Embla Medical and the end of the range that counts

3 February 2026, Copenhagen. Embla Medical, the parent company of Össur, publishes its plan for the year, and its chief executive, Sveinn Sölvason, promises “organic sales growth” of five to eight per cent. This column is about one mechanic: the range, and why only one end of it is a promise.

In plain words: sales up five to eight per cent from the business it already had, not from buying others. Read the right end and you are ahead of the room.

Keep that line. Mostly the first number.

This morning I sat down with the reports and a ruler. Not for the figures. For the ranges.

The growth promise has been narrowed twice, in July and again on 20 October, to about five per cent. It has been folded up like a deckchair at the end of summer.

So is this a promise broken, or kept? Hold on.

Embla makes artificial limbs, braces and supports, and runs clinics that fit them. Jón Sigurðsson spent more than a quarter of a century growing Össur to about a hundred and forty times its size.

Sölvason, his finance chief, took over in April 2022, and the new name followed: the figure Norse mythology calls the first woman on earth. Ambitious, as rebrands go. Most companies settle for a new font.

Here is how I read a forecast range: the bottom is what the bosses are confident of, the top is what they hope for. When a range is narrowed, the end that moves tells you what changed: a rising bottom means confidence, a falling top means fading hope. Embla has only moved the top, twice, down to about five; the bottom has not moved.

Third-quarter sales grew four per cent, a shade under the floor. The profit promise held, inside its old range. The floor creaked; it did not give.

The reason is printed, in the chief executive’s own words. In Patient Care, its clinics, “sales performance has been below the expectations we set at the beginning of the year”.

Integration work had slowed growth in patient numbers in some regions, and losing a regional contract in Sweden is expected to cost the clinics about two percentage points of growth. A chief executive who writes “the expectations we set” instead of blaming the weather deserves a small medal. It will come in a range.

In July the front page admitted sales were “below expectations”. Page 4 of the half-year report went further: the clinics had “underperformed through most of 2025” and their recovery had “not yet fully materialized”.

It was on page 4, three months before the ceiling came down again. Nobody got that far.

Compare Intrum, here last week: one number, promised and missed. Embla promised a corridor and is standing on its floor.

Nobody is accused of anything; every change was announced, with reasons.

A promise kept at the floor is kept. Nobody frames the floor.

For patients, a new system in their clinic is not a percentage. They matter more than any range.

Three things to do with the next forecast you read: watch which end moves; count the narrowings, because one is housekeeping and two is a direction; and read past the front page to where the reasons live.

So: five to eight promised, about five expected. On his watch the ceiling went and the floor has held, and the floor was the promise.

A range is a promise with a hope sitting on top. Embla let the hope go and, so far, kept the promise: the least glamorous thing a chief executive can do. Mostly the first number, I said; it was the only one promised.

I have put 2 February 2027 in my diary. Tomorrow: Ford, which promised to keep eight cents of every dollar it sold, and the two cents that went missing.

Law No. 26 · Promise the Floor, Not the Ceiling

Understand Business. Better.
Max Noble