Align’s Q2 Is a Warning for Every Lab That Just Prints Trays

Jul 31, 2025

Align’s Q2 Is a Warning for Every Lab That Just Prints Trays

There was a time when clear aligners were synonymous with high growth. Every quarter, Align Technology would announce record volumes and broader global adoption. It felt inevitable.

But Q2 2025 tells a different story.

Align’s total revenue came in at $1.012 billion. That’s a slight lift from the previous quarter, but lower than the same time last year. The aligner business, which is still the company’s core, declined 3.3% year over year. It’s not dramatic, but it’s worth paying attention to.

What stood out more was the performance of their Systems and Services business. That includes iTero scanners, CAD/CAM systems, and software like exocad. That side of the business grew 13.9% from the previous quarter and 5.6% year over year. And while it’s still smaller than their aligner business in terms of total revenue, it’s growing at a time when trays are slowing.

That tells us something important.

A Volume Problem or an Environment Problem?

This isn’t about aligners becoming less useful. The slowdown is likely coming from economic factors. In North America and parts of Europe, patient starts are down. Financing is tighter. Some DSOs are delaying investments. In many cases, patients are still interested, but more hesitant to commit.

Meanwhile, clinics are still buying scanners and building up digital infrastructure. They aren’t scaling back entirely. They’re just being cautious about what gets activated. This creates a strange dynamic where the planning environment is maturing, even while case volume flattens.

So when Align’s fastest-growing line is software and services, it makes sense. It reflects where clinics are investing their time and money. Not in more trays, but in systems that help them operate better.

The Value Is Shifting

For years, success in the aligner space meant printing more trays. Today, that’s changing. The focus is now on who can manage the upstream better.

That includes everything from how the scan is taken, how approvals are tracked, how communication happens between labs and clinics, and how remakes are avoided. The trays themselves are almost a given. The differentiator is everything around them.

The big players have already started adjusting to this. Align, for example, is clearly pushing further into digital diagnostics and planning. It gives them tighter control of the entire pipeline and helps them keep margins in check, especially when tray volumes dip.

The companies that continue to grow from here will likely be the ones that own this broader context, not just the physical product.

Not Every Business Will Respond the Same Way

What this means for the rest of the market will vary. DSOs are likely to invest more in planning tools, performance dashboards, and communication systems. They’ll want to tighten how cases move internally. Labs, meanwhile, may start feeling pressure to do more than just produce. Some will offer planning services. Others might embed deeper into the clinic’s workflow.

But everyone in the chain will need to be more accountable for what happens between the scan and the seat.

This is the part of the workflow that’s historically been full of gaps. No one really owned the communication. No one tracked the back-and-forths cleanly. No one had a clear view of what caused delays. That has to change if labs want to stay relevant and clinics want to run leaner.

Marketing Can't Fix a Broken Workflow

There was a time when you could mask operational inefficiency with a clean brand and a good campaign. That's getting harder. Clinics and patients are more aware now. If a case doesn’t track well, or if a retainer doesn’t fit, they don’t blame the patient, they start asking questions about the system behind it. The assumption is no longer that delays are normal.

What this means is that your brand reputation is now tied directly to how well your internal processes work. If your turnaround times are slipping or refinements are creeping up, you can’t solve that with new ad creatives. You fix it by tightening how cases move through your system, not by explaining away delays on Instagram.

Transparency Is Becoming a Baseline Expectation

More clinics want visibility into the case journey. They’re asking for dashboards, updates, treatment plan logs, the kind of things that used to be considered “internal.” That expectation is going to extend to patients too. Especially with newer DTC-style players entering the market, consumers will demand more transparency on progress, refinements, and what they’re paying for.

That shift puts pressure on labs and aligner brands to stop hiding behind PDF attachments and email threads. If your answer to "where’s the plan?" is "I’ll check with someone and get back to you," you're going to look increasingly out of step.

Digital Doesn’t Just Mean Scanner Adoption

It's easy to assume digital transformation means more scanners, but that’s just the first step. Real digital maturity is about having structured workflows, audit trails, and built-in accountability. It's about knowing who approved what and when, which plan was accepted, and why a case was delayed.

If you're still running your case pipeline across four different tools and a WhatsApp group, you're not digital, you're digitised chaos. That kind of setup doesn’t scale, and eventually the inefficiencies show up in the numbers: more refinements, longer turnaround times, more frustrated partners.

The Gap Is Getting Wider

There’s a noticeable divide opening up between labs that are adapting and those that are hoping volumes will bounce back. The ones adapting are leaning into better visibility, faster feedback loops, and tighter handshakes with clinics. The others are doubling down on production and pricing, hoping efficiency will come later.

That gap won’t be visible in month one, but over time it compounds. The clinics that feel supported will stay. The ones that feel like they’re doing all the chasing will move on. In a market where tray volumes aren’t guaranteed to grow every quarter, trust and coordination become the actual moat.