps, mostly in the U.S. We ended Q1 with 35 RSMs and country managers, up 13% year-over-year. We expect to go direct in Poland in Q4. This project will include an office, warehouse, a GM, customer service team, and several reps. Poland will be our 32nd direct country.
George LeMaitre
Higher ASPs, geographic expansion, and disciplined spending produced 11% sales growth and 42% EPS growth in Q1. Full year 2026 also shows op leverage. Increased guidance implies 12% sales growth and 26% EPS growth. Our new 2030 goals are posted on the walls of all LeMaitre conference rooms. We call them the 20/30 planks, and our playbook remains simple: produce quality devices, build our sales force, go direct in new countries, acquire niche products, and focus on profitability, cash flow, and dividends. I'll now turn the call over to Dorian.
Dorian LeBlanc
Thanks, George. Organic sales growth of 10% over Q1 2025 was driven by average selling price increases of 8% and unit growth of 2%. Unit growth was impacted by a lower than average quarter in our distribution business, which can be lumpy. Excluding distribution, direct sales grew 12.8% organically, comprised of 8.4% price and 4.4% units. Total organic revenue growth excludes a $2 million foreign exchange benefit in Q1 2026 and $1.5 million of Aziyo distribution sales in Q1 2025. These two items largely offset one another. We discontinued Aziyo distribution in May 2025. In Q1 2026, we posted a gross margin of 72.7%. The 350 basis point year-over-year improvement was driven primarily by higher ASPs and manufacturing efficiencies.
Dorian LeBlanc
Our Q2 gross margin guidance of 72.1% reflects the impact of our new Billerica warehouse and the manufacturing transfer of our RestoreFlow processing to Burlington. Operating expenses in Q1 2026 were $30.6 million, an increase of 6% versus Q1 2025. Despite the continued expansion of the sales force, overall company headcount decreased 3% from 662 at March first, 2025 to 641 at March thirty-first, 2026. Q1 2026 operating income increased 41% year-over-year to $17.8 million, with an operating margin of 27% compared to 21% in Q1 2025. Fully diluted earnings per share were $0.68, up 42% benefiting from strong operating income and an improved effective tax rate. We believe our effective tax rate will remain lower than our historical rates.
Dorian LeBlanc
Given the strong growth in high-margin international Artegraft sales and our overall geographic sales mix, a larger share of our income qualifies for the foreign-derived intangible income or FDII deduction, which structurally lowers our tax rate. Excluding the discrete items in this quarter, we expect an 80 basis point improvement from historical effective tax rate due to the higher FDII deductions, another benefit of our U.S. manufacturing footprint. Cash from operations generated $15 million in Q1 2026 as compared to $9 million in Q1 2025. We paid $5.7 million in dividends to our shareholders during the quarter. We ended Q1 2026 with $367 million in cash and securities, an increase of $8 million in the quarter. The LeMaitre playbook continues to drive broad-based revenue growth supported by our differentiated products, direct-to-hospital model, and strong commercial organization.
Dorian LeBlanc
We are affirming our full-year revenue guidance of $280 million, representing 12% organic growth. We are increasing our annual guidance for gross margin to 72.3% and operating to $79.8 million, representing 24% growth over adjusted 2025 operating income. We are also increasing annual guidance for diluted earnings per share to $3 or 26% growth from adjusted 2025. Historically, Q2 has been one of our strongest quarters, and we're expecting revenue of $71.5 million and an operating margin of 30%. Our current guidance assumes a constant euro/U.S. dollar exchange rate of 1.17 and no dilutive impact from our convertible debt. For additional details, please see today's press release. We'd like to welcome Keith Hinton from Freedom Capital Markets to the call. Keith initiated coverage on LeMaitre on March 31st. With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator for questions.
Operator
Thank you. At this time, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by as we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Keith Hinton from Freedom Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Keith Hinton
Great. Thank you. Thanks for taking the question. I have kind of a high-level question here on the pricing side of things. You know, EMEA has been growing faster than the U.S. for a few years. You know, it's my assumption that the prices there start lower and there's less ability to take price over time. Considering that kind of balanced against the ongoing mix shift towards grafts where it seems like you do have good pricing leverage in the U.S., just how should we think about the high sustainability of high single-digit funded pricing increases in the out years?
George LeMaitre
Hi, Keith. This is George LeMaitre. Again, welcome to your firm for covering the company, and also welcome to the call in terms of asking about price increases and the sustainability. It's a question you can imagine we get frequently. We feel very comfortable with what's going on here. We have another year where I think we're validating all the way into Q1 that we're able to get these price increases. We got 8% in Q1. Did you want me to distinguish between European pricing flexibility and U.S. pricing flexibility? Was that part of your question?
Keith Hinton
Yes. That would be terrific. Thank you.
George LeMaitre
I would say it's not exactly answering it, but on that topic, I would say the floors, the pricing floors we put in are largely in and installed in the United States in about 55% of our products. Then we change them from year to year, of course. In Europe, I still think we have a little room to go. I think only about 40% of our products have pricing floors. You can do more. You can add pricing floors to more of the different products over there. Also, in Europe, I think it takes longer for prices to really get installed since, particularly in Southern Europe, a lot of the stuff is sold on 3-year tenders, you can only change your price once every 3 years.
George LeMaitre
You change it, and then it takes three years for it to fully get implemented. I hope that makes sense to you. Maybe a little more room over in Europe, given the fact that we're not as price floored over there and that it takes longer once you get to a price hike, it takes longer to get to.
Keith Hinton
Understood. Great. Just one specific, again, apologies if I missed this, but can you talk a little bit about the performance for patches in the quarter? I know there was a bit of a tough comp there. You were lapping some supply issues for a competitor, and I think that was the last quarter of Elutia. Just talk a little bit about that and how we should think about patches growth going forward.
George LeMaitre
Right. I can pull out. It was not such a great quarter for patches. XenoSure was up 5%. That's the core patch. I can get you in a second if you stand by, I can get you the full patch category. If anyone in the room has that, we can do that. XenoSure is the main piece of all this. I'm getting closer here, Keith. I should know this off the top of my head. Let's see. That's not gonna help me. One second, I can do it. Organic growth for the whole category was 2.3% for the quarter. Again, 5% for XenoSure, and 2.3% for the whole category patches.
Keith Hinton
Excellent. Thank you so much.
George LeMaitre
Hope that worked. Yep, no problem.
Operator
Thank you.
George LeMaitre
We're having some audio problem, you know.
Operator
Okay. I can hear you very well at the moment.
George LeMaitre
Great.
Operator
Our next-
George LeMaitre
I think we lost you for a little while. Yep.
Operator
Oh, I'm so sorry. Our next question is coming from the line of Michael Petusky from Barrington Research. Your line is now open, Michael.
Michael Petusky
Okay. Thank you. Good evening. George, I guess, I'm curious, with the stuff of the last, I guess 2 months in the Middle East, are you guys seeing any impact from that either just in terms of customers that you may have in that part of the world or just in general in terms of the cost of transporting things and so on and so forth? Just wondering, any impact from sort of the international problems. Thanks.
George LeMaitre
Sure. We have a very concrete topic about that, but it's not large. We weren't able to ship $175,000 worth of export towards the Middle East at the end of the quarter. We ended the quarter Q1 without having shipped that. In general, Mike, I would say, no, we're not really being bothered by this. This is a big topic for everyone in the world, but for our little world, LeMaitre Vascular, so far, we've been okay. Probably as time goes by, the supply chain will put extra costs on us for transportation and things like that. I would say for now, you know, we're crossing fingers and toes, and I think things are okay for us vis-à-vis what's going on in Iran.
Michael Petusky
Okay, great. I don't know if Dave's there, but if he is, I'd love an update on M&A, any commentary he has there. Thanks.
Dave Roberts
Hi, Mike. Yeah, it's Dave. Nice to hear your voice.
Michael Petusky
Thanks.
Dave Roberts
Yeah. You know, we're out hunting, we're active. We've put out 2 or 3 term sheets so far this year. The hunting ground remains the same of open vascular, where there are a couple dozen targets in cardiac surgery, which of course is about 12% of the revenue, and the revenue sweet spot stays in that sort of $15 million-$150 million, give or take. We do look smaller, we do look bigger. Certainly we have cash and dry powder to execute. We're just trying to find a good target that's the right fit at the right price.
Michael Petusky
Has, you know, obviously you guys were, you know, pretty active for a long time. In the last five years or so it has, you know, been less so. Have you guys, other than maybe looking bigger, I mean, have you guys changed the approach at all in terms of hurdle, you know, internal hurdle rates or anything like that? Or is it just, hey, we're waiting for our pitch and we just aren't seeing our pitch?
Dave Roberts
I would say we haven't really changed it. I mean, obviously the last sizable acquisition we did was Artegraft, which was almost six years ago. We did a very small one acquisition, which, you know, some people might have missed in December. It was just a few hundred thousand of revenue over in Europe.
Michael Petusky
Right. Yep.
Dave Roberts
High level, no, I mean, I would say since Artegraft, we did that, and it was COVID, and then we're integrating, but we've been hunting. I think, you know, one factor is that there just aren't that many targets left in open vascular, so that's piece A. Piece B is, you know, I think it's taken us a little while to sharpen our focus in cardiac surgery, and I feel like we're there now, which is why I think you hear me saying we're fairly active with respect to making these non-binding offers. We're out there and, yeah, I mean, on the one hand, you know, I'm fully cognizant of the amount of cash we have, but I've done enough bad acquisitions to know that you're really better off waiting for your pitch. We're waiting for our pitch.
George LeMaitre
Mike-
Michael Petusky
All right. Fair enough.
George LeMaitre
Maybe a small add to that from George.
Michael Petusky
Sure.
George LeMaitre
I think in the last six years since we did the last big acquisition in June of 2000, I do think, and I think I mentioned this on one of these calls, I think we've gotten more self-confident about our ability to grow this company organically. The last three or five years, the stock price has moved a lot based on organic growth. When you prove that to yourself that you can run a business organically that well, you start feeling less pressure to do acquisitions. I think maybe that sort of implicitly made the bar go up a little bit as well.
Michael Petusky
All right. Makes sense. Thanks, guys.
Operator
Thank you.
George LeMaitre
Thanks a lot, Mike.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Sarcone of Jefferies. Your line is now open.
Michael Sarcone
Good afternoon, thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to start, you know, George, you opened up the call talking about some opportunities and growth drivers for Artegraft. Wanted to hone in on the Quick Stick claim. Maybe, you know, was hoping you could help us frame the volume opportunity. I believe GORE ACUSEAL is kind of the primary competitor there. You know, help us frame the opportunity for what you could gain in share or volume growth if you did get the Quick Stick claim.
Dave Roberts
Mike, it's Dave Roberts. I'm gonna jump in on this, and George can add color. Yeah, you're right in identifying the GORE ACUSEAL. Whenever you buy a GORE-TEX raincoat, you support ACUSEAL. There's that. Then, you know, there are Flixene, there are other Quick Stick grafts on the market. Of course, Quick Stick really is focused on dialysis access, and not peripheral bypass. Artegraft, it's funny. Over in Europe, as George mentioned, it's being used primarily for peripheral bypass. A Quick Stick indication, unless the Europeans take up using grafts as part of their algorithm for dialysis access, the Quick Stick feature will really just help us in the U.S. Last year, our Artegraft sales in the U.S. were around $40 million.
Dave Roberts
You know, we don't really speak in TAMs too much around here. You know, do we think that Quick Stick will expand our sales of Artegraft? We do. Because we see these competitors, we know there's a market. You know, but we feel also like this regulatory path is long for us. It could be 2 years, but it could be 5 or 6 years. We know the market is big enough that it completely justifies us investing the dollars to pursue that indication. In terms of exactly how much bigger we expect the market to be, I don't think we're prepared to say that. We do think it will be materially bigger than our U.S. Auto Graft sales today, but beyond that, I'm not so sure, we're ready to say exactly how much bigger.
Michael Sarcone
Got it. That's helpful. Thanks, Dave. I guess just another one on Artegraft, just about the, you know, the 53 centimeters, the longer length. How much I guess I'm trying to figure out what does that do for pricing for you? You know, obviously, as George mentioned, one of the central focuses here is sustainability of pricing. You know, what kind of ASP bump do you get as you elongate the length of some of these grafts?
George LeMaitre
I think there's a good market out there, and we've proven it with our Omniflow II product, which we've had out there for five or eight years now. That's the ovine-based device out there, Mike. When we get to the longer Auto Graft, and we'll get there at some point, we've already proven the 50 centimeter has significantly premium pricing versus the rest of the entire Auto Graft portfolio of catalog numbers, if you will, the other lengths. I would say when you get up to 53, 55, 58, you are going to be able to get into premium pricing there. As good as possible.
George LeMaitre
Some other good news is that when we went into Europe, our manager over there put pricing above the American pricing, which is kind of rare, and it seems to be working. I You know, should be nice gross margin devices when we get there.
Michael Sarcone
Great. Thank you.
George LeMaitre
Thank you.
Dorian LeBlanc
This is Dorian. Thanks for the question. You know, the 350 basis points year over year, it's largely the pricing. It's also driven by some positive mix. You know, we talked about the distribution business being down a little bit. That's a lower margin business overall. We also talked about, you know, the success of Artegraft, and that's a very high margin business. That price and that positive mix helped to that 350. The manufacturing efficiencies, you know, we've talked about this on several calls now, and, you know, it's hard to identify really one single individual thing that we've done in the operations.
Dorian LeBlanc
You know, other than really maybe the theme of consolidating here in Massachusetts, which we do think long term gives us a better operational efficiencies. We have seen, you know, really good You know, Trent G. Kamke who runs our Operations, Ryan H. Connelly on our engineering team, you know, Andrew Hodgkinson, who runs Quality Regulatory, I think have done a nice job of just building a culture of continuous improvement here. We've seen that come through in a lot of just discrete, you know, what you'd call lean or Kaizen projects. Maybe the best way to, you know, articulate it is at the end of 2023, we had 211 direct labor employees in the company. At the end of 2025, we had 175.
Dorian LeBlanc
We continue to increase the number of devices that we're manufacturing, and we can continue to do it with, you know, fewer and fewer direct labor heads. That's really a result of these, you know, automation projects, these lean Kaizen type projects. You know, we've also elsewhere in the cost structure, tried to drive cost out over the last year. We did do some initiatives around freight and logistics in the back half of last year that really helped margins. We have been building out that footprint of warehouses across Europe in particular, where we used to ship all the products from our German facility in Salzburg to cover the European customers. We now have operations with warehouses in Switzerland, in Italy, in Spain, in France, in the U.K.
George LeMaitre
You know, I think material here is that we have a 30% op margin coming at us in Q2, which is historically one of our better sales quarters. That one's a little bit more obvious. You know, 29%, I don't know, what do we have keyed in here for the back half? 29 for the H2. That implies H2 at 29%, but we're not splitting the quarters exactly right now. I hope that's cleaning up. I mean, 30 is very close to 29, so it's a nice exit rate in any event. What are we at this quarter? We're at 27 right now, so, you know, a little bit better.
George LeMaitre
Thanks, Will.
George LeMaitre
Right. That's a good question. You know, I would say The Artegraft thing happened so suddenly, it sort of took front and center stage at the company last year and then this year. I think RestoreFlow is kinda not as much focused from a regulatory perspective, but I think now the focus is on that, these things will start coming soon. I would say it's been a little bit slow to start with, that we should see it speed up as we get more regulatory focus on that product line. Also, in Germany, we got the approval, if you remember, in October, we have not done 1 implant yet, we're still sort of building our supply of quote-unquote German approved items, they're slightly different technical reasons.
George LeMaitre
Thanks, Annie.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Danny Stauder from Citizens JMP. Danny, your line is now open.
Danny Stauder
Yeah, great. Thanks for the questions. just my first one on autografts. specifically on the point on making the longer sizes for leg bypass. Could you talk about this decision? I mean, it sounds like it's higher dollar in terms of the sell point, and maybe it's more common in Europe, but are there any more recent trends from vascular surgeons that you're seeing that's leading to higher demand for these longer sizes? I guess in summation, the question is why now and why are you pursuing this at this point? Thank you.
George LeMaitre
Right. You know, I think it's always been very clear to our European colleagues that a 50 centimeter wasn't gonna make them happy, and that it just barely qualified for what we'll call fem-pop bypasses, which is just below the knee. They've always told us, "Yeah, we can sell a 50, but George, we want 60s and 58s and 53s, just like you provide us with that Omniflow II graft." Again, I'm talking again about what I said. We sell ovine Omniflow II over there, and they're longer, and that's the market. They don't really do AV access in general in Europe. In the U.S., where we sell mostly AV access Artegraft, 50 centimeters has always been sufficient for the whole entire history of this device. We figured, "Oh, let's get going in Europe," we always knew.
George LeMaitre
This has been a project that's been on our drawing board for a while, but it's starting to get real now that we've got that CE mark.
Dave Roberts
I would add, Danny, this is Dave Roberts. The backdrop, you know, if a patient has peripheral vascular disease, especially distally, you know, down the calf towards the foot, the smaller diameter the artery, the more likely it is that an endovascular intervention, whether it's an angioplasty or stent or atherectomy or whatever you have, isn't going to be durable over the long haul. That's why we always see with our valvulotome, a long bypass is what surgeons want to do. With our allografts here in the U.S. and in Canada and the U.K., we've always seen the most demand for the longest allograft. Clinically, there's a very good reason for it. As George said, you know, for us, our U.S. Artegraft business has been mostly dialysis access.
Dave Roberts
It's only since we got into Europe, where they're really adopting it for peripheral, that it's highlighted the need for a longer Artegraft.
Danny Stauder
That's really helpful. Just following up on that line of questioning, just in terms of the market opportunity, how much would approvals here expand your total addressable market for this business? Like, are there certain procedures that this unlocks? It sounds like it might be more so in Europe, but any more detail on patient population sizing or growth here would be great in terms of what this could offer you. Thank you.
George LeMaitre
Right. The answer is, we've given you a TAM, and I think we upped it the last time we met at $30 million for biologic grafts in Europe or international rather, OUS, let's call it. That always included the ovine graft, and we sold something like $6 million last year of ovine, and we plan to sell $10 million worth of this bovine graft Artegraft, so that's 16 of the 30 TAM. It's a little complex. In knowing that we're already selling ovine for the distal bypasses, for these longer bypasses, we already felt that was part of the TAM. In the very short run, does this affect our TAM of $30 million? No. Though we should think about it for a while and come back to you guys on it. In the short run, no, let's stay with $30 million as the TAM.
Danny Stauder
Great. Appreciate it. Sorry for making it more complex than it needs to be. Thanks a lot.
George LeMaitre
Not at all.
Operator
Thank you.
George LeMaitre
Thank you very much.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nathan Treybeck from Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.
Nathan Treybeck
Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. you know, just thinking about capital allocation, I guess as we think about your opportunity set, either organically or through M&A, are there any product categories you would call out in open vascular, open cardiac where, you know, you're seeing outsized momentum or maybe strategic under investment?
Dave Roberts
I mean, for us, Nathan, this is Dave, it's a great question. I think, you know, the first level consideration is, you know, open vascular versus open cardiac. For us, open vascular is still the center of the fairway. Like I've said, there are limited target set in open vascular. When you get to cardiac, we're generally steering away from capital equipment. Never say never, the more important attribute for us is the niche market. George emphasized that when he rattled off, I think five of the key tenets of the LeMaitre playbook. We're looking for these niche-y markets where we can acquire into a leadership position. We really like physician preference items that are differentiated, that the surgeons are going to gravitate towards over time.
Dave Roberts
You know, the cardiac surgery market devices is, I would say at least 4 times the size of the open vascular surgery market. There are a lot of targets there. I'm not gonna get specific for obviously competitive strategic reasons about the targets we're interested in, but there are plenty of these interesting niches where that we could acquire into, and then hopefully, they would exhibit the same financial characteristics over time that our organic products are these days.
Nathan Treybeck
Thanks for that. How are you thinking about the RestoreFlow German launch in Germany? How are you thinking about the ramp and the contribution to growth this year?
George LeMaitre
I mean, this is George again. It's all baked in a guidance, but I think we're being quite cautious with what we're baking into guidance because we don't know. We've had one European launch over there, and it went fantastic. It was the U.K. But, you know, we haven't seen it yet. We have less supply. We didn't have supply issues the last time. The American and the British, what the Americans and the British accepted for acceptable tissue was the same, so we didn't have a distinction. Now, we have a distinction. Every single tissue that we send to Germany has to be sort of German qualified, if you will. We've had a slower. We don't know. We've got very cautious numbers baked in a guidance. We shall see. Maybe there's a little upside for everyone in this launch.
Nathan Treybeck
Okay. If I could squeeze one more in. you know, as we think about your guidance philosophy, I mean, we see 10% organic growth and there was this distribution dynamic in Q1. Your guidance implies an acceleration through the rest of the year. I guess, how de-risked is this guidance at this point?
George LeMaitre
I mean, one, if you look at tough comps, easy comps, I think the summer quarter is an easy quarter to beat up on. You have that going for you. In general, maybe even Q4 is something that we can do better than what we had here. You know, you look at our guidance history, I think, Dave, what do we hit, like 77% of the quarters for a sales guidance. We have it written on the Investor prezo out there. I think it's something like that, Nathan. You know, this is like our 78th call, so we're getting better and better at doing guidance, I think. Yeah, there's always risk.
George LeMaitre
I don't think you would accuse us of sandbagging if we're only quote-unquote, only making it 75% of the time. We try to give you the best, the right number, and then we, you know. We chase it too. We'll chase those numbers. They mean a lot to us.
Nathan Treybeck
Thanks for that.
George LeMaitre
Yep.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jim Sidoti from Sidoti & Company. Your line is now open.
Jim Sidoti
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Can you tell me what the operating cash and the capital expenditures were in the quarter?
Dorian LeBlanc
Sure. This is Dorian. Jim, cash from operations was $15.1 million, and the CapEx was $2.8 million.
Jim Sidoti
Okay. You talked about the consolidation of the Chicago plant. Is that something you expect to be done by the end of this year?
George LeMaitre
Yes.
Jim Sidoti
Okay. Then I feel like I'd be missing something if I didn't ask an Artegraft question on the call. It seems like that's the topic of the day. You brought up Korea, Brazil, Vietnam, India. When do you expect those approvals?
George LeMaitre
2027.
Jim Sidoti
Those are all 2027. Early, late, you know, will they be contributors?
George LeMaitre
We do, I mean, we wrote in the script H2, but I bet you get one of them in H1 and three of them in H2, something like that.
Jim Sidoti
Okay. They'll be moderate contributors to 2027.
George LeMaitre
You know, we haven't even thought that through. We're thrilled to get them, and that would make us have 56 approvals instead of 52, but they're okay countries for us.
Jim Sidoti
Okay. All right. Thank you.
George LeMaitre
Thanks, Jim.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question, rather, comes from the line of Frank Takkinen from Lake Street Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Frank Takkinen
Great. Thank you for taking the questions. I was hoping to follow up on the distributor. Is there a chance this swings back in Q2 and the back half of the year? Is this potentially a geography where you may elect to go direct?
George LeMaitre
You're talking about when we talked about export in Q1 being a little bit light. Yes, there's a very good chance it'll swing back. Maybe if we look at one fact that didn't come out yet, which is if you look at April, you guys, we usually don't do this, but just to give people some comfort there. In April, sales growth was 13%. It was 7% price and 6% units, that's a big hint that, yeah, it was a temporary passing phenomenon. One little step further here, Frank Takkinen, the export business, interestingly enough, because, you know, we run around touting ourselves as a direct to hospital company.
George LeMaitre
Lo and behold, if you really look at the facts, the export business of this company has a CAGR of 20% for the last since 2019. Skipping over the pandemic, starting in 2019, the 7-year CAGR, if you will, is 20%. That business continues to just do fantastic. All it says to me is that the world's a very big place. We ignore it, and the business keeps coming in, and then we use that to pick off places to go direct. You can see Poland, Mexico and Greece. If you were in our building, you would look at the walls at all these 2030 plank sets. It says Poland, Mexico and Greece. You're probably gonna see that happen over the next 2 or 3 years.
George LeMaitre
Certainly Poland this year and then Mexico and Greece coming after that. Not worried. You know, very excited about the export business always. We have 4 export managers right now, or 3 and 1 being filled right now. On our plank set, we plan to get to 8 export managers by 2030. A place where we heavily invest because of the growth of the business as well as it produces great opportunities for us to go direct.
Frank Takkinen
Perfect. Helpful. Thanks for the April bonus. On the Artegraft R&D projects you mentioned, my assumption to this answer is no, but is this at all kind of marking a transition to maybe looking more internally at the portfolio for other R&D opportunities in light of maybe the M&A lack of appropriate M&A currently? Is this just kind of one-off because the Artegraft has had so much momentum?
George LeMaitre
That's a good question, good way to look at it. I mean, one of the nice things about being a company that doesn't do too much R&D is that the R&D projects scream at you and you can't ignore them for too long. Maybe we could put that in that category. This is very, very obvious stuff. Also, you're allowed If you don't do too much R&D, you're allowed to do some really low risk, low beta projects. You know, making a longer tube is a very low risk projects where we have high confidence that we'll get that approved by Europe and the U.S. I hope that gives you some color on the choice of R&D projects. Probably, I think we've said this before, and it's again on these plank sets.
George LeMaitre
We do plan to do a little bit more R&D around here. I think in the old days we were targeting 10%. Now we're maybe targeting 8% just because we're at 6 and saying 10 seems false. We should do more R&D around here. There's a lot of projects. The larger you get, the more important the more helpful a little bit of R&D is to each one of your 160 sales reps, and I think we're becoming conscious of that.
Frank Takkinen
Perfect. Very helpful. Thank you for taking the questions.
George LeMaitre
Thanks a lot, Frank.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Keith Hinton from Freedom Capital Markets. Your line is now open, Keith.
Keith Hinton
Great. Thanks for taking the follow-up. I just have a high level question on business development. If you do decide to execute on a sizable deal in the cardiac space, just beyond the purchase price, kind of how should we think about the potential need for incremental investment to just bolster your commercial presence in cardiac? Is there kind of a level of near term margin dilution that you're willing to live with in order to bring in another growth driver for the out years?
Dave Roberts
Keith Hinton, it's David Roberts. It's a good question. The answer is it depends. What it primarily depends on is if the cardiac surgery product is a product that's also used in vascular surgery because there are five or seven crossover products like surgical sealants, ligating clips and atraumatic occlusion devices like that, and they're a relatively easy short learning curve, the answer might be no. We may not need a dilutive cardiac sales force. If the product is a product that's used exclusively in cardiac surgery, I would say it's much more likely. The way we look at that is, okay, maybe there is the need to establish some size of a cardiac sales force. Depends, of course, on the size of the acquisition and its geographic reach.
Dave Roberts
You know, if that's the first step into cardiac surgery, then future cardiac acquisitions would leverage that channel to derive sales. We're always taking a very long-term view around here. We've done vascular acquisitions for almost 30 years, and I think we would have a long runway of cardiac acquisitions. We pay attention to it, but it doesn't really deter us because we have a long-term viewpoint.
Keith Hinton
Great. That's helpful. Thank you.
George LeMaitre
Thanks a lot, Keith.
Transcript from May 5, 2026
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