Prepared remarks
Welcome to the STAAR Surgical second quarter 2026 results conference call and webcast. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Connie Johnson, Director of Investor Relations.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. On the call today are Warren Foust, President and Chief Executive Officer of STAAR Surgical, and Deborah Andrews, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of STAAR Surgical. Earlier today, we reported our second quarter 2026 results via a press release in Form 8-K. We posted our results, release, and shareholder letter to our investor website at investors.staar.com. Today's call is scheduled for 1 hour and will include Q&A for publishing analysts. Webcast participants can also send questions for today's Q&A session to ir@staar.com. Before we get started, I want to remind you that during today's discussion, we will be making forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. I encourage you to read the disclosures in today's release, as well as on our filings with the SEC. Except as required by law, STAAR assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or actual outcomes. In addition, during today's discussion, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures including adjusted EBITDA and constant currency sales. Please refer to today's release for definitions and reconciliations of non-GAAP metrics. For brevity, unless otherwise specified, all comparisons on today's call will be on a year-over-year basis versus the relevant period. Finally, a quick reminder. We intend to use our website as a means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. Such disclosures will be included on our website in the investor relations section. Accordingly, investors should monitor our investor website in addition to following our press releases, SEC filings, and public conference calls and webcasts. And with that, I would like to turn the presentation over to our President and CEO, Warren Foust.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Six months ago, Deborah and I stepped into our roles as interim co-CEOs. Looking back now, I am struck by how much we accomplished together. We navigated uncertainty and challenges and leaned into significant opportunities. And today, we are proud to report the strongest first half revenue performance in STAAR's history. That includes the launch of EVO Plus in China, which fueled market share gains and drove both year-over-year and sequential growth in the region, back-to-back record quarters in the U.S., and a return to profitability and free cash flow generation across the business. These results reflect the focus, resilience, and execution of teams across the company, and that is a milestone worth celebrating. Through it all, it's been a tremendous experience, one that I'm grateful for. As we move forward, I'm proud to do so as President and Chief Executive Officer. I thank the Board for their confidence and each of you for your continued support. I want to take a moment to recognize and thank Deborah Andrews. Over the past 6 months, Deborah has been an extraordinary partner, steady, wise, and tireless in her commitment to STAAR. Her clarity and focus on financial discipline, culture, and strategy have profoundly benefited this company. I'm thrilled that she continues as Chief Financial Officer and is doing so now as an Executive Vice President. I could not ask for a better partner as we lead our company forward. Now, let's talk about the quarter, which was a strong one. Our shareholder letter published today covers our second quarter results, regional performance, ERP implementation, and long-term priorities in detail. Rather than repeat all of that here, I want to focus on the three priorities that we laid out nearly six months ago: revenue growth, profit expansion, and innovation acceleration. In the second quarter, we advanced all three, and I'd like to walk you through where we stand. Starting with revenue growth, the second quarter was a strong revenue quarter. Net sales were $93.5 million, up 111% year over year. We delivered sequential growth in China, double-digit growth in the Americas, and double-digit growth in EMEA, excluding the Middle East. Deborah will take you through the details a little later, but the headline is clear. This business is performing. One important item I want to flag for your modeling: our third quarter of 2025 results included the recognition of $25.9 million related to the 2024 order. On a consolidated basis, third quarter 2025 net sales were $94.7 million. Excluding that item, though, the comparable total base is $68.8 million. That revenue from the 2024 order will not repeat, and we encourage you to use the adjusted base when evaluating third quarter 2026 year-over-year results. Fourth quarter comparisons are unaffected. Fourth quarter 2025 net sales were $57.8 million. Now on China, I'm proud of our market share gains and of our expanding EVO Plus launch. China remains critical to our success in an area where we have a compelling opportunity ahead. In the quarter, China grew sequentially supported by increased adoption of EVO Plus, and importantly, we saw no evidence of inventory build at distributors or hospitals, reinforcing that our growth is being driven by demand. The broader refractive market remains uneven. Recent industry commentary reinforces the view that procedures remain pressured in parts of China and APAC. Against that backdrop, STAAR's performance supports our belief that EVO is gaining market share. We're definitely getting a lift from the EVO Plus rollout, but more than that, we're seeing patients and surgeons really leaning into the benefits of lens-based surgery. People like that EVO is reversible and doesn't require removing corneal tissue, and that's a big differentiator as laser-based procedures continue to struggle in many markets around the world. We also want to provide more clarity on China's seasonality. As discussed in our shareholder letter, the quarterly pattern in China has evolved. The first and second quarters are emerging as our strongest revenue quarters, supported by Chinese New Year, a shift forward of military recruitment-related procedures, and summer demand. While the third quarter revenue is expected to be moderately lower than the second quarter due to shifts in seasonality, excluding the one-time order of $25.9 million booked in the third quarter of 2025, we expect year-over-year growth. As is typical, the fourth quarter will remain seasonally softer than the first three quarters, but we are still planning for year-over-year growth. Outside China, we continue to see strong revenue contributions in key markets such as Japan and Korea, as well as double-digit growth in the U.S., the Americas broadly, and, excluding the Middle East, EMEA as well. We also see compelling long-term opportunities in many other markets around the globe. In the Americas, growth was led by another greater than $6 million quarter in the U.S., our second consecutive quarter at that level. The U.S. market remains underpenetrated, and we continue to see opportunity to grow EVO sales and continue to take market share as practices look for differentiated, lens-based refractive alternatives to laser vision correction as demand for laser procedures continues to decline. In APAC outside of China, Japan remains an important market where EVO has strong category awareness, is a strong market leader, and has sustainable long-term potential. We continue to see solid underlying demand in Japan, bolstered by direct-to-consumer awareness initiatives launched in November of 2025. Unit volume rose 14%, though currency headwinds damaged the market and reported sales growth, which came in at 2%. Across the broader region, market dynamics vary, and we are being disciplined about where we invest. In EMEA, excluding the Middle East, the region grew double digits, reflecting solid underlying demand across much of the region. Across all regions, our approach is consistent. Invest where we see the clearest returns and support surgeons and patients through service, training, and education. While we continue driving the global shift from laser-based to lens-based refractive surgery, we are also working to increase our product availability in order to satisfy the accelerating global demand that has outpaced our supply chain projections. The second area is profit expansion. In the second quarter, we demonstrated meaningful progress in expanding profitability. We grew gross profit and net income compared with both the prior year quarter and the first quarter. These improvements resulted in significant cash flow generation, increasing cash from $163.9 million at the end of the first quarter to $181.5 million at the end of the second quarter. This progress reflects the strength of our business model and the financial discipline that Deborah and the team have brought to the organization. The result is a company with strong gross margins, a strong balance sheet, no debt, an increasing cash balance, and the flexibility to invest in the business where it matters: commercial execution, customer support, product availability, innovation, and the systems that help us scale. Our ERP implementation demanded significant energy and focus across the organization in the quarter. And our teams delivered. We continued to sell EVO lenses. We provided support for our customers and achieved strong results. The ERP system is now live and we are actively optimizing the system in the third quarter. This is not just an operational upgrade. It is a foundational investment that improves visibility across our business and positions us to scale more effectively and efficiently as we grow. With the ERP system in place, we are also beginning to build toward artificial intelligence-enabled capabilities that will improve how we operate over time. The third area, innovation acceleration, is the one that I am most excited about. EVO is a genuinely differentiated product built on our proprietary Collamer material. It is a lens-based procedure that preserves the cornea, is removable by a surgeon, and addresses a broad range of myopia and astigmatism. While our progress is significant and exciting, accelerating our global share of the refractive market remains far below what we believe is possible. That gap is our opportunity. Capturing it requires moving beyond a single product mindset. EVO, powered by Collamer, is our foundation, but we have the opportunity to build a broader platform and a more diversified product organization supported by a disciplined innovation roadmap, structured product development, clear milestones, and stronger execution accountability. Our R&D team, including our advanced research group, is working hard against these objectives and is actively preparing for first-in-human studies on our next-generation product. To further support our efforts, we will soon be hiring a chief technology officer to drive STAAR's innovation agenda. I have personally led this search with the support from trusted advisors and our board. And I'll say this: this process has only deepened my conviction about STAAR's long-term potential. I'm excited to share more in the coming weeks. This is the next chapter of STAAR: Grounded and Differentiated Technology, Disciplined Execution, and Sustainable Long-Term Value Creation. With that, I'll turn the call over to Deborah to walk through the financials in more detail.
Thank you, Warren. I'll provide a brief financial summary and then we'll move to Q&A. Second quarter net sales were $93.5 million compared to $44.3 million in the prior year quarter, which, as a reminder, was impacted by minimal China shipments while distributors worked through excess inventory. Excluding China, net sales were $41.2 million, up 6% year over year. Regionally, the quarter was generally consistent with the preliminary net sales update we provided in July. APAC net sales increased 189% year-over-year. Excluding China, net sales were up 7% year-over-year. China net sales increased 100-plus percent and grew 10% sequentially to $52.3 million. In Japan, unit volume rose 14%, though currency headwinds dampened reported sales growth, which came in at 2%. The Americas grew 12% year-over-year, and the U.S. delivered another approximately $6 million quarter. EMEA has declined 1%, resulting from the continued conflicts in the Middle East. Excluding the Middle East, EMEA also grew 12% year over year. Gross margin was 74.5% compared to 74% in the prior year quarter. The improvement reflected lower Switzerland ramp-up costs, reduced advanced manufacturing expenses, inventory provisions and lower freight and other costs of sales as a percentage of sales, partially offset by higher per unit manufacturing costs related to lower production volumes in 2025. Gross margin was also negatively impacted by China tariffs on U.S.-manufactured product. Margins will continue to be impacted by tariffs until 100% of products shipped to China are manufactured in Switzerland, which should happen by the end of 2026. Total operating expenses were $59.6 million compared to $62.8 million in the prior year quarter. Excluding $5.2 million in restructuring and merger-related costs from the prior year period, operating expenses increased approximately 3.7% year over year. Included within operating expenses were $1.2 million in marketing severance and $1.7 million in ERP consulting. We don't expect the severance to repeat and expect the ERP consulting expense to decline significantly beginning in the fourth quarter. Depreciation expense related to ERP systems was $1.1 million. We continue to manage toward our 2026 spending target of $225 million, though we may choose to make targeted investments that could result in marginally higher spending should the opportunity arise. Net income was $8.1 million, or $0.16 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $16.8 million, or $0.34 per diluted share, in the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $20 million, or $0.39 per diluted share, compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $14.8 million or $0.30 per diluted share in the prior year quarter. We ended the quarter with $181.5 million in cash, cash equivalents, and investments available for sale, up from $163.9 million at the end of the first quarter, and we continue to have no debt. The company currently expects to generate significant free cash flow in the second half of the year, ending 2026 with well over $200 million in cash. Overall, the second quarter reflected meaningful improvement in profitability, cash generation, and operating leverage. Our focus remains on maintaining financial discipline, advancing new product development, and investing selectively in the opportunities with the clearest return potential. With that, I'll turn it back to Warren.
Thank you, Deborah. Stepping back, the second quarter was a strong quarter that rounded out the best first-half revenue performance in STAAR history. This is yet another step forward for STAAR. We grew revenue, expanded gross margins, generated net income, and built cash. And we have much to be proud of, growing EVO Plus adoption in China, back-to-back record quarters in the U.S., a successful ERP implementation, and early progress in organizing our product pipeline with an eye toward the mid- and long-term future. Our strategy is clear, our team is focused and performing, and our long-term opportunity remains as compelling as ever. With more than 4 million lenses sold, 85 countries served, and 32 years of proven Collamer safety and efficacy in a world that is becoming more myopic every year. Now, our focus is to build on this momentum: revenue growth, expanding profitability, and advancing innovation. Deborah and I are aligned with our board and management team as we focus on long-term value creation through clear priorities and operating discipline. Thank you for your continued support. With that, operator, we are now ready to take questions.
Questions and answers
The first question will come from John Young with Canaccord. Please go ahead.
I want to touch on Q3 and just maybe understand how you're going to level set investors, given the comps and the one-timers that you called out. So using that adjusted number of $68.8 million that was in the press release and that you spoke about, consensus currently sits at $80.9 million going into this print, so about 17.5% year-over-year growth from that figure you provided. Are you comfortable with the consensus number today? And what's a good way to think of the Q3 growth algorithm? If you're not comfortable with that number, how should we think about growth overall for the quarter?
Yes, hey John, great question. Nice to hear from you, and I'll make some comments and then invite Deborah to join. Look, we don't comment on consensus numbers generally. What I would say is we tried to give a little bit of a bridge to how you think about Q3 and Q4. We wanted to be clear that you needed to take the 2024 order out of each quarter so that you could have an appropriate base. We intend to grow off of that number. In fact, we're planning to grow on Q4 as well. That's what we would say as far as how to think about it. I think the primary driver of the success so far, clearly China has come back for us. We recognize that the market is somewhat muted. You hear that in some of the commentary about other companies that are reporting, but we believe we have a nice advantage with EVO Plus launching in that market. We're clearly taking share relative to our competitors. And then we're still putting up a nice performance around the rest of the world, even in the face of some external challenges.
The next question will come from Tom Stephan with Stifel. Please go ahead.
I want to start off with China and sort of thinking more intermediate to long term. Comps are weird this year when the street looks at numbers, but you're seeing obviously underlying volume growth. I obviously have a good sense on price and mix. So not asking for guidance or anything, Warren, but if we think out to 2027 on a full year basis, and that obviously strips out any quarter-to-quarter seasonality questions, like as we sit here today, what do you view as the general range of normalized year-over-year China growth for STAAR? And then I'll have a follow-up.
Thanks, Tom. Appreciate the comments. And look, I love that you said you're thinking intermediate to long term. That's what we want. We're focused on building the long term, not just from the revenue standpoint, but the infrastructure investments that we're making in the organization, the preparations we're making behind the scenes from a portfolio standpoint. We are intending to operate this business into the long term. So thanks for that mindset. You said it: aside from the nuance of us taking out the $25.9 million from the Q3 base, now we're going to be back to what we call clean quarters. We had clean quarters already this year, and you've seen growth better than market in China, and you've seen us continue to deliver in markets elsewhere around the world. And so I have no reason to believe that's going to change in China. Our thinking is that as that market, which we think is probably mid- to single digits right now from a refractive market standpoint, pulled down a little bit by lasers that are struggling, but it's offset by improvements that are happening, largely because of price with EVO Plus and then a V4c halo effect that's happening when patients go in looking for V5 and either don't get it because it's slightly higher price from a premium standpoint, or it's not even available because we're trying to satisfy that demand. So we think that feels like a tailwind as we go into next year, but we're not really ready to comment on exactly what that means for the quarters. I'll just finish by saying we did try and give some more guidance, not formal guidance, but some guidance around what the shape of the quarters look like in China. Clearly Q1 and Q2 have now moved in the last couple of years to be seasonally our highest quarters. Q3 is still strong, but it's typically going to be less than what Q1 and Q2 are, and Q4 will be a softer quarter from a total revenue standpoint. But again, we're planning growth in both of those quarters, notwithstanding the $25.9 million that we've talked about extensively. I hope that makes sense.
Makes sense. Appreciate that. And I'll maybe shift a little near term. I wanted to start off long term to set this up a little better, but I'll take a stab at kind of the 3Q, 4Q cadence and focus on China here. Warren, if I got this right, I think you mentioned 3Q China revenues moderately lower than 2Q. Hopefully I heard that right. Wondering if we can put a finer point on that. And I'll ask it in the context of 3Q24 and 3Q23. China dollar declines were $10 to $15 million, roughly speaking. Warren or Deborah, is that reasonable for 3Q26 China, particularly as EVO Plus mix continues to provide a continued sequential headwind? And as we try to contemplate, it sounds like pretty resilient ICL, China summer high season trend. So is that down $10 to $15 million that you've seen in the past a good anchor point?
That's a good one. Look, I'll start and then invite Deborah. I think it's important to remember two things. The seasonal shift has happened that I described. So Q1 and Q2, we expect to be stronger. That's borrowing partially from Q3. So it's hard for us to say exactly what's going to happen in Q3 because one, because of that dynamic, and two, because of what we said around having to pull some of that 2024 order out of Q3. But we still expect the underlying demand in China is stable. It's not amazing. It's not as high as it was back in periods of hypergrowth, but we're taking advantage of it disproportionately because of the acceleration of share capture in our view. So I think that's how I would be thinking about it. It's hard for us to put a precise number on that.
The next question will come from Anthony Petrone with Mizuho Americas. Please go ahead.
Congrats, everyone, on the new roles and look forward to working with everyone moving forward. Maybe I'll pivot to the U.S. and then come back to China. Just maybe an update on active sites and the strategy. So where are we in terms of total active sites in the U.S.? And I know that there was sort of a go deeper penetration strategy, but also there was a push to open up new sites. Maybe where are we on active sites and a recap and a refresh on the strategy between deeper penetration at the EVO-live sites versus going after new accounts? And then I'll have a follow-up on China.
Thanks Anthony. Good to hear from you. Look, what we're seeing in the U.S. is a bit of what we're seeing around the world. Remember that we only got the approval for EVO in 2022. Commercial launch kind of happened in 2023 as we built up the team. And what you're seeing now is we've got hundreds and hundreds of active sites. We're going deeper where we know we can make the biggest difference. We're focused on two key things. And it's a U.S. discussion, but it's also relevant outside of the U.S. And that is, once we get customers clinically confident—when they use EVO and those patients come back and they see them in the clinic or they see the optometrist—these are happy people. And so what we're seeing is the surgeons get more confident clinically and then they look for how to make this work economically and that varies by whether they operate in their practice or whether they go down the street to a multi-specialty ASC where they have to pay anywhere from $900 to $1,800 an eye to operate on them. That's a more challenging situation versus in-office suites where the doctor can operate in his or her own practice. We've stratified those customers. Our team is actively and aggressively going after clinically confident customers with an economic message that says you've got revenue that's walking out of your practice because they're high diopter and someone's trying to sell them LASIK, which is declining year over year, and now again quarter over quarter. What's happening now is patients are asking for EVO because they're hearing more about it. Younger patients and younger doctors recognize the value of a removable, reversible technology, and so they're more excited. So more of those surgeons in the U.S. are offering EVO as one of their refractive surgery options. And so you're seeing the adoption, you're seeing less walkout revenue, and you're seeing practices make EVO more accessible to patients, and that's what we're seeing drive the adoption in the U.S. It's still at a smaller volume than we want, but we're proud of another $6 million quarter and looking forward to continued growth.
Very helpful. And China, EVO Plus, just a reminder, what percent of the market does the larger lens size open up in China? And then just looking at the consignment numbers, they're up pretty substantially year over year in the queue. I was wondering how much of the China consignment sales were linked to EVO Plus.
I'll let Deborah comment on the consignment sales. From a product standpoint, the amount of refractive error on this planet is untreated and it's massive. We're on a journey after it. Obviously we're constrained by some things. We're constrained by the total patient pool coming in for consultation. As it pertains to EVO Plus in China, we're constrained a bit by inventory as we've been struggling to build enough to meet demand in Q1 and then in Q2. I think we're getting our hands around that now, particularly as we get into the latter parts of Q3 and into Q4, we'll see some of the demand slow down because of seasonality, which will actually help us from a supply standpoint. But EVO Plus does not open up an additional number of patients that EVO could not otherwise address. It becomes a premium positioning at the account level and whether the patient has the economics to support it.
From a consignment standpoint, our consignments in China are actually way down. That's why you're seeing increased tariff costs on the gross margin side. If you recall, we shipped those consignments before the increased tariffs were put into effect early last year. Now that those lenses have been used, we're shipping U.S.-made product into China increasingly and they are subject to tariffs. But the overall consignment numbers are significantly lower in China.
The next question will come from Simran Kaur with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Warren, you framed the China share gains as coming primarily from laser-based procedures. Can you just help us understand the mechanism behind that? Are you seeing more patients opt for ICL up front, or is the bigger driver surgeons expanding into ICL and converting procedures within their practices? And as domestic competition develops in the China refractive market over the next few years, how durable do you believe those share gains are?
Thanks. I think starting with competition, we're thrilled to have competition. It's just more of an indication that the future's lens-based from a refractive surgery standpoint. You're seeing laser volumes around the world face headwinds. Is that happening in China? It's hard to quantify exactly, but we believe a bit of all of it is happening. Patients are coming in asking for EVO Plus. Oftentimes, they're getting EVO Plus if they have the economics to do it and we're able to supply it. Even when they're not, and if they're a candidate for V4c, we're seeing a halo effect from V4c that benefits EVO adoption. So despite otherwise modest market growth in China, we believe we're getting a bigger share because we're getting dollar share with EVO Plus and some unit share with EVO and EVO Plus. We respect competitors, but STAAR's 32-year history with Collamer and the safety and efficacy record gives surgeons great confidence and creates a durable advantage versus non-Collamer devices.
Got it, very helpful. And for my follow-up, ex-China, I can appreciate on a year-over-year basis every region grew, but if I look at the growth rates across APAC in particular, it looks like it's decelerated pretty significantly. So maybe just to help us understand what's going on in the region, and more broadly, should we think about ex-China as sort of a mid-single-digit grower going forward, or is there opportunity to re-accelerate the growth rate there?
We have strong contributions from our largest markets in APAC: Japan and Korea. Japan grew substantially from a unit standpoint but faced significant currency headwinds, so while units were up meaningfully, reported sales were only up about 2% due to translation effects. Korea is in a low season currently; it's a smaller market relative to Japan but very important to us and has a nice case mix where we have great sales execution and customer relationships. India is a long-term play—it's complicated due to local competition and macro factors, including currency issues that affect access to U.S.- and Swiss-made products. So it's a long-term process but an important market. As for what to expect on growth rate, I can't give a precise number, but we don't see any reason to believe the viability of EVO in those markets is threatened.
I just wanted to add that we're seeing really strong growth in Taiwan, which we launched last year. That market is doing very well and has increased sequentially every quarter.
It's a fun market to think about because we just got approval for EVO Plus. It's adjacent to China, so from a patient population standpoint there's visibility to social media and the positive outcomes with EVO. It's filled with lasers and opportunity.
The next question will come from Ryan Zimmerman with BTIG. Please go ahead.
The first question: I want to go back to the pricing and volume dynamics in China for a minute. Warren, I was struck by your comments about a third of the lenses in China being EVO Plus. Let's assume there's a 30% to 40% price premium on that product. That would suggest you're getting about ten points of growth from that mix. But if you back that out and all else being equal, if the China market is mid-single digits, wouldn't that suggest that units are declining in China?
You have to remember that's an exit share in July. It's not a third of units for the full year. We're building adoption as we go. We're not launched in every hospital or system yet. So the math is challenging. Revenue in China is being driven by two things: return of our V4c business and adoption of EVO Plus in both units and price. How that evolves from a third at exit to a full-year number remains to be seen and depends on our ability to supply product.
Okay, that's helpful. The other question I had was on the U.S. Given the launch of EVO in the U.S., we've seen sequential growth every quarter since launch. I appreciate it's still early, but the U.S. was roughly flat sequentially in 2Q versus 1Q. Is that just timing and small numbers, or is there anything else driving that?
The long-term value of the U.S. market is massive and it's a long-term discussion, not quarter to quarter. There is often an inverse relationship between how the laser market declines and how we grow, but we don't capture every point of that decline. When the overall refractive market shrinks or grows, it affects us too. In Q2, the total refractive market was down, driven by lasers, and that impacted sequential comparisons versus Q1. There's also timing and small-number effects. Additionally, when demand in our largest market, China, outpaced supply and we needed to produce more made-to-order toric lenses, that impacts global supply and can put U.S. customers on backorder for some product. We are working to catch up production and satisfy demand.
The next question will come from David Saxon with Needham and Co. Please go ahead.
Maybe just on the ERP, any way to quantify the impact of the second quarter operating issues on orders or revenue, and does that all get recouped in the third quarter or does that take longer, or is it just lost sales at this point?
We don't think the impact on revenue was material overall. The impact was mainly on expenses as we worked to stabilize and upgrade the system. On the revenue side, could there have been some lost sales on the made-to-order lens side? It's possible, but that's mainly driven by strong demand in the first half of the year, especially in China, rather than the ERP system itself.
We referenced it in the pre-release and in the shareholder letter. Honestly, it's more an acknowledgment of how hard our teams worked because despite the internal exhaustion it created, we were still shipping products, booking orders, servicing customers, and delivering revenue for the quarter, which delivered our profit. So from a revenue impact standpoint, I think it was negligible.
We've actually exceeded our operating plans for both the first and second quarters of this year, which is something we're pleased with overall.
Okay. That's helpful. Thanks for that. And then maybe I'll try a third-quarter question. Looking at third quarter, round numbers, sounds like you'll land somewhere in the $70 to $90 million range. I guess sitting here halfway through the quarter, how would you characterize the sequential trend you're seeing? How steep or gradual is that trend line looking at this point?
I won't comment on specific numbers. From a trend perspective, not much has changed. We noted China's high seasons—Q1 and Q2 have become seasonally higher due to Chinese New Year and the pull-forward of procedures. Q3 typically tapers from Q2 as summer demand fades. If you listen to what's happening in China, it's sort of flat to mid-single-digit growth for the market. As we've said, in the quarter we've done better than that. All those dynamics hold as we go forward, and you just have to back out the $25.9 million from last year to get your Q3 comparable. Same for Q4. Q4 was unaffected by that order, but we plan to grow in Q4 as well.
The next question will come from Mason Carrico with Stephens. Please go ahead.
This is Harrison on for Mason. Just wanted to ask on ASPs: are blended ASPs under pressure from toric/sphere mix and the diopter curve dynamics? After exiting Q2 at about 30% EVO Plus of China volume, is the EVO Plus premium now large enough to offset these headwinds at the consolidated level in the back half of the year?
It's a good question. We're going to continue to get ASP tailwind from EVO Plus, but price dynamics vary by market. For example, in Germany we face competition despite having the highest price in Europe, so we may see some ASP slippage there, but it's not massive. Toric adoption helps ASPs because torics are higher-priced. I'm less concerned about ASP and more focused on continuing to take share. Regarding diopter curve, outside China we've moved a couple percentage points down from worse myopes into the minus 6 to minus 8 range, and moving down the diopter curve opens opportunities that lasers may have been addressing. That's our focus rather than purely ASP.
Thank you. When do you expect to have enough EVO Plus inventory to fully supply the demand you were seeing in China right now?
I think we're there or thereabouts now. The fading of the summer high season will give us a chance to catch our breath and build units. By the end of the third quarter, roughly, we should be in a position to supply EVO Plus as required. Our focus is also to build V4c in Switzerland so that we can eliminate tariffs for product shipped to China. We're hoping to accomplish that by the end of the year.
The next question will come from Adam Maeder with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Congrats on the appointments. In the press release you talked about moving beyond a single product line company into a true platform. Could you expand on that? Are you thinking about moving beyond the refractive market, or is it more about having a broader offering within refractive? I'm assuming everything starts and stops with your polymer-based technology. Is that the right way to think about it? Any comment on potential timelines—years or medium to long term—would be helpful.
Thanks Adam. We're excited to run this business for the long term. The thinking is to establish the infrastructure and capabilities for STAAR to be a long-term ophthalmology company. From a pipeline standpoint, we have engineers, clinical, medical, and regulatory talent that have been working on a variety of projects. We're aiming for a more cohesive, easier-to-understand portfolio that we'll present over time. We're planning to hire a chief technology officer and expect to be ready for first-in-human testing on next-generation products as early as next year, possibly sooner. Collamer material capabilities are unique and have differentiated us for decades. We'll use those capabilities—whether Collamer or related technologies—to accelerate beyond being a single-product EVO ICL company. Refractive is our wheelhouse, especially sulcus-placed lenses where EVO is implanted. Opportunities include extended depth-of-focus or presbyopia correction, leveraging a patient's accommodation with lens-based technology, among other possibilities. We'll discuss specifics in more formal updates in the future.
I'll stay tuned. Thank you.
Please stand by as we pull for questions. Showing no further questions, this will conclude our question and answer session as well as the conference call. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.