Robert S. Weiss
Analyst · Robert W
Thank you, Elizabeth, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and good evening in some cases. Well, a few financial highlights. A solid way to start the new year, top line growth of 7%, 11% in constant currency excluding the divestiture of Aime. GAAP and non-GAAP earnings per share were $1.47 and non-GAAP earnings per share is up 20% versus the prior year's first quarter. Some highlights and key events. During the quarter, we continued to gain market share and grow at 2x the market. Our silicone hydrogels are posting -- posted $154 million in revenue. Were up 30% in constant currency in the fourth quarter or in the full first quarter. Our rollout of MyDay, most notably in Europe, proceeds to plan. Our manufacturing ramp up of MyDay is also proceeding to plan, if not slightly, ahead of plan. The depth of our top line growth is broad-based. All regions, all modalities, all types of lenses, spheres, torics and multifocals, in both hydrogels and silicone hydrogels. We delivered a solid top line, a solid gross profit percent, a solid operating margin and a solid earnings per share. We took the opportunity to continue opportunistically buying our shares -- buying in another 396,000 shares for $50 million. At $326 million, CooperVision revenues put up a solid top line results in the first quarter. Excluding the effects of the divestiture of Aime, our CooperVision sales were up 14% in constant currency versus the prior year. Our silicone hydrogel family continue to drive our top line. With revenues of $154 million, our silicone hydrogels were up 30% in constant currency. Our silicone hydrogel family is now very deep. Monthly which is Biofinity; 2 weeks, Avaira and now, the daily disposable MyDay. All modalities performed well even our non-silicone hydrogel products performed well. Our Proclear family, led by daily disposables was up 12% in constant currency and accounts for 25% of CooperVision's revenues. By lens type, we also kept our momentum with torics accounting for 31% of CooperVision's revenues, up 12% in constant currency. And multifocal is now 10% of CooperVision revenues, up 24%. We continue to lead the market in these more specialized categories. When it comes to the fastest-growing modality, daily disposables or single-use lenses, we put up stellar numbers with single-use spheres, up 14% in constant currency and overall single-use, up 19%. Geographically, CooperVision's foreign exchange headwinds continue reducing our revenues, down 3% in the quarter. Excluding foreign exchange and the Aime divestiture, our CooperVision revenues growth was 14% in constant currency. The biggest headwind is still the year-over-year comps on the yen, which was down 21% versus the prior year. With $200 million of revenue in Japan, this certainly is a drag, but one that should moderate starting in the second quarter. From a revenues perspective, we have put up solid constant currency growth in all regions. Our growth drivers are in the Americas trading up to Biofinity including the ongoing halo effect of Biofinity multifocal with the entire family doing well. Also while much smaller base Proclear 1 Day and the Avaira Toric and Sphere family are significant contributors. In Europe, right now, the euro is helping offset some of the yen, driving our 13% constant currency growth is the -- in this region is the entire Biofinity family, 1 Day is including MyDay and Avaira. In Asia Pacific, while foreign exchange took its toll on revenues in constant currency -- our constant currency revenue was up 17% excluding Aime. The Biofinity family, with strong support both Biofinity Toric and Biofinity Multifocal and single-use led by Proclear 1 Day, are key drivers. In the Asia-Pac, torics and multifocals are key drivers by lens type. Worldwide [indiscernible] -- soft contact lens market in the fourth quarter of 2013 calendar quarter was up 6% in constant currency while CooperVision was up 13%. For the calendar 2013, the soft contact lens market now $7.5 billion worldwide was up 5% in constant currency. CooperVision was up 11% on the strength of Biofinity and Proclear 1 Day and by lens type, torics and multifocals. For the calendar fourth quarter, the market growth was sponsored by 1 Day, now 43% of the soft contact lens revenue dollars worldwide. While industry growth is not currently available on silicone hydrogel material, this trade-up material is most likely the growth driver and we believe silicone hydrogel accounts for about 48% in the soft contact lens revenues worldwide. CooperVision is currently at 47% of silicone hydrogel revenue dollars. Soft contact lens market continues to be a trade up market. This includes the premium products silicone hydrogels, torics and multifocals. The trade up to the 1 Day disposable expands revenue per patient by 400% to 600%. Even more important, the 1 Day wearer generates 300% to 500% more profit. Also it's important to understand that torics and multifocals have a long way to go in terms of capturing the market opportunity, especially outside the United States. Geographically, the Americas divest up 8% in the calendar quarter on the strength of the 1 Day trade up and a strong showing from silicone hydrogel, torics and multifocals. Asia-Pac delivered 6% growth, aided by a strong showing of silicone hydrogel lenses; and in Europe, was up 5% for the same reasons. Looking at CooperSurgical. I want to talk to our franchise. It turned in a slightly positive revenue performance in the quarter. We were pleased with the continued strength of top line growth in fertility, which was up 15% above the prior year. Our fertility business now accounts for 35% of our CSI franchise. With our office in surgical space, we continue to run into industry headwinds caused by the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, if you will. Having said that, the negative 6% we reported is not truly reflective of that business as we had some orders we typically received in the first quarter get placed in the second quarter. This would have brought our office in surgical sales closer to a flat quarter. For the year, we believe we will see moderate top line growth for CooperSurgical with gross margins similar to last year and operating margins expanding to some operating expense leverage. Overall, CooperSurgical continues to be approximately 20% of our overall local business. Looking at guidance. We continue to increase our earnings per share by raising a lower end and narrowed our revenue guidance initially provided on our year end earnings call. This guidance reflects our successes in the first quarter, including $0.04 benefit of our buying of almost 400,000 of our shares in the open market in the first quarter. MyDay, our new 1 Day silicone hydrogel being rolled out in Europe and in Australia and New Zealand, is marching to plan and we're continuing to expect around $25 million in revenue this fiscal year limited only by capacity constraints. Our strategy, we continue to -- we are continuing with our successful strategy, which I frequently articulated in the past. We believe it's a solid one and it has delivered results. CooperSurgical is putting up solid results and is leveraging its infrastructure. The franchise was built with 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, office, surgery center, hospital or IVF centers. Although the call points are different for each, the leverage is considerable, CooperSurgical's first quarter gross profit percent was 63%, operating margin was 18%. And due to minimal capital requirements, CooperSurgical is a significant contributor to our free cash flow. We are dedicated to this strategy and we'll continue tuck in, in non-U.S. acquisitions to leverage CooperSurgical structure and products. At CooperVision, the strategy is more complex and is much more global in nature. The $7.5 billion soft contact lens industry, because of the uniqueness of our manufacturing platforms, we are the only company that participates with a very broad and very deep product portfolio. Just to crystallize this point. CooperVision aggressively promotes silicone hydrogel and non-silicone hydrogel, which is the Proclear family. CooperVision emphasizes branded and non-branded products, note private label does not mean lower operating margins. Already, we actively promote specialized custom lenses with a high gross profit percent, I might add. We support all modalities. The eye care professional prescribes 1 Day, 2-week and monthly lenses and we support all types of lenses: spheres, torics and multifocals with approximately 30% of our share in the high-growth areas, specialty lens categories: torics and multifocals. It is acknowledged by eye care professionals and 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 have seen similar successes for that same reason with Biofinity Multifocal, which first hit the market in the middle of calendar year 2011, almost 3 years ago. On the capacity front, we are capable of delivering considerable more product, where we had then previously supplied constraint. The Biofinity family, Proclear 1 Day and our 1 Day toric, and all -- are all in good capacity shape. Our newest endeavor is now ramping up MyDay, our 1 Day silicone hydrogel. On pricing, we, like the rest of the soft contact lens industry, have a trade-up strategy, our new wares and existing wares are targeted for silicone hydrogel and Proclear family and 1 Day or single-use lenses. Each creates more revenue per patient. A 1 Day modality, for example, results in a 4x to 6x more in revenue per wear. While this strategy sacrifices the gross profit margin, that is percent, it generally creates 3x to 5x more profit per wear. Of course, the strategy competes head-on with the lens care space since we are shifting resources from lens care to contact lenses only. Competing for lens care dollars is more a problem with 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 the -- of our competitors are now going through. I might add, with Biofinity, Avaira, Proclear and MyDay, 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 our 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 development. In today's markets, we have a solid product portfolio to leverage in all modalities, multiple materials, all lens types and we retain our expertise to emphasize customizing lenses for the 10% to 20% of those 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 [ph] 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 globe. The same applies to Avaira, where the Avaira sphere was anxiously awaiting the launch 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 exploit our private label strategy more aggressively with this family. While we already have a pretty respectable gross profit and operating margins, from a cost perspective, we have considerable upside yet to be fully developed. Upsides include the elimination of silicone hydrogel royalty with the expiration of patents, a reduction of our manufacturing cost buy, among other things, improving, molding cycle times, increasing capacity utilization and improving yields in general. Each of these are key goals for us. And as previously mentioned, our expansion plans include a lower cost labor location in Costa Rica that is now being built. This is a multi-year project that will further help us manage down our cost. 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 each of the acquisitions 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 U.S., and we generate a considerable amount of cash offshore to impart to our level of manufacturing outside of the U.S. As such, we will continue to aggressively invest in global expansion opportunities. With over 95% of the people on the planet outside the U.S., we believe we will find opportunities to invest in other countries for decades to come, thereby, sustaining a low effective tax rate indefinitely. And finally, we again, this year, demonstrated we are opportunistically willing to buy in our stock to maximize total shareholder return. In summary, before I turn it over to Greg, let me say how pleased I am with our progress. We continue to outperform the marketplace more than 2x in -- market growth in 2012 and 2013 and almost 2x over the last 5 years. Our market share gains are deep, covering all geographies, modalities, lens types, lens materials and are both branded and private label. Our family of products like Biofinity, Avaira, Proclear, 1 Day and MyDay, as well as fertility and women's health care have very promising continuing growth potential in the United States and throughout the rest of the world. We believe our optimism is with good reason. Because of our solid gross profit percent performance, we have been able to continue investing in geographic expansion, sales force expansion and R&D the past the 5 years. Our improving operating income margins have been cost -- driven, leaving room to invest. Our balance sheet and our free cash flow are strong and we will continue to fund each of these areas, as well as capital expansion North of $200 million. Being a player in the 1 Day soft contact lens market requires commitment to capital. Not everyone will play. Today, this market is over $3 billion and growing double-digit. Given the 4x to 6x trade up of the 1 Day conversion, we are more than willing to trade off our gross profit percent for the added profits per patient of a 1 Day wearer, but we remain committed to our 2018 objective of 25% operating income and related earnings per share growth impact. We remain keenly focused on delivering improving results, mindful of our desire to invest and leverage prudently, thereby, delivering optimized long-term total shareholder returns. I might add, we purchased cumulatively 2.8 million shares of our stock the past 3 years at an average cost of $103. We have done this opportunistically with our strong balance sheet and free cash flow, so our focus is on delivering bottom line total shareholder returns. Lastly, as always, a reminder that at Cooper, our #1 asset is our employees. To them, I express my appreciation for their dedication to creating value and delivering results. And now, I'll turn it over to Greg to cover some of the financial results.