“While we are slowing our hiring pace and pursuing leverage in our enabling functions, we are planning for balanced growth in operating expenses in 2023 given the opportunity to advance our next-generation robotics capabilities and the relatively earlier stage of our investments in Ion, SP and digital.”

In context

“given the environment and investments for future growth. Fourth quarter pro forma operating expenses increased 19% compared with last year, driven by increased headcount, higher travel costs, increased customer training activities and higher R&D related project costs. Fourth quarter 2021 operating expenses included a $30 million contribution to the Intuitive Foundation, which can support their efforts for the next couple of years and did not repeat in 2022. The pace at which we are increasing headcount continued to moderate in Q4 with net additions of about 330 employees in the quarter compared to a net increase of approximately 530 employees last quarter. More than half of the employees we added in Q4 were production staff in our instrument factory in Mexico to support procedure growth. While we are slowing our hiring pace and pursuing leverage in our enabling functions, we are planning for balanced growth in operating expenses in 2023 given the opportunity to advance our next-generation robotics capabilities and the relatively earlier stage of our investments in Ion, SP and digital. In 2023, we expect a significant increase in expenses related to clinical trials. Brian will provide our outlook for operating expenses later in this call. As we look forward to our growth plans over the next several years, we are planning to make significant capital expenditures. Capital expenditures for 2022 were $532 million, and we expect 2023 capital expenditures in a range of $800 million to $1 billion, of which approximately two-thirds will be for facilities to expand our manufacturing capacity. Our manufacturing investment plans include advanced proprietary facilities for production of new products and the Ion platform in California and da Vinci systems in Georgia. Internationally, we are increasing our product development capacity in Germany, building a new low-cost endoscope man”