James Corbett
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. You may begin
Thank you, Christine and good afternoon. Welcome to the Q3 2015 Alphatec conference call. I'm going to begin by an overview of worldwide revenue. Following that I am going to give an operational review within the context of our three pillars of transformation. Now, I am going to reorder the pillars, and I want to make a quick comment to why. The first pillar is around the go to product strategy and our product pipeline. That’s going to stay the same because that's the most fundamental competitive basis that we focus on. The second pillar that's what’s going to be different. We are going to put the second pillar from now on to be manufacturing transformation and physical distribution transformation. Once we’re able to make it, we have to sell it for a profit rather straightforward. Third, we’re going to take on this commercial transformation worldwide, so that will be the order from here on. Let’s stuck to the revenue, worldwide revenue was $43 million for Q3 of 2015, broken-out geographically the U.S. was $27.4 million that is consecutively up, which is a very good news because we’ve had two consecutive down quarters. Underlying that there is a lot of good progress which I will share with you later. Internationally, sales were $15.6 million that’s 13% up in common currency. International continues to be strong, it’s no accent. So I’ll share those details with you a little bit later. Now, let’s get to the three pillars, product development and the go to market pipeline that we are developing at Alphatec. Couple of things, first we are focused on the big market segments that means stabilization, fixation so the third of all the money. Arsenal is on the market, Arsenal Cortical Bone is now launched, clearly differentiating us from a significant number of competitors. Arsenal Deformity, the one of the two major R&D programs is launching in Q1, this is really big. This is a big segment of the market. It’s a program a year ago we thought would take two more years to come to market. It’s how we’ve changed Alphatec. It’s part how we are managing R&D differently. Narrowing what we work on, choosing big market segments and bringing them to market in a timely manner. The next segment is Interbody, which is the second largest segment in spine. There is two elements to it, the Universal Interbody that’s Battalion, it’s a Titanium-Coated PEEK, we’re doing cases, we’re expanding our rollout will hit Europe in Q1 2016, the other element of the Interbody segment of course is lateral. I have to tell you, our lateral retractor is awesome. You should see the physicians who see it and what they have to say about it. We’ve locked the design and we are sending it off to manufacture, we expect to launch by the end of Q1. This will transform our competitiveness without a doubt. Now, that’s the second biggest market segment, the third largest is Biologics. As you recall, we’ve changed our Biologics strategy significantly. We want to compete globally that means the synthetic segment that means and explain why we entered into a 10-year agreement with Haider Biologics. This comes in many form factors, but in fact we also have a cost-sharing agreement that allows us to flexibly compute across the very elastic Biologics spine marketplace. So that’s the third largest segment, 70% of all the revenue in spine, we're poised and able and ready to compete. So this is the Alphatec that has not been here before. Now let’s get over to making things and moving them around. First, to remind you, our instrument cost initiatives has stayed in place. We are achieving a 50% cost reduction versus our historical ability to manufacture instruments designed in-house at Alphatec. It’s not only passed the tipping point, it’s a done methodology for us. We strive to get better, but we've already hit our cost goals and are continuing to refine them. Let’s go to implant manufacturing. That’s the big outsourcing methodology for the company. A year ago, we were at 90% plus of implants manufactured in-house at Alphatec, by January that will zero. We are getting many benefits, it reduces our overhead, it reduces our inventory cost including raw material and equipment, manufacturing purchases that we would have had to make that we will now avoid. The ability to scale up more rapidly and to transform to new product platforms without the cost and time barrier that normally exist. The multitude of benefits is way passed that tipping point. January what we hear before we know it and we are making great progress. Let’s go to the next piece, physical distribution. Physical distribution has two requirements and get it there perfectly on time and increased utilization per month. Straightforward hard to do from a single location in Carlsbad, California. We have partnered with UPS. What systems they have, you want to see it, it’s really amazing. Their methodology that we are incorporating in our systems, we use multiple elements of what makes them a great logistics company. We are starting the region of the United States, it is underway that will be followed by the end of next year with multiple hubs for managing inventory and processing that are linked to the local market by concept called forward stocking locations. This will allow us to achieve that perfect delivery and increase our cycle time monthly, we think by double. So think about that. We lower instrument cost by half and increase the utilization by two. It’s hard to believe that that won’t be just great for us. Imagine, we are going from – I have to ship it across the country and hope nothing that happens when it goes through Memphis, which virtually everybody else has to do instead we are developing system the mix that possibly go to near zero. I have a test for these kinds of implementations. When you are managing physical distribution, there is one thing you don’t want to have phone calls, I receive zero during the first 30 days of implementation that means it's going extremely well. We are really excited about this program and it will help transform our competitiveness. So product pipeline going absolutely terrifically, our manufacturing transportation well passed the tipping point nearly complete. Physical distribution passed the tipping point because it’s the planning that takes a time. Doing it not as hard, planning it and hearing it out harder, so that is well underway. I would like to spend a few minutes now on the commercial transmission. This has two significant elements, international and U.S. and it has one overwriting issue is that we don’t reach the customers worldwide; we don't compete in all the markets. Internationally, we would expand the distribution in Australia and additionally countries in Europe. We are going to choose to go direct in some countries principally however in 2015 that was through distributed. Now not only are we going to new markets, we are managing them with discipline, fundamentals of sales and marketing methodologies, it’s yielding very obvious results. We have been in double-digit growth all year long and we expect that to continue. The U.S. just a different market, same fundamental problem. We cover 10% of the surgeon in the United States step back, 10% of the surgeon in the United States know an Alphatec salesperson who has Alphatec products, 90% of the market doesn't. Well, look at that it’s 90% of the surgeons are opportunities for us and therefore readily accessible. We just have to execute on that strategy and we are taking an approach its three different elements to expand net coverage and expand sell through. The first is our existing distributors. We love these guys. They help to build Alphatec. They do a great job. There is approximately 100 or so of them to cover these 10% of the U.S. market. Now we’re of course going to keep them long-term, but we are going to feed them with all our new products and we are going to do so more efficiently for them. They will be very happy. Secondly, we’ve identified early in the year our initiative to hire some direct sales people. It’s a different activity to hire direct sales people and manage them and go into completely virgin marketplaces and grow the business. To put your head around this idea very clearly, so planting a kernel of corn, we have to water it, fertilize it; it grows up and bears corn. We are in that process now, many of these territories are started to produce more of them well in the future. They will continue to build their territories but it will take time. The third is when we want to do this expansion and we realized at some geographies required it more experienced to find distributor type of approach rather than a virgin planting of a seed. So we’ve gone to those experienced fine distributors and recruited many of them to join Alphatec as our selling agent in some of these new geographies. Ask yourself why would they come? It’s actually rather simple, it’s back to the basics, its our product line, they love it and they want to extent the careers by having a product line [indiscernible] in a company, there is a clear vision around how to compete in the majority of the revenue of the spine market. We have that we are doing that they want it, so very straight forward why they are coming. The most tangible way to understand how we are going, how we are doing, with that initiative is in Q3. Although we were marginally up in revenue, we signed new distribution between our direct and our new distributors that will result in at least $3 million of new revenue and new geographies with new doctors in Q4. I know you can do the math that’s $12 million annually that is significant progress from where we were in Q2 and Q1. By the way, this will be great progress in any quarter. We are going to continue this three-legged initiative with expanding our U.S. Commercial operation throughout 2016. We are going forward to 2016 with momentum and it’s the momentum we’re building to carry forward from Q4, the products will continue, our expansion will continue, we are going to cover more of the market and 2016 is going to be a great year for us. It will be a year when the transformation takes full effect at Alphatec. Now, I am going to turn the call over to Mike. Mike?