Ed Pesicka
Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.
You know, here is what we've seen. And this is - these are some of the variables, I mean the first question was asked by Eric, it was really, if you think about flu season, COVID-19 and the other issues we have right now in the market. These are variables that are tough because here's what we're seeing. We're seeing a substantial increase in demand for flu-related products. We believe that's partially because flu season seems to be a little more severe this year where we see that partially because we have other suppliers and manufacturers that are stocking out because their products are made in Asia or China and they can't get them. But then the other wildcard which we see is, we don't know what is true demand and what is stockpiling? When you see a product from a certain customer go from a normal run rate of 1 to a normal run rate of 4 times, that's when we have to put in our protocols to make sure we don't have the complete allocation to somebody and then stock out for others. So that's why we're focused on taking care of our existing customers, shutting down other channels that aren't our traditional channels and then continuing to balance out that allocation to all of our existing customers and then helping others with the excess where we can. So, we have not seen a slowdown outside of that. We see our traditional business, whether it's elective surgery, non-elective surgery, normal visits, we have not seen that slowdown, but what we have seen is the spike associated with those products that are - that are manufactured for PPE purposes, again face protections, gowns and drapes, traditional staff apparel. The other anomaly we have seen, but in a very, very small sample I guess would be demands and spikes for products that are produced in China that have nothing to do with PPE. So customers looking at it and saying "Okay, here's products that are produced in China, let me go and increase my order in case that gets shut down too." So it's again - what's nice is, we have strong protocols to protect the inventory to make sure that we can continue to provide it to our existing customers. So I guess, the long answer to your question, it's really what we've seen is kind of that base business continue, but we have seen a spike in demand of PPE related products, which we believe is partially because of flu, partially because a significant stock out by other manufacturers and competitors. And then - and then some level of stockpiling. And then we're seeing small data points that say "Hey, people know these products are manufactured in China, let me see if I can get them in advance, just in case this extends for a period of time."