Earnings Labs

CONMED Corporation (CNMD)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Apr 22, 2015

$36.69

-3.12%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+9.89%

1 Week

+2.90%

1 Month

+12.08%

vs S&P

+10.96%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone. Before we begin, let me remind you that during this call management will be making comments and statements regarding its financial outlook, which represents forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. As those terms are defined under the Federal Securities Laws, the company's actual results may differ materially from its current expectations. Please refer to the Risk Factors and other cautionary factors in today's press release as well as the company's SEC filings for more details on factors that may cause actual results to differ materially. You will also hear management refer to certain non-GAAP adjusted measurements during this discussion. While these figures are not a substitute for GAAP measurements, management will use these figures to aid in monitoring the company's ongoing financial performance from quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year on a regular basis and for benchmarking against other medical technology companies. Adjusted net income and adjusted earnings per share measure the income of the company, excluding credits or charges that are considered by the company to be special or outside of its normal ongoing operations. These adjusting items are specified in the reconciliation in the press release issued this afternoon. With these required announcements completed, I will turn the call over to Curt Hartman, CONMED's President and Chief Executive Officer for opening remarks. Mr. Hartman? Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Denise. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for CONMED's first quarter earnings call. With me on today's call is Luke Pomilio, CONMED's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. On today's call, I'll provide a brief overview of the financial and operating highlights for the first quarter. Then Luke will provide a detailed analysis of our financial performance and commentary on our updated 2015 guidance. We will then…

Operator

Operator

Our first question comes from Richard Newitter with Leerink. Please proceed.

Rich S. Newitter - Leerink Partners LLC

Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe I could just start off with your constant currency growth. In the first quarter you came in positive for the first time, I guess, since the back half of 2013, so congratulations there. My question is you reiterated your 1% to 3% constant currency rate for the full year, and with the first quarter kind of already turning positive, it was a bit above our expectations. Just trying to figure out any changes to the cadence to the year that we should be contemplating, and is there any kind of directional indication you can give between that 1% to 3% range. Is it trending a little bit better, or towards the upper end or any color that would be helpful, Curt? Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure, Rich, and thanks for joining us tonight. I think I'd point to a couple of things here that give us a little bit of pause to not get too far ahead of ourself. We did have a respectable first quarter, yet one quarter does not a trend make, and we still have a lot of work to do in our largest business, orthopedics, which was evident in the numbers. And while I'm pleased with our progress, as I said in my opening comments about 75% complete, there's still work to be done there. So I don't want to get too far in front of ourself. We also had a couple of things in the first quarter that we'd love to tell you. They're going to repeat again, some quarters within our general surgery business that were – lot of work went into getting those. A good strong finish in the month of March, maybe a little better than what we had anticipated even going back to the beginning of March and we had about $800,000 impact from one extra Tuesday in the month of March which is when large distributors order from us. So we try to factor all that to our forward view and our assessment coming out of the first quarter even with the positive constant currency growth was to leave our guidance where it is. And we'll see how the second quarter plays out. And if it looks like there's room after the second quarter to make adjustments in our guidance, we'd probably take that under consideration at that point. I still think we're pointing towards the back half, a better performance than the first half than to the extent that the first half unfolds a little bit better, then we'll address that at the halfway point.

Rich S. Newitter - Leerink Partners LLC

Analyst

Okay. That's helpful. And I guess, should we be thinking about the second quarter kind of in line with the first quarter? And then, to the back half just better than the first half or is anything you can give on trends into the second quarter? Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think you're – directionally, that's correct Rich. The second quarter is one where we're going to ensure that our work in orthopedics gets wrapped up. We've got a lot of stuff going on there that has to be in place for us to feel good and we're working diligently to get that done. And so anytime you're doing that, there's potential for disruption and we definitely do not want to disappoint people. So I think your comment, a similar performance in the second quarter is probably a fair assessment and then we'll look for strength in the back half as all the work in the first half starts materializing.

Rich S. Newitter - Leerink Partners LLC

Analyst

Great. And Luke, maybe – could you just reiterate what exactly impacted the gross margin in the first quarter that no longer will impact you going forward and kind of what is not transient? Luke A. Pomilio - Chief Financial Officer & Executive VP-Finance: Sure. So the three components for the quarter were FX, 150 basis points, that's with us for the duration of the year based on our forecast for the year. Second piece was the 2014 inventory variance being expensed in this quarter. That represent 160 basis points, that's going to be with us to some degree in the second quarter, but will not be with us in second half of the year. And the third portion, 60 basis points, was mixed and hopefully will have favorability as we move through the year on that.

Rich S. Newitter - Leerink Partners LLC

Analyst

Okay. And Curt maybe one last one. Any color on where you are with exploring acquisition opportunities. What's the strategy there, timing? Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. The priority is M&A and the priority is finding tuck-in acquisition deals and it starts with being out in the market actively searching. And we've got a lot of activity. So that's very encouraging. People are calling us and we're doing a lot of work to uncover things and we're working diligently. I think everybody probably knows I have two executive openings. One in running the orthopedics business and one is my Head of Business Development and Strategy, and I would just convey to folks on the call we are, meaning me personally, working very hard to close both of those positions and that will greatly facilitate our efforts on M&A. And right now, Luke is serving double duty as both the CFO and the Head of BD and there's no one more motivated to get a business development leader, corporate development leader into the company than Luke because he's got a full time job. So we're working diligently on it Rich both the person side as well as the pursuing deals that are out there and available for us.

Rich S. Newitter - Leerink Partners LLC

Analyst

Thanks a lot. Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Rich.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Matthew O'Brien with Piper Jaffray. Please proceed. Matt O'Brien - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Can you guys hear me, okay? Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We can, Matt. Thanks. Luke A. Pomilio - Chief Financial Officer & Executive VP-Finance: Hey, Matt. Matt O'Brien - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Okay, great. I was hoping, Curt, just to start off on the general surgery side of the business. I think you said as of April 1st, you're now set and ready to go with those two organizations on the endomechanical and energy side of things now selling products. Can you just give us a sense for how that selling process now is going to work. Are the reps going to have to go back to the value-added committees et cetera at these hospitals and get them to review the other products before they can start selling them more aggressively? So we should think about potentially sometime in Q3, if not Q4 where they're starting to see more success or could it be more of a near-term boost to the top-line? Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Matt, it's a great question, and I think candidly, the answer is going to be a little of both. Some of the products are just flat out competitive with existing similar products that other competitors have. And if we can go in and get customer attention and show a value story that ties in with the rest of our portfolio, I think that's a fairly straight up competition, if you will, in the OR. Other products where it perhaps is – because they sell both single-use disposables as well as capital, if they're going…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mike Matson with Needham & Company. Please proceed. Mike S. Matson - Needham & Co. LLC: Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess I just wanted to start with SG&A. This is the second quarter in a row where you're seeing that 38% range. Just wondering – which is down considerably from earlier last year. So I'm assuming there was – this is the result of some restructuring. So was there some low-hanging fruit that you were able to go after fairly quickly, and are there any remaining opportunities to cut costs and drive SG&A even lower in the near-term, say, the remainder of the year? Luke A. Pomilio - Chief Financial Officer & Executive VP-Finance: Yes. So to talk numbers, we were at 38.6% for the quarter. Full year of 2014 we're at 39.7% for the quarter, and that really resulted from a substantial effort looking internally at where we could reduce our cost structure. So there's been a substantial activity related to head count reductions on the SG&A side. So I suspect we'll continue to see that benefit as we move forward through 2015, although I don't expect in any quarter of 2015 that we'll get dramatically lower than the 38.6%. Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And Mike, I'm nuancing here a little bit, but I wouldn't say it's low-hanging fruit. And I commented that we've had to make some tough decisions, because in relation to our top-line, our expense structure had not really been appropriately structured to reflect where the top-line had been in recent years. So you bring in new managers, you bring in some new leaders, and they're going to design the organization slightly different than previous management. And that's really the work we've…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Matthew Mishan with KeyBanc. Please proceed.

Matt Mishan - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc. Please proceed.

Great. Thank you for taking my questions. Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi, Matt. Thank you. Luke A. Pomilio - Chief Financial Officer & Executive VP-Finance: Hey, Matt.

Matt Mishan - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc. Please proceed.

I'll just start off with some of the weakness you saw in instruments. Are you surprised that didn't benefit more from some of the improvement in hospital capital spending? And then in line with that question, I think Stryker on their call last night, said they had certain supply chain issues with their instruments and that was supposed to linger for them for another quarter or so. Is that an opportunity for you or something that you saw in your supply chain? Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So a couple of comments there, Matt. You know, a year ago the U.S. orthopedics business had a very solid capital equipment quarter in the Power Tool business. Not that our Power Tool revenue is as large as some of our competitors, but the performance last year was pretty outsized and it was a tough comparison to go against, number one. Number two, the capital equipment requires you have a robust pipeline, and I would say, given a lot of what happened in 2014, there were periods when our pipeline was not that robust. So it takes a little bit of time to reestablish those pipelines which is, in large degree, what our new regional directors are working with our teams on, understanding where the opportunities are, understanding how to get an invite to the party, if you will. So I have greater expectations for our capital empowered instruments franchise as the year unfolds. As it relates to our competitors, I can't control what happens to them and we're just going to go out in marketplace and be a good competitor and try to get our fair share of the business. And if there's a disruption in the marketplace so we could take advantage of it, we'll certainly try to do that.

Matt Mishan - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc. Please proceed.

Okay. And then I noticed the med device tax moved off of the income statement. I'm assuming that went to SG&A? Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, went into SG&A.

Matt Mishan - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc. Please proceed.

So, in reality, I mean your SG&A would have been somewhere in the 37.5% of sales if that were called out? Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: That's correct.

Matt Mishan - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc. Please proceed.

All right. And then, I guess, the question there is how sustainable is that? I mean, my guess is that you're going through these head count reductions but on the same token, you're also replacing a lot of people at the same time. I know the question was already asked, but I'm assuming that's not a level that we should expect going forward? Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I think couple of things at a high level. We brought our head count down. If you look at the end of 2013 head count versus where we are today, it's down close to 200 people and I don't see a lot of reason for our head count to expand dramatically outside of the areas that support our commercial organization. We've done a lot of work to consolidate manufacturing footprint. And it's about putting volume over that. The selling organizations, the marketing teams we want to appropriately size them for the opportunity we're pursuing and we'll try to be pretty judicious when we're adding to make sure that it's the right add and we're holding people accountable there. We're not going to get the expense in front of the revenue and our focus right now is on driving the revenue. So I'd like to believe that our SG&A expense is not going to move dramatically as the year unfolds that we can be responsible and keep these rates as a percentage of sales in this range.

Matt Mishan - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc. Please proceed.

Okay. Thank you very much. Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Matt.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jeffrey Cohen with Ladenburg. Please proceed. Jeffrey S. Cohen - Ladenburg Thalmann & Co., Inc. (Broker): Oh, hi. Thanks for taking the questions. Can you hear me, okay? Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We can, Jeff. Jeffrey S. Cohen - Ladenburg Thalmann & Co., Inc. (Broker): Thanks, guys. We've addressed a lot of the issues, but I just want to leave two on the table, and one is if you could talk about any anticipated or what levels of restructuring costs throughout the balance of the year? And secondly, if you could provide any color as far as product launches, or at least give us a little flavor as far as segments going forward, at least for the balance of 2015? Thanks. Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. Great question. I'll probably take the product launch. I'll start with that one first. We've discussed within the general surgery segment the newly formed advance surgical has some product launches that were working their way through the pipeline and we're in the very early stages of those. The EntriPort cannulas system, the VCare Pneumo upgrade, they're nice products right now. They're important that we drop new things into the portfolio, but we're in the very early stages of rolling that out, again being very cautious here. We need to be cautious as we go out and approach customers, and ensure that we have the right offering and solution with our new platforms, and then as people walk through the booth at the AORN show, they saw kind of the totality of the general surgery offering and some different things that we think they would benefit from in terms of our smoke portfolio offering and some subtle enhancements…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jim Sidoti with Sidoti & Company. Please proceed. James P. Sidoti - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Good afternoon. Can you hear me? Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We can, Jim. Thanks for being on the call with us. James P. Sidoti - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Great. Thank you. So the strong performance on the capital side, would you attribute that mostly to the new surgical visualization system? Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Certainly we're pleased right now with where the camera is going. Again, the prior year numbers were beaten down pretty far. So we don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but certainly the camera sales were a big component of the capital equipment. But as I mentioned in one of the other responses, in the general surgery portfolio with the energy boxes, if you will, that is counted as a capital item and we did have some nice orders coming in the first quarter that supported the capital equipment side of the business. James P. Sidoti - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Okay. And then conversely on the disposable side, the decline both in the U.S. and internationally, what would you attribute that to? Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Look, if you dive into the segments, within our orthopedics business, the items that we count as disposables, some of those, the single-use burs and blades as well as the sports medicine related to implants. We put the organization through a lot in the first quarter in terms of training, education, meeting new regional directors, evaluating business. So we've probably missed some opportunities, and that's just part of the transition work that's going on and little bit of the…

Operator

Operator

We have no further questions. I will now turn the call back over to management for any closing remarks. Please proceed. Curt R. Hartman - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Denise. We're pleased with our first quarter and start to 2015, and I'm proud of what the team at CONMED has accomplished here in the last 90 days and really leading or going back into the end of the fourth quarter of 2014, and I'm thrilled to be leading the company's extremely talented and dedicated team. As I mentioned on many occasions, 2015 is a year of transition and we've got a lot of work ahead of us but we're optimistic about CONMED's future and we believe that we have the right team and strategies in place to drive very profitable growth. So thank you for your time this evening. We look forward to speaking with all of you on our next call which will be held on July 22 of 2015. Thank you, everybody.