Jeffrey Henderson
Analyst · Lazard Capital
Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. It's a pleasure to be reporting our Q3 end results, and I'm very proud of the organizational execution and financial performance we have delivered in the third quarter and fiscal year to date. First, I'll provide an overview of our Q3 results and key drivers. Let me build on those as well as touch on our revised FY '10 guidance and preliminary fiscal '11 outlook. To begin, as you may recall, before the start of this year, we identified a few key financial metrics that we needed to focus on to win, specifically margin expansion and working capital improvements. Driven by a number of the performance initiatives that George has already referenced, we have made some great progress in both of these areas. First, we are pleased that after the second quarter in a row, consolidated gross margin rates have increased year-on-year. In Q3, this rate increased five basis points versus last year to 4.15%. And non-bulk profit margins within our Pharma segment were 2.24% versus 2.05% in Q3 of FY '09. Second, regarding working capital, we've continued to see the hard work of our people pay dividends. Both year-on-year and sequentially, inventory declined by two days largely due to the efforts of our operating teams and our lean Six Sigma programs. At the same time, our accounts receivables days outstanding improved versus last year. These initiatives, combined with our earnings performance, helped to generate $879 million of operating cash flow in Q3, bringing our year-to-date operating cash flow to just over $1.8 billion. And in the timing of payments, our cumulative operating cash flow for the full year will likely be below this in a range of $1.5 billion or so. But it still represents a significant number and is much higher than we projected coming into the year. To summarize, we're making great progress with our performance initiatives as beginning to consistently show in our key metrics. Although we’ll always see some quarterly fluctuations and margin rate trends and working capital levels, due to the nature of our business and external factors, we feel we have the actions in place to continue to move these in the right direction over time. Now let me add a few more details regarding our Q3 performance starting with the segments. As George said, we are pleased with the business progress and financial results in Pharma. Revenue increased by 0.5%, split almost equally between non-bulk and bulk customers. [Indiscernible] of a relationship with two significant customers in the first half of the year, there had been sales growth by approximately 150 basis points. These are the same two low-margin accounts we had referenced in previous calls. Certain of our large customers also grew their orders less than market in the third quarter which further impacted the growth rate. Within the Pharma margins in the quarter, we saw strong performance under our brand agreements, particularly related to brand inflation from our price contingent vendors as well as our generic programs. This benefit was partially offset by the continued Medicine Shoppe and Pfizer DSA transitions and previously referenced contract repricings which are largely pulling [ph] through as anticipated. In the Medical segment, profit declined 16% versus last year to $108 million, primarily due to an unusual year-on-year comparison and the cost of goods sold, the year-on-year impact of performance-based employee compensation, and increased investment spend associated with the Medical Business Transformation. The decline was partially offset by revenue growth from our Canadian lab and ambulatory services and our portfolio of preferred products. Segment profit increased sequentially, by $5 million, despite that left benefit from commodity price changes and the absence of a significant Q3 flu season. In fact, after a much higher than usual positive impact in the flu in the first half of fiscal '10, that trend pretty much reversed itself in Q3. Let me now cover a few items in the consolidated level. Non-GAAP operating expense is up over 9% from last year, largely driven by funding our performance-based employee compensation programs that did not occur in the prior year period, and to a lesser extent, investments spend on key initiatives. If you exclude those drivers, our core SG&A is down year-on-year, reflecting the continued tight focus we have on this area. Let me spend a few more moments in this composition issue given its significance to our expense line [ph] in this quarter. As I’m sure you’ll recall, last year in late Q2 and Q3, we were in the midst of the global financial crisis. At that time, we had not yet spun off our CareFusion capital equipment businesses. The economic crisis had begun having a very negative impact on hospital capital equipment orders, significantly impacting our CareFusion business. As we recognized this downturn in our full year financial forecast for FY '09, we also brought down our management bonus accruals across the entire company commensurately and as particularly impacted Q3 ’09. This year, our bonus accruals have increased based on strong performance versus target. The net year-on-year impact of those accruals moving in opposite directions is reflected in our SG&A growth this quarter. Compiling this increase is the decision we made heading into FY '10 to tie more of our employee-related expenses to company financial performance and hence make more variable. Specifically, we replaced a portion of our 401k benefit that was a fixed employer contribution with a variable contribution linked to financial performance. And again, better-than-planned performance this year resulted in higher accruals for his expense in Q3. Moving on, our non-GAAP tax rate for the quarter was 38.2% versus 37.3% last year. A higher rate in the current quarter was attributable to changes in income mix and a few discreet items. On the balance sheet, we finished the quarter with over $2.6 billion of cash, approximately $400 million of which is overseas. Now let me turn to Slide 7 and take a moment to walk you through the items that accounted for the difference in our GAAP and non-GAAP EPS numbers. It always figures that our reviews ar on an after-tax basis. The biggest item in this category is a $23 million gain from sales of 5.4 million shares of CareFusion stock in the quarter. This accounted for approximately $0.06. The next item is the impairments and loss sale of assets of approximately $0.04. The majority of this relates to the closure of a facility, as well as final tax true-ups related to a divestiture. The other three items, restructuring and severance, litigation charges, and other spin-off costs netted to approximately $0.01. The [indiscernible] of all these items resulted in a GAAP EPS of $0.62 versus non-GAAP of $0.61. Now turning to Slide 8, an update on the status of our CareFusion stake. As mentioned earlier, during Q3, we sold 5.4 million shares that generated $136 million in proceeds and a gain of $23 million. We’ve accrued no tax on the proceeds of the sale. After these sales, we now hold 30.5 million shares of CareFusion stock which had a value of $805 million on March 31. During Q3, we had a pretax unrealized gain of its remaining [ph] ownership of $43 million, which does not have an earnings impact until shares are actually sold and capital gains or losses are recognized. As we’ve said in the past, in order to maintain the tax-free nature of this spin-off, we need to divest of the remaining shares within five years from the spin-off date. We intend to complete this by the end of fiscal '11, and are continuing to assess the best method and timing to do this based on market conditions and other factors. Also during the quarter, we signed a definitive agreement for the sale of Martindale in the U.K., and are expecting to close this by the end of fiscal 2010. This, along with the sale of Specialty Scripts, the closing of which we announced earlier, complete the portfolio rationalization activity that we projected for this year. Now let’s [ph] review our revised FY '10 outlook. Let me begin with some [indiscernible] comments about how we now view the full year from a forecast perspective, particularly given our [indiscernible] strong financial results in the first three quarters. Certainly our performance thus far has been better than anticipated heading into the year. This is being driven by two major categories of items. First, we've had very good execution against our key initiatives this year, including our Medical supply chain strategy, generics programs, our progress in retail independence and strong performance in nuclear, despite supply shortage issues. But we’ve also benefited from certain external factors including generic launches that happened at a higher level than we had planned, lower deflation on certain generic products, accelerated compensation from our branded vendors relative to price increases and a higher demand for certain med surge products resulting from a stronger and earlier flu season in the first half of the year. For the full year, although we will get some net benefit from those factors, we are assuming that they are largely normalized in the fourth quarter. In total, the sum of these items has added up to solid performance in the first nine months of the fiscal year, and this is reflected in our increased guidance of $2.15 to $2.20. [Indiscernible] is that Q4 will be down from last year based upon several factors which I’ll attempt to walk through. Our Pharmaceutical segment assumptions for Q4 include the following: the headwinds of the Pfizer DSA and Medicine Shoppe transitions continue to play out as anticipated. The earlier-than-anticipated [indiscernible] price inflation realized in the first three quarters is not [ph] expected to continue in the fourth quarter. In fact, we had originally expected price increases from a major branded contingent vendor in Q4 which we no longer anticipate. The negative year-on-year impact of the generic launches in deflation was not as significant in the first three quarters as we anticipated, again due to several unplanned launches and slower deflation on certain products launched. However, we are not projecting any significant high-value generic launches in Q4. Finally, let me comment on the financial impact of the nuclear generator supply situation which George covered in some detail. The supply shortage had unfavorable EPS impact of $0.01 to $0.02 in Q3 and based on what we’re seeing so far, we’ll have at least $0.02 impact in Q4. Turning to our Medical segment: the first three quarters' results show revenue growth to be above overall market trends, driven by our mix shift, strong growth in Canada ambulatory and lab, an exceptional flu season in Q1 and Q2 and a one-time revenue recognition benefit from the CareFusion spend. In Q4, we expect that segment revenue growth may moderate somewhat, given the absence of a few of these unique items and a slightly cautious view of the market due to some softness in utilization we saw during part of Q3. In the first half of 2010, this segment also saw greater benefit from commodity raw material prices and higher flu-related sales than we had originally projected. These did not continue in Q3. In fact, all [ph] prices moved higher over the past months, and as you recall, there's a lag effect regarding the impact of these movements in our income statement. These factors make for a harder second half comparison. That all said, after a tough [ph] compare in Q3, we do expect the Medical segment to return to year-on-year profit growth in Q4. On Slide 10, we provided our corporate assumptions for fiscal 2010, which are identical to what we have shared previously. The only comment I’ll make in this area is that we expect that our full-year tax rate will likely be north of 37%, which implies a fourth quarter that could be four percentage points or so higher than last year's unusually low Q4 rate. Taking all of this into account and based on our performance during the first three quarters of this year, as George had mentioned, we are increasing and narrowing our non-GAAP earnings per share guidance for FY '10 to $2.15 to $2.20. Now let's turn to Slides 12 to 14 and have a look at our preliminary FY '11 guidance. As George mentioned, we thought it made sense to provide you all with an early look at next year given the somewhat unique circumstances of 2010. Our initial thoughts for fiscal 2011 non-GAAP earnings per share range are between $2.35 and $2.45. Implicit in this is our expectation for relatively modest revenue growth on a consolidated basis. Now that said, let's spend a few moments going through some of the segment-specific assumptions in more detail. On Slide 13, you can see the Pharmaceutical segment assumptions. Let me hit on a few highlights. Importantly, our FY '11 guidance assumes a renewal of all existing major customer contracts. Brand inflation is projected to be on a comparable level to FY '10. We do not anticipate a significant change from FY '10 related to the year-on-year comparison of generic launches and price deflation. We do, however, expect continued benefit from our generic sourcing programs. And as we did heading into this year, we have risk-adjusted a basket of potential at-risk launches losses in FY '11 to come up with our forecast. In the Nuclear business, we expect the Moly [ph] supply shortage to moderate during the first half of next year. The Nuclear will likely face a tough first half due to the supply shortage. Now let's turn to Slide 14 and our assumptions for the Medical segment. We expect to benefit from increased preferred product sales and customer mix shifts to higher margin classes such as ambulatory care. We do project a negative impact from rising commodity prices that we saw over the last several quarters, as the increased cost slowed through our P&L through FY '11. We did not anticipate the extraordinary demand from the pandemic flu season that we experienced in the first half of this year. Our Medical Transformation initiative expense will continue at a similar level to FY '10 as we continue to position our Medical segment for long-term growth. And we are also making some further strategic moves in the Medical segment related to sourcing and category management which derive [ph] long-term benefit. In addition to the segment-specific items noted, I want to highlight that we will continue to take additional broad-based actions to improve the cost and capital profile of our businesses. As you would expect, we will be providing an updated look with additional details at our Q4 call. But I hope this preliminary look at FY '11 is helpful. Let me conclude with some final remarks on healthcare reform, building on what George commented on earlier. At this point, it is difficult to accurately quantify the impact that some elements of the reform package will have on volumes or margins, although we are optimistic that increased access will provide an overall benefit to us in the medium to longer term. Further, there are two areas that are a bit easier to quantify. First, with regard to the cost of our employee benefits, we expect the ongoing impact to be relatively minimal, and we'll be taking no charge for postretirement healthcare as we do not have a company funded retiree healthcare program. With regard to the 2.3% tax on sales by med device manufacturers, we expect to see, which is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2013, will have some impact on us. The final language, as [indiscernible] devices to include in this tax application, was a little more inclusive than we would have liked. [Indiscernible] for you, based on today's look at business and after any actions we may take to mitigate or share the impact hit to our Med/Surg manufacturing business would be about $20 million to $25 million annually. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator to begin our Q&A.