Ken Reali
Analyst · Canaccord. Your line is open please ask your question
Thanks Dave, and good morning everyone. And thank you for your interest in Bioventus. Before discussing our most recent quarter, I would like to reflect on what was a transformational year at Bioventus. I am extremely proud of the way that our entire organization rallied to strengthen our long-term outlook through a variety of actions. Last month, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of our IPO. Which helped facilitate our acquisitions of Bioventus and Misonix, allowing us to build out our three customer focus verticals and enhance our scale. These acquisitions have enabled our transformation from a company that historically reported high single-digit organic sales growth to one that we believe and can consistently deliver double-digit organic growth. The acquisitions also bolstered our commercial organization by adding over 200 sales representatives to our team. Throughout 2021, we delivered strong commercial execution and we're resilient in our response to the challenging dynamics brought on by the pandemic. We exceeded our initial sales plans, increased our targets throughout the year and generated 19% organic revenue growth. We couldn't have achieved this without our teams exceptional execution of the company's strategy. Thanks to their continued hard work and dedication, the outlook for Bioventus has never been more exciting and we're looking forward to building on this momentum in 2022. I will now review our results for the quarter. Revenue increased to 32% during the fourth quarter to $130 million, despite some continued challenges from the pandemic. We encountered headwinds at both the beginning and the end of the quarter from elective surgical procedure delays in specific regions of the country impacting our Surgical Solutions vertical. As the quarter progressed, we saw the impact of hospital and physician office staffing challenges across all our verticals, as well as increased COVID rates among patients that forced delays in scheduled treatment. Despite these challenges and the fact that we were impacted by three fewer selling days, we delivered a strong quarter of 5% organic growth. Adjusting for the impact of three fewer selling days. Growth for the quarter would project to 10%. With this as a background, I will now discuss sales performance across our three verticals in more detail. Across pain treatments, we saw double-digit revenue growth driven by continued market share gains for our single injection DUROLANE therapy. And are three injection GELSYN therapy. We remain well-positioned to take advantage of the shift towards single and three injection treatments for osteoarthritic knee pain. DUROLANE and GELSYN each represent roughly 20% share of the single and three injection markets, respectively, with significant room for additional growth in the coming years for bulk therapies as they increased penetration. Meanwhile, our five injection therapy SUPARTZ maintained its leading share of approximately 40% as the only company with a portfolio of products across single three and five injection therapies. We have held the number two share position in the HA market and look to become the market leader in the coming years. Turning to our Surgical Solutions vertical, [Indiscernible] fully referred to as bone graft substitutes, we saw double-digit organic revenue growth despite the disruption in elective procedures. I mentioned earlier, the launch of OSTEOAMP Flowable, are injectable allograft, bone graft substitutes solution continues to contribute to our momentum. Misonix contributed two months of revenue in the fourth quarter following the closing of the acquisition. And we saw a strong double-digit sales growth of Misonix BoneScalpel, compared to the same two-month period in 2020. At the end of the quarter, we received FDA clearance for the BoneScalpel access hand piece. This handpiece provides surgeons with a new option to use in confined spaces during minimally-invasive spine surgeries, enabling safe bone removal with maximum visualization. This device further strengthens our presence in minimally-Invasive Spinal fusions. The fastest-growing statement of spine, and complements our already strong portfolio of bone graft substitutes, including OSTEOAMP Flowable. We have commenced a limited market release for BoneScalpel access that has received positive feedback, and plan to initiate a full commercial release in the second half of this year. Finally, we saw double-digit growth across our Restorative Therapies vertical, underpined by our recently acquired advanced rehabilitation products, and the Misonix Wound Therapy business. Our advanced rehabilitation business has continued to perform well since we acquired it last March. In addition, our Misonix wound business grew double-digits for the two months post acquisition compared to the same two-month period in 2020. Across our international segment, growth of 71% was enhanced by our BIONESS and Misonix acquisitions while organic growth of 9% was driven primarily by DUROLANE. Bolstering our international [Indiscernible] presence, I am pleased to announce that during the quarter we acquired [Indiscernible], a 3 and 5 injection aching treatments to sell alongside DUROLANE in our international markets. While not as material as our other acquisitions, this was an important strategic acquisition that allows us to leverage and expand our significant market presence and customer base in HA therapy. Additionally, later this year, we expect to begin leveraging the international distribution rights we received through our investment in Trice Medical. As we continue to introduce new products across multiple regions and execute our go-to-market strategy. We see international expansion as a catalyst for revenue growth. Dave will give you a look at the guidance shortly. But as we look out to the rest of the year, market conditions are improving and while delays in elective procedures have improved in recent weeks, we continue to see some impact from hospital staffing challenges. We expect some disruption over the next few months, but we are optimistic that conditions will begin to more closely resemble a normal environment. In the second half of the year. Now I'd like to update you on our 2022 priorities. As I highlighted earlier, we accomplished a great deal in 2021 with disciplined focus and execution across our key priorities and will maintain the same rigor in executing our three priorities for 2022. Our first priority is to maintain double-digit organic growth through the continued strong execution of our commercial organization. We see three areas that are expected to deliver double-digit organic growth. Pain treatments, including hyaluronic acid and PNS, peripheral nerve stimulation driven by share gains across DUROLANE and GELSYN and growth of cure based internationally and continued growth of our PNS business. Surgical solutions, including our bone graft substitutes as our hardware agnostic strategy drives penetration into new accounts. Keeping in mind we only have 5% market share today and plenty of runway for growth. And while recognizing that it isn't contributing to organic growth for the majority of the year, Misonix will allow us to leverage our scale to achieve further market share gains and enhance its historic double-digit growth rate. Our second priority focuses on completing the integrations of our recent acquisitions, delivering on our cost synergy commitments, and leveraging our enhanced scale to accelerate sales. We recently incorporated Bioness into our IT system, the last significant milestone in the Integration process. And now turn our attention to my Misonix. Over the past few months, an internal team has developed our integration plan, leveraging the valuable experience from the Bioness process. We expect to be substantially completed with the integration of Misonix by year-end and remain on target for our projected $20 million of cost synergies by the end of 2023. Besides the realization of cost synergies, our [Indiscernible] buying commercial teams, continue to pilot opportunities to leverage our enhanced scale and customer relationships to accelerate sales growth. As I highlighted last quarter, we initiated two sales pilot programs to utilize our call point access and further increase Bioness growth. We saw positive results from our successful pilot centered around our L300 Go product for patients suffering gait disturbance following total knee replacement surgery. As a result, we are educating our broader sales team to further leverage their relationships with orthopedic surgeons. The second pilot explored accelerating PNS revenue by using our existing sales force for lead-generation. Based on the results of this pilot, we are moving forward and hiring additional sales representatives in our pain treatments vertical that will be solely focused on our PNS products. We anticipate that these products will contribute to our double-digit growth in both the near and mid-term. In addition to these successful pilots, we recently received FDA 5 10-K clearance for our next-generation StimRouter plus Neuromodulation system. The new system provides the same clinically proven long-term pain relief, while significantly improving the patient's control and user experience and also has enhanced battery life. With the Misonix integration underway, we have recently initiated programs to enable deeper penetration within our customers across surgical applications in spinal fusion, neurosurgery, and wound treatments. The first will leverage the existing customer relationships that the respective Bioventus and Misonix sales forces maintain. These two sales forces have approximately 500 customer relationships each but there is relatively little overlap due to our relatively small market penetration today. Roughly ten accounts in total. Already, we have cross-trained the entire Misonix sales team on our bone graft substitutes portfolio to leverage their customer relationships. Also, we have trained select members of our indirect sales force on our Misonix surgical products and plan to implement a more extensive rollout in the second half of the year. Through the early stages of implementation, we are already seeing this approach pay dividends as our sales teams have been able to utilize their relationships and cross-sell incremental products to an account. The second Misonix program engages our Exogen representatives to sell Misonix's wound products into the office setting. Misonix has focused on the hospital wound center call point in the past. But due to the pandemic, more wound related treatments have shifted to the office setting. We are leveraging our relationships with podiatrist by utilizing our existing EXOGEN call points in the office setting to offer Misonix's wound treatment therapies to patients suffering from debilitating wound conditions, such as diabetic foot ulcers. Our third and final priority for the year centers on the pending acquisition of CartiHeal, which we believe is a revolutionary and game changing device for multitudes of patients suffering from knee osteoarthritis. As I mentioned last quarter, there are still steps remaining for CartiHeal to gain PMA approval. But in the meantime, we are preparing to finance the potential acquisition with additional debt. As a reminder, CartiHeal fills a significant unmet need for surgeons and the treatment of patients with cartilage defects and knee osteoarthritis, and has a demonstrated superiority through a randomized controlled trial to the current surgical standard of care. Demonstrating superiority, particularly in orthopedics, is a high bar, and one that speaks to the strong merits of the CartiHeal device. While we don't expect the acquisition to drive material growth during the first years post-launch, we anticipate CartiHeal will be a significant driver of growth in the midterm as private payers increasingly approve reimbursement based on its clinical superiority and economic attractiveness. Before turning it over to Dave, I want to express how excited we are to bring Mark Singleton onboard as our new Chief Financial Officer during our search, we were focused on finding a candidate who has demonstrated the ability in a global medtech organization to drive revenue growth, as well as consistent operating leverage, both organically and through value creating M&A. Throughout his time at IBM, Lenovo and most recently over the last 7 years at Teleflex, Mark has partnered with leadership to consistently deliver improved operating results and integrate acquired assets. Mark's ability to effectively manage operating spending, an increased financial discipline and accountability will help us to drive expanded operating margin leverage as we continue to grow organically and enhance our portfolio through M&A. Mark brings robust experience in our industry and will be a strong cultural fit with our executive team and all of Bioventus. Lastly, I would like to thank Greg [Indiscernible] for his financial leadership during his time at Bioventus and wish him the best in the next step of his career. In conclusion, we continue to build momentum across our business as we execute on our growth strategy and drive further market penetration across all three customer focused verticals. I am confident we will deliver on our cost synergies from our acquisitions and enhance our growth profile by leveraging our scale and commercial infrastructure to deliver consistent double-digit growth. Now, I will turn the call over to Dave.