Robert S. Weiss
Analyst · Kim Gailun, JPMorgan
Thank you, Kim. First of all, to some of you on the call, happy new year both to you and your families. Our apologies for having our release date the first date of -- first day of Rosh Hashanah. On to results. Another solid quarter, we march on: top line growth of 9%, GAAP earnings per share of $1.79, up 32% versus the prior year; non-GAAP earnings per share, $1.74, is up $0.29 or 20%; and free cash flow of $64.5 million means our trailing-12-month free cash flow was $245 million. Some highlights and key events. Our silicone hydrogel family of soft contact lenses continues to show strong growth with worldwide sales up 22% in constant currency, now accounting for 43% of CooperVision revenues. Additionally, I'm proud to announce that just this week, we have officially launched our branded daily silicone hydrogel lens, MyDay, in Europe. Demand is very strong for this lens, and we're very optimistic about the future. We also continue to see a lot of success in our entire silicone hydrogel family of products with Biofinity and Avaira. The combination of these products should continue our momentum for years to come. With the most recent calendar quarter, we grew 2x the market, which grew 4%. We achieved 23% operating income and even exceeded 20% in net income as a percent of revenues. We are very pleased with our IVF or fertility growth, which was 180%, and adjusting for acquisition comparability, grew 20% over the prior year comparable period. Our free cash flow delivery resulted in our debt-to-cap now moving to single digits. We have a very strong balance sheet, as well as a strong free cash flow. On the revenue results, during the third quarter, our silicone hydrogel family continued to drive our top line and our bottom line. Silicone hydrogel revenues were $143 million, the halo effect of Biofinity Toric in Japan continues. In Japan, Biofinity constant currency sales are up over 100% versus the prior year. The halo effect of Avaira Toric is contributing to solid growth of the Avaira 2-week family. As previously mentioned, we have launched MyDay, our branded single-use silicone into Europe this month. We expect this newest addition to our silicone hydrogel portfolio of soft contact lenses to help continue our silicone hydrogel revenue growth momentum for many years to come. I'm extremely happy to say that we believe we, once again this calendar quarter ended June 30, gained share across the board. All regions, all modalities, all lens types, sphere, torics and multifocal in both materials, silicone hydrogel and non-silicone hydrogel. This demonstrates the breadth of our reach and the product portfolio. Geographically, foreign exchange headwinds continue to reduce CooperVision revenues, down 4% in the quarter. Excluding foreign exchange, CVI constant currency growth was 9%. Last year, it was the euro and this year, it's the yen which is down 25% versus the third quarter of 2012. It was over $200 million of revenue in Japan. This is not only impacting our revenue, but is also negatively impacting our gross margin, as well as our operating income and bottom line, I might add. But even with this major nuisance on the strength of our product lines, we are putting up some solid numbers. From a revenue perspective regionally, we have put up solid constant currency growth in all locations: Americas up 9%; EMEA or Europe, 8%; Asia-Pac, 8%; and worldwide, 9%. Our growth drivers in the Americas: trading up Biofinity, including the halo effect of Biofinity multifocal with the entire family doing well. Also, while off a much smaller base, Proclear 1 Day and the Avaira Toric and family are a significant contributor. In Europe right now, currency is helping off at some of the yen. Driving our 8% constant currency growth in this region is the entire Biofinity family and 1 Day, including single-use silicone hydrogel. In Asia-Pac, while foreign exchange took its toll on revenue, our constant currency revenue is up 8%. Drivers include tremendous success of the Biofinity family, especially with the halo effect of Biofinity Toric and Proclear 1 Day. The worldwide soft contact lens market in the second quarter -- calendar quarter was up 4% in constant currency, while CooperVision was up 10%. For the trailing 12 months ended June 30, the soft contact lens market, now $7.2 billion worldwide, was up 4% in constant currency. CooperVision was up 11% on the strength of Biofinity, Proclear 1 Day and Avaira. For the calendar quarter, the market was up, growth was sponsored by 1 Day. While industry data is no longer available for silicone hydrogel material, most likely, this trade-up material remains a solid growth material. CooperVision was up 22% in constant currency in fiscal third quarter of 2013, and CooperVision silicone hydrogel now is 43% of our revenues. Soft contact lens market continues to be a trade-up market. This includes the premium products: silicone hydrogel lenses; torics and multifocals; and trade-up of a 1 Day disposable expands patient revenues by 400% to 600%. Even more important, the 1 Day wearer generates 300% to 500% more profit. Also, it is important to understand that torics and multifocals have a long way to go in capturing the market opportunity, especially outside the United States. Geographically, growth is reasonably balanced with the Americas and Europe up 4%, and Asia-Pac up 5% in the calendar quarter, second quarter. Drivers continue as 1 Days in silicone hydrogel trade-up. Also, we believe torics and multifocals continue to expand faster, off of a lower base outside the United States. CooperSurgical, our women's health care franchise, turned in $81.5 million in revenue, up 27% versus the prior year's third quarter on the strength of a $27 million contribution from our IVF business or fertility business, which now accounts for 1/3 of CooperSurgical revenues. Revenue growth of our fertility business was up 180%. And adjusting for acquisition comparability, the IVF product growth was 20% over the prior year's comparable period. And we're pleased to see our office and surgical procedures product lines achieve a breakeven following last quarter's declines. This reflects some returning momentum in the surgical procedure area in spite of continued softness with our closure device. And remember, we are in a transition mode with this product of Carter-Thomason CloseSure device as we roll out an upgrade of the product. This, in essence, results in lost revenues during a trial period -- trialing period. We continue working through this rollout and remain optimistic we'll see improvements over time. Adjusting for acquisition comparability, including the 20% for fertility, CooperSurgical growth was 6% above the prior year. In terms of guidance, we have taken our non-GAAP earnings per share range and have again taken up our bottom line end of our guidance range for revenue for fiscal year 2013. This results from the strength of our third quarter results, the bottom line brought about by solid top-line moderating foreign exchange movement, a 23% operating income margin and the third quarter and favorable tax movement. The favorable tax movement includes the effects of geographic mix, tax rate reduction, specifically in the U.K., and the effects of some positive discrete tax items. The yen took its toll with about a $13 million hit on revenue due to a 25% decline in the yen versus the prior year. In spite of this, we overcame it and its effects with our positive top line performance and the strength of our gross profit percent in prior year's comparable -- versus prior year's comparable periods. Our new guidance for non-GAAP earnings per share for the fiscal year is $6.23 to $6.28 versus our prior guidance of $6.15 to $6.25. This reflects the ongoing strength of our product portfolio, including Biofinity and the Proclear 1 Day, as well as the lower effective tax rate for this fiscal year. Importantly, in spite of increasing our guidance, we continue to invest in geographic expansion and R&D, with emphasis on D or product development. This D is what has accelerated our rollout of new products, like MyDay, our new branded 1 Day silicone hydrogel. This branded product is now launching in Europe this month. Regarding free cash flow guidance, we're increasing our free cash flow range to $180 million to $210 million, while reducing our CapEx to $180 million to $210 million. This mainly reflects the timing of CapEx or capital expenditure payments as we continue to aggressively manage our free cash flow. As a general comment on capital expenditures, our production plans remain on schedule. And I am pleased to say our manufacturing for MyDay and other products is meeting or beating our internal expectations. I might add one other thing, we are pleased with our -- how we're progressing with fiscal year 2013 and how it's shaping up, and are anticipating low double-digit earnings per share growth again next fiscal year. On strategy, we are continuing with our successful strategy, which I have frequently articulated in the past. We believe it is solid and it has delivered results. CooperSurgical is putting up solid results and is leveraging its infrastructure. This franchise was built with the solid understanding of the value of critical mass in the women's health care market, targeting the OB/GYNs. We follow the professional wherever they go, be it the office, the surgicenter, hospital or IVF centers. Although the call points are different for each, the leverage is considerable. CooperSurgical's third quarter gross profit percent was 64%, its operating margin was 20% and due to minimal capital requirements, CooperSurgical is a significant contributor to our free cash flow. We are dedicated to the strategy and will continue tuck-in acquisitions to leverage the CooperSurgical structure and products. At CooperVision, the strategy is more complex and is much more global in nature. The $7.2 billion soft contact lens industry, because of the uniqueness of our manufacturing platforms and product portfolio, we are the only participant that aggressively promotes silicone hydrogel and non-silicone hydrogel, that is the Proclear family. We 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, I might add. We support all modalities that the eye care professional prescribed for 1 Day, 2-week, as well as monthly lenses. And we support all type of lenses, spheres, torics and multifocals. With approximately 30% share in the high-growth specialty lens categories, torics and multifocals, it is acknowledged by eye care professionals that we're pretty good at specialty contact lenses. Few eye care professionals would challenge why the success of Biofinity Toric for astigmatism put a great design together with a great material and great things can happen. We happen -- we have seen similar successes for this same reason with Biofinity Multifocal, which shipped to market in the middle of calendar year 2011. On the capacity front, with the possible exception of Avaira Toric, we are ahead of plan to deliver considerably more product where we had previously been supply-constrained. The Biofinity family, Proclear 1 Day are all in good capacity shape. Our newest challenge will be to ramp up 1 Day silicone hydrogel as we -- as it is yet a niche market. On pricing, like the rest of the soft contact lens industry, we have a trade-up strategy. Our new wearers and existing wearers are targeted for silicone hydrogel lenses, the Proclear family and the 1 Day or our single-use lenses. Each creates more revenue per patient. A 1 Day modality, for example, results in 4x to 6x more revenue per patient. While this strategy sacrifices the gross profit margin, it generally creates 3 to 5x more profit per wearer. Of course, the strategy competes head on with the lens care space since we are shifting the wearers' resources from lens care to 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 one of the most focused company in the industry lacking many distractions that some of our competitors are going through. I might add, with Biofinity, Avaira and Proclear, we have a lot to talk about with eye care professionals around the globe. As we look down the road over the next several years, we expect to continue improving operating margins and de-leveraging -- or 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 development. In today's market, we have a solid product portfolio to leverage in all modality, multiple materials, all lens types and we retain our expertise to emphasize customizing lenses for the 10% to 20% of those lens wearers requiring other than 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 the world. The same applies to Avaira, where the Avaira Sphere was anxiously awaiting the relaunch of Avaira Toric. This combination has now 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 profit and operating margins, from a cost perspective, we have considerable upside yet to be fully developed. Upsides include the complete elimination of silicone hydrogel royalty, with the expiration of patents in September 2014 in the United States and in March 2016 in the rest of the world. The reduction of our manufacturing cost by, among other things, improving molding cycle times, increasing capacity utilization and improving yields in general. Each of these are key goals for us. As previously mentioned, our expansion plans include: a low-cost labor location in Costa Rica that is now being built. This is a multi-year project that will further help us minimize costs or manage our costs. 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 requirement, however, is that each acquisition must exceed our minimum investment hurdle rates. Each must achieve, over time, a hurdle rate that exceeds 10%. Additionally, the markets for both women's health care and soft contact lenses are much less developed outside the United States and we generate a considerable amount of cash offshore due in part to our level of manufacturing outside the United States. And as such, we will continue to be -- to aggressively invest in global expansion opportunities. With over 95% of the people on the planet outside the United States, we believe we will find opportunities to invest in other countries for decades to come, thereby sustaining our low effective tax rate indefinitely. And finally, we again this year demonstrated we are opportunistic when it comes to buying back our stock in order to enhance total shareholder return. In summary, before I turn it over to Greg, let me say how pleased I remain with our ongoing progress on many fronts. We continue to outperform the marketplace, most recently growing 2 to 3x the market rate of growth. Our top line growth in a so-so economy, a low inflationary economy remains solid, and I am very pleased at our upper single-digit organic constant currency growth at CooperVision during the quarter. Our family of products, Biofinity, Avaira, Proclear 1 Day and now 1 Day silicone hydrogel, MyDay, as well as women's health care, our global fertility products are all promising growth going forward. We continue to execute well and invest in geographic expansion in a new product pipeline. While we are still very early in our expansion programs in each of the BRIC countries and there are challenges in each, I am very pleased with our progress to date. Our women's health care franchise has now become more global with the Origio acquisition made 1 year ago. Our balance sheet is very strong. Our debt-to-cap, which was near 40% only a few years ago is now single digit at 9%. We remain keenly focused on delivering consistently improving results, mindful of our desire to invest and leverage prudently, thereby delivering a 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 now, I'll turn it to -- over to Greg to cover more financial highlights.