Todd Fruchterman
Analyst · Cowen. Josh, your line is now open
Thank you, Agnes, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to start off by sharing that I'm joined by Heather Getz, our new Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Whilst she will not be participating in today's call, I did want to briefly introduce her. Heather is a proven CFO with deep experience in delivering results and value creation. She brings 25 years of corporate finance and operating experience from both public and private companies as well as a strong background in the digital health and medical device space. Heather spent 12 years at BioTelemetry, a publicly traded remote medical technology company, where she served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial and Administrative Officer. Before this, Heather held various leadership positions at companies including Alita Pharmaceuticals, VIASYS Healthcare and Sunoco. I have no doubt Heather will be a strong partner as we continue to execute our strategy and introduce unique value for the healthcare ecosystem and our shareholders. Now to set the stage for our first quarter results. I want to highlight the important progress we are making in building a mission-aligned culture throughout Butterfly. Our team has come together to not only realize but to accelerate the vision of Dr. Jonathan Rothberg an Butterfly’s early trailblazing scientists to set out to make healthcare more effective, more accessible, more equitable and more affordable by enabling clinicians to accelerate diagnosis and care and to improve patient wellness and convenience. In today's discussion, you will not only hear how we are catalyzing care transformation across health systems, but also how we are enabling maternal imaging in Africa, facilitating emergency care in Ukraine, providing EMS teams with imaging capabilities and empowering veterinarians across the country to more quickly assess and address animal health needs. We are unified by a belief that our technology will dramatically elevate care across use cases and care continuum, and we are investing heavily in our people and product development to meaningfully capture our first-mover advantage. From a revenue perspective, we opened the year with $15.6 million in quarterly revenues, a 25% increase versus the first quarter of 2021. This was an excellent start to the year and in line with our expectations. I'm immensely proud of our Butterfly team for their work this past quarter and throughout the pandemic, which has been a challenging and chaotic period in healthcare delivery. The commitment of our people to transform care by providing valuable clinical insights earlier in the pathway has never wavered. We endeavor to work as hard as clinicians and technicians have over the past several years and look forward to continuing to work alongside them in partnership to help them deliver the best possible care to all patients. I'd now like to touch on some overarching market activity that is validating the transformational role of Butterfly. In Q1, at the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine Annual Meeting, Dr. Abraham Verghese of Stanford University called out in a keynote speech that it was his hope that recent advancements an ultrasound technology would bring new life to the bedside exam and help foster greater connection between the doctor and the patient. Further, the Institute's President, Dr. Nazarian, supported this sentiment by saying resist the trend of commoditizing ultrasound as just another study that we read wasted in a dark room understand the importance of getting up, scanning and interacting with patients. This is what Butterfly makes possible. It's about establishing connections with patients and being present with them at the bedside and obtaining a window into the body to see and at times to even show what's happening. It's about using ultrasound information to inform clinical decisions rather than confirm that. This is a paradigm shift from how ultrasound has historically been used. We believe this shift has the potential to transform healthcare to improve the patient-doctor relationship and in time to unlock multiple economic efficiencies and gains. With that, I'd like to shift to our business update. Our team continues to make progress against our core principles of making Butterfly easy, everywhere and economical. Let's start with an example of our principle of these. In a landmark study published March 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine Evidence, Butterfly was found to be an effective tool to estimate fetal gestational age just as accurately as a trained sonographer using a standard ultrasound machine. Dr. Joni Price at UNC, who led the study said, armed with a pocket-sized Butterfly probe and the smartphone as Zambian midwife with no prior training in sonography can assess gestational age as accurately as a certified sonographer using an expensive machine. This has the potential to revolutionize the delivery of obstetric care settings like Zambia. The results of this study offer hope to millions of mothers, when it comes to determining risk and ensuring good quality maternal care. Access to low-cost imaging devices and the expertise to perform scan has historically presented challenging hurdles to overcome in low-resource care settings around the world. Additionally, ultrasound, as part of routine care can demonstrate the benefit of a patient seeing their health, whether it be a greater willingness to seek out appropriate free natal care or to pursue proper vaccinations. This study reinforces the ease in which Butterfly can enter the equation and drive positive impact and reinforces our belief that all levels or practitioners when armed with the right tool can meaningfully advance the standard of care. In addition to such external validation, we continue to strengthen and differentiate our educational curriculum, in-app guidance and associated services to take the burden off the user, while increasing their confidence in scanning with a Butterfly. Fifth, alongside our team's ongoing development of AI to enable and simplify bedside ultrasound for those not traditionally trained in it is core to making Butterfly adaptable at scale. Now let's talk about our second core principle everywhere. We believe Butterfly can be as ubiquitous as the stethoscope and can find a home in every practitioner's pocket and used for every patient every time. Our belief is materializing. The American Academy of Family Physicians is now recommending that family medicine residents be trained in point-of-care ultrasound, in curriculum guidelines, AAFP, called out that point-of-care ultrasound will transform family physicians' ability to arrive at a rapid diagnosis for patients. This is a meaningful recommendation, with one in eight US medical graduates entering family medicine residencies each year. It's this type of catalyst that our clinical, education and commercial teams are prepared to quickly activate around and already have. Also this past quarter, I was reminded of the importance of our Everywhere principle as our team worked to arm caregivers who are aiding in the humanitarian crisis in and around Ukraine. Due to our mission, we were able to equipped care teams on the front lines of this crisis with Butterfly, and we're already the hearing of the value it's bringing to this distressing situation. The use of Butterfly and such a backdrop reinforces what we are doing, innovating to inform better decisions so people everywhere get the care they need. It's moments like these that emphasize the great impact on utility of Butterfly and drive our team. If we take a quick look at our third principle, economical, one area where Butterfly is increasingly seen as becoming a standard of care is with diagnostic assessment of the lungs. In Q1, the Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine featured a retrospective multicenter study of 479 patients that found point-of-care ultrasound to bring radiation-free, affordable and equivalent diagnostic accuracy to a long assessment as compared to chest x-ray. Given the magnitude and regularity of patients who present with respiratory distress, we're encouraged that Butterfly is being increasingly used by and adding value with a wide range of clinicians to inform decision-making and in turn, to expedite treatment. Studies like this one demonstrate Butterfly's momentum in challenging health care's traditional point-of-care toolkit and workflow. As you have just heard, we have made progress in the first quarter in reinforcing the vision of being easy, everywhere and economical. I will now provide some updates in line with each of our four strategic pillars. Let's start with hospitals and health systems. We are pleased with our Q1 year-over-year growth in the hospital and health system space, which benefited from solid momentum in software sales and from deeper penetration with current clients. Looking ahead, we believe the industry's growing interest to educate and train practitioners to incorporate ultrasound information into the clinical workflow across the enterprise will help drive continued growth in our Blueprint offering. In Q1, we began a number of installations in top hospitals across the country. We anticipate announcing additional partnerships in the near future. Our first enterprise-wide deployment with Rochester is the embodiment of our Blueprint solution, utilizing Butterfly to advanced care delivery, medical education and clinical research. This project is fully on track, and we expect our device deployment to begin in Q2 of this year. Let's move on to our international pillar. We continue to make progress in markets outside of the US. I'm happy to share that in Q1, we solidified a distribution partnership with Novolog, a leading health care services group in Israel. This will enable us to bring Butterfly into Israel and introduce its value as part of primary care. Additionally, we have made a number of segment penetrating deals. One of these comes from the UK, where we've begun working with East of England Ambulance Trust, which provides accident and emergency services, covering an area made up of around 6.2 million people. This will allow us to further demonstrate the value of Butterfly in the hands of EMS teams, which represents a substantial opportunity for Butterfly in many markets. Also, as we previously announced, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided a $5 million grant to help bring Butterfly to sub-Saharan Africa to improve maternal and fetal health. This grant enables our teams to arm 1,000 health care workers with Butterfly iQ+. 500 probes will be given to mid-level practitioners in Kenya, and 500 probes will be distributed to healthcare workers in South Africa later this year. This work represents an important step towards improving worldwide access to medical imaging and advancing our commitment to global health equity. I look forward to sharing more progress on future calls as we roll out this initiative later in the year. Our third pillar is home-based care. In addition to the clinical evidence supporting Butterfly, the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases is spurring interest and use cases in in-home care. This presents us with a market opportunity as Butterfly can enable improved disease management and early detection of some diseases. As part of our clinical program, we are launching multiple studies to evaluate the use of Butterfly for bladder scanning, heart failure and dialysis. These are just a few of the scenarios where Butterfly could be meaningfully used for home health assessment. We believe this will reduce hospital visits, better manage conditions and in some instances, replace a more expensive workflow or device. And finally, as I've covered on past calls, we are exploring markets adjacent to health care. One such market is veterinary medicine. I'm pleased to announce that we are welcoming Petco to Butterfly’s customer ecosystem. Beginning this year, Butterfly iQ+ Vet will be deployed and become standard across 200 eco clinic locations in the United States. We are proud to be the first and only US imaging provider to collaborate with Petco nationwide and to lead the largest deployment of ultrasound into a practice group in veterinary medicine. Whether used as part of routine exams for early detection or for intervention, Butterfly iQ+ Vet will expand the services offered to Petco pet owners, and more importantly, will deliver valuable insights to veterinarians, elevating the care delivered in Petco examiners. This partnership is driven by an aligned vision and a mission with Petco, a health and wellness company focused on creating a better world for animals and the people who love and need them. Our team maintained focus on deploying Butterfly iQ+ Vet to the more than 250,000 veterinarians and vet techs globally who could benefit from having Butterfly in their pocket. I'm excited about the progress we have made and will continue to make in the veterinarian market as we evolve and expand our footprint. I hope this recap illustrates the progress of our journey. As we stated at the beginning of the year, we believe that Butterfly can be as ubiquitous as to stethoscope across all specialties, species and care settings. Over the past year, we've empowered the use of ultrasound where ultrasound is not traditionally utilized and where ultrasound expertise is not traditionally found. As we introduce more caregivers to the benefit of seeing inside the body at the bedside and as the industry's understanding of the value of imaging to inform first confirmed care decisions continues to grow Butterfly is proving itself. And with that, I will now turn to the financial results. Revenue for Q1 2022 was $15.6 million, a 25% increase versus the prior year period and in line with our expectations. Product revenue was $11 million, an increase of 15% versus Q1 2021. This increase was driven by higher average selling prices and volumes in both our US and international healthcare channels, as well as in the vet market. Partially offsetting this increase was a reduction in e-commerce or direct-to-user sales as our business model is evolving to enterprise sales across health systems. Subscription revenue was $4.6 million in the first quarter, growing by approximately 60% over the prior year period. Subscription mix of 29.3% of revenue increased by approximately six percentage points versus Q1 2021. This increase was due to a higher installed base of products with accompanying subscription software as well as increased renewals. Turning now to adjusted gross profit. Please note that a reconciliation of our adjusted numbers to GAAP can be found in today's press release and at the end of the slide presentation. Adjusted gross profit was $8.8 million in Q1 2022 compared to $5.9 million in the prior year period. This increase was primarily due to product mix, reflecting a higher proportion of subscription revenues in addition to higher device prices and volume. Also contributing to the increased margin was higher manufacturing productivity, partially offset by the increased cost of manufacturing materials. Adjusted gross profit margin was 56.3% for the first quarter, which compares to 47.8% in Q1 2021, reflecting the positive mix, higher product ASP and manufacturing efficiencies. For the first quarter of 2022, adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $40 million compared with a loss of $26.5 million for the same period in 2021. The increase in adjusted EBITDA loss of $13.5 million was driven by investments in our commercial and R&D functions as we build out our commercial operations and products as well as investments in future revenue streams. These investments were partially offset by increased adjusted gross margin dollars, driven by the aforementioned positive product mix, ASPs and volume. Moving to our capital resources. As of March 31, 2022, cash and cash equivalents were $359.9 million. In addition to our operating expenses, our Q1 cash position was impacted by fiscal 2021 annual bonus payout, capital expenditures for the build-out of our headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts, and the annual renewal of insurance premiums. We have a solid cash position, and we plan to continue to invest in 2022 to maintain our momentum and continue to capitalize on this attractive market opportunity. Looking at our 2022 guidance, given the strong start to the year, we are reaffirming the previously issued annual revenue guidance of $83 million to $88 million and the adjusted EBITDA guidance for a loss of $175 million to $195 million. As a reminder, we expected about 40% to 45% of 2022 revenue in the first half of the year and 55% to 60% in the second half. This translates to approximately 25% to 30% growth in the first half and approximately 45% growth in the second half. The increased growth in the second half is due to strength in our international channel in addition to the evolution of our business model from e-commerce sales to institutional purchases and deployments. This evolution will be driven by the industry's building awareness of and appreciation for Butterfly's practical application of ultrasound information into the clinical workflow. In time, we believe this shift will not only accelerate our growth but will also allow for more predictable growth expectations. For some additional color, as mentioned, we are expecting 25% to 30% growth in the first half of the year and approximately 45% growth in the second half. We expect our gross margin percentage will fluctuate quarterly along with the change in mix between product and software subscription sales. The first quarter tends to be the lightest in terms of product sales. As such, we anticipate it will be our highest in terms of subscription sales as a percentage of revenue and gross margin percentage. We do, however, anticipate that our subscription sales as a percentage of revenue and gross margin percentage to increase for the full year 2022 versus 2021. For operating expenses, please remember we are doing two things simultaneously: one, we are building a domestic and international commercial organization to support our current revenue base; and two, we are investing in R&D resources to create future revenue streams. Because we are investing significantly for the future and expecting operating leverage on these investments in subsequent years, we believe at this time, adjusted gross margin are the best predictor of our future profitability. In closing, time and time again, Butterfly's unique ability to serve its valuable clinical information quickly and easily, where otherwise does not exist, is winning the hearts and minds of practitioners and leaders across healthcare. Butterfly is the practical application of ultrasound information in the clinical workflow. This is not about doing more ultrasound, but about using the valuable information from ultrasound to better inform care decisions everywhere. Thank you for joining today's call. And thank you, to the Butterfly team for the amazing and important work you continue to do. Now, we'll open up for Q&A.