Robert S. Weiss
Analyst · Robert Baird
Thank you, Kim, and good afternoon and evening to everyone. Another solid quarter with a good start to the new year, top line growth of 16%, 11% in organic constant currency. Capital earnings per share was $1.50, up 34%, which includes $14 million of business interruption. Non-GAAP EPS was $1.23, up $0.11 or 10%, and our free cash flow was $19.2 million for the quarter and that brings our trailing 12-month free cash flow to $226 million. Some highlights and key events. During the quarter, we successfully amended our CIBA, Alcon royalty agreement, giving updated guidance, factoring in investments and some foreign exchange, or the yen if you will, through December 21, 2012. We also successfully concluded our business interruption insurance process, receiving another $14 million in payments. While the stock market sputtered to begin the New Year, we affected the repurchase of 450,000 of our own shares using $44 million of cash. Our Origio acquisition got off to a good start, with revenues of $20 million or 24% growth. Our silicone hydrogel family, including the recent relaunch of our 2-week Avaira Toric, is humming up 38% in constant currency and now accounts for 40% of our CVI revenue. Our balance sheet, even after the $44 million buyback, remains strong with debt to cap of 15%. On sales, our silicone hydrogel family continues to drive results. During Q1, our silicone hydrogel family contributed -- continued to drive our top line and bottom line results. Silicone hydrogel revenues were $120 million. Our silicone hydrogel family grew 38% in constant currency. The family now encompasses 40% of CVI revenues. The rollout of Biofinity Toric into Japan and the expected halo effect on the Biofinity Sphere, overall, Biofinity in Japan more than tripled. The relaunch of Avaira Toric is having the expected halo effect on the Avaira family of 2-weeks silicone hydrogel lenses. Overall, Avaira is up over 50% in constant currency worldwide. We continued our confirmatory rollout of our single-use silicone still small [ph]. We believe several years down the road, as cost come down and prices to the consumer get lowered, that silicone hydrogel in the 1 Day modality will become more than what it is today which is a niche. In fact, as you will notice from our revised guidance on free cash flow, we have reduced forecasted free cash flow, reflecting our accelerated plans in this arena. We have now moved from confirmatory phase and are taking steps to accommodate a global rollout already in multiple continents. I might add that capital expenditures in 2013, 2014 is not expected to lower our 5-year objective of $1.3 billion in free cash flow. Geographically, foreign exchange headwinds continue affecting our CooperVision results, impacting the top line by 2% in the quarter. Excluding foreign exchange, CooperVision constant currency growth was 14%. Last year, it was the euro. This year, it's the yen. With over $200 million in revenues in Japan, this is obviously having an impact not only on revenues, but also on our gross profit percent and operating margin percent. Even with this nuisance, our results are solid. Regionally, we have put up solid constant currency growth in all accounts. America is up 18%; EMEA, up 7% constant currency; Asia Pac, 17%; and overall, as I indicated, 14%. Our growth drivers are, in the Americas, trading up to Biofinity, including the halo effect of Biofinity Multifocal, with the entire family doing well. Also, well off of a small base Proclear 1 Day and the Avaira Toric and family are significant contributors. EMEA right now, currency is neutral. Driving our 7% growth in the region is the entire Biofinity family and Proclear 1 Days, while single-use silicone is still only a small contributor. Asia Pac, while foreign exchange took its toll on a GAAP revenue basis, which was up 10%, our constant currency growth in revenue was up 17%. Drivers here: the Biofinity family, especially with the halo effect of Biofinity Toric; the Proclear 1 Day; as well as single-use torics. Looking at the soft contact lens market. In the fourth quarter of 2012, it was up 5% in constant currency, while CooperVision was up 10%. For the calendar year, the soft contact lens market now, $7.3 billion worldwide was up 5% also on constant currency. CooperVision was up 11% on the strength of Biofinity and the 1 Day -- Proclear 1 Day product. For the calendar quarter, market growth was sponsored by the 1 Day market, multifocals and torics. While CLI or Contact Lens Institute has now stopped reporting the growth of silicone hydrogel material, most likely the trade-up material remains solid growth material. CooperVision was up 38% in constant currency in the first quarter of '13. And at CooperVision, silicone hydrogel now represents 40% of our revenue. The soft contact lens market continues to be a trade-up market. This includes 2 premium products: silicone hydrogel lenses, torics and multifocals. A trade-up of silicone hydrogel is in the 20% to 40% range. And importantly, a trade-up to the 1 Day disposable expands patient revenue by 400% to 600%. Even more importantly, the 1 Day wear generates 300% to 500% more profit. Also, it's important to understand that torics and multifocals have a long way to go in capturing the market opportunities, especially outside the United States. Geographically, the strength of the Americas, up 5%; and Asia Pac, up 6%. During the final quarter of 2012 carried a weak EMEA, which was only up 2%. Overall, the market was up 5% for the quarter, at the midpoint of our 4% to 6% expectations. CooperSurgical, our women's health care franchise turned in $78 million in revenue on the strength of more than $20 million of revenue contributed by Origio. CooperSurgical was up 37%. We were very pleased with the Origio revenue of 20%, up $20 million, which was up 24% over the comparable prior period. I might add, if we were to have owned the Origio business at the beginning of the prior year, our constant currency growth at Cooper would have been 12% while our women's health care growth would have grown at 7%. Aside from IVF or fertility, if you will, which now accounts for 30% of CooperSurgical revenue, our surgical procedures continue to perform near double-digit growth. Overall, CooperSurgical now accounts for 20% of Cooper, with a solid gross margin and operating margins and very little CapEx requirements that translates to outstanding cash flow. While we have a fair amount of work to do in further leveraging our most recent acquisition, we will continue to focus on other things to buy that either fit the GYN office setting, IVF or surgical procedures. Looking at guidance. We updated our guidance in late December following the amendment to our CIBA, Alcon royalty agreement. While the exact change has not been disclosed for contractual and competitive reasons, our revised guidance reflected several factors: the revised royalty; certain investment decisions; and the impact to foreign exchange, most notably the yen through December 20. The yen, which was at JPY 84 on December 20, has continued to soften and is now at JPY 93 to the dollar. With an excess $200 million in sales in Japan, this 1% further drop is a considerable headwind, impacting revenue, gross profit percentages, as well as operating margins. Our new guidance reflects the strength and progress of our product portfolio, market share gains, favorable impact of our buyback of 460,000 shares of stocks and the favorable Q1 results. We are pleased to take up the bottom of our revenue and EPS ranges in spite of foreign exchange challenges we, like many other global companies, are currently experiencing. On strategy, we are continuing with our successful strategy, which I've frequently articulated in the past. We believe it is solid, and it has delivered results. CooperSurgical is putting up outstanding results and is leveraging its infrastructure. This franchise was built with a solid understanding of the value of critical mass in a women's health care market, targeting the OB/GYNs. We follow the professional wherever they go, office, surgi center hospital or IVF centers. Although the call points are different for each, the leverage is considerable. CooperSurgical's Q1 '13 gross profit was 64%. Operating margins were 19%. And due to minimal CapEx requirements, CooperSurgical was a significant contributor to free cash flow. We are dedicated to the strategy, and we'll continue tuck-in acquisitions, as well as acquisitions outside the U.S. to leverage the CooperSurgical structure and products. At CooperVision, the strategy is much more complicated, reflecting the fact that it's global in nature also. In the $7.3 billion soft contact lens industry, because of the uniqueness of our manufacturing platform and product portfolio, we are the only participant that can aggressively promote silicone hydrogel and non-silicone hydrogel, that is the Proclear family. We can emphasize branded and non-branded products. Note, private label does not mean lower operating margins. We actively promote and specialize in custom lenses, with a high gross profit percent, of course. We support all modalities that the eye care professional promotes, 1 Day, 2 week, as well as monthly lenses. And we support all types of lenses, spheres, torics and multifocals, with close to 30% share on the high-growth specialty lens categories, torics and multifocal. It is acknowledged by eye care professionals that we are pretty good at specialty contact lenses. Few would challenge why the success at Biofinity Toric for stigmatism. Put a great design together with a great material and great things can happen. We have seen similar successes for the same reason that Biofinity Multifocal would shift to market in the middle of calendar year 2011. On the capacity front, with the exception of Avaira Toric, we are ahead of plan to deliver considerable more product where we have been previously supply constrained, The Biofinity family, Proclear 1 Day, our 1 Day Torics, are all in good capacity shape. Our newest challenge will be to ramp up 1 Day silicone hydrogel as yet a niche market. On pricing, we, like the rest of the soft contact lens industry, have a trade-up strategy. Our new wearers and existing wearers are targeted for silicone hydrogel lenses, the Proclear family and the 1 Day and single-use lenses. Each creates more revenue per wear. A 1 Day modality, for example, results in 4x to 6x more revenue per wear. While this strategy sacrifices the gross margin percent, it generally creates 3x to 5x more profit per wear. Of course, this strategy competes head-on with the lens care space since we are shifting the wear resources from lens care contact lenses only. Competing for lens care dollars is more of a problem for some of our competitors. In my opinion, we continue to be the most focused company in the industry, lacking many of the distractions that some of our competitors are now going through. I might add, with Biofinity, Avaira and Proclear, we have a lot of talk about with eye care professionals all around the world. As we look down the road over the next several years, we expect to continue improving operating margins and delivering above-average shareholder returns. We expect to continue to average double-digit earnings per share growth while investing in geographic expansion and new product developments. In today's market, we have a solid product portfolio to leverage in all modalities, multiple materials, all lens types, and we retain our expertise to emphasize customizing the lenses for the 10% to 20% of those lens wearers requiring other than the standard lens sizes and/or designs. We have a lot of work to do before we come anywhere close to having exploited our #1 contact lens family, Biofinity. This is particularly true when it comes to geographic expansion and fully developing the Biofinity family of torics and multifocals around world. The same applies to Avaira, where the Avaira Sphere has anxiously awaited the relaunch of Avaira Toric. The combination will put us in a much better position to exploit the U.S. 2-week space owned by Johnson & Johnson and to also exploit our private label strategy more aggressively with this family. While we already have pretty respectable gross and operating margins from a cost perspective, we have considerable upside yet to be fully developed. Upside includes the complete elimination of the silicone hydrogel royalty, with the expiration of patents in September 2004 -- 2014, rather, in the United States and March 2016 in the rest of the world. The reduction of our manufacturing cost by, among other things, improving mode molding cycle time, increasing capacity utilization and improving yields in general. Each of these are key goals to us. Also, given the considerable amount of free cash flow we generate, we will continue to look for tuck-in acquisitions and geographic expansion opportunities, like Origio, in our 2 businesses. The key requirements, however, is that they must exceed our minimum investment hurdle rates. They must achieve over time a hurdle rate that exceeds 10%. Additionally, the markets for our women's health care and soft contact lenses are much less developed outside the United States. We generate a considerable amount of cash flow offshore due in part to our level of manufacturing outside the United States. As such, we will continue to aggressively invest in global expansion opportunity. With over 95% of the people on the planet outside United States, we believe we will find opportunities to invest in other countries for decades to come, thereby, retaining our low effective tax rate indefinitely. Finally, we again demonstrated we are opportunistically willing to go into the market and buy our stock at certain times. In summary, before I turn it over to Greg, let me say how pleased I am with our ongoing progress. We continue to outperform the marketplace, growing 1.5x to 2x or 2x X, a respectable market growth. Our top line growth in the skittish global economy remains solid, and I am very pleased at our double-digit organic constant currency growth during this last quarter. Our family of products, Biofinity, Avaira, 1 Day single-use silicone hydrogel, Proclear 1 Day, as well as now our IVF family, where we are #1 in the world, all offer promising growth going forward. We continue to execute well and continue to invest in geographic expansion in the new product pipeline. And yes, R&D spending increased 20% over the prior quarter of last year. While we are still early in our expansion programs in each of the BRIC countries and there are challenging -- challenges in each of them, I am very pleased with the progress we have made to date. Our women's health care franchise has become more global with the Origio acquisition. We remain keenly focused on delivering the improving results, mindful of our desire to invest and leverage prudently, thereby, delivering respectable total shareholder return. Lastly, as always, a reminder that at Cooper, our #1 asset is our employees. To them, a big thank you for consistently delivering great results. And with that, I'll turn it over to Greg.