Robert Powell
Analyst · Berenberg. Please go ahead
Thank you, Dominik. Good morning, good afternoon to everyone depending on where you are. It's great to have you with us today and we appreciate your interest in the first quarter of 2019. Turning to Slide 4, and looking at some key parameters of the service business. You can see our clinic growth in the quarter, patient growth and treatment growth. I would also say looking at our statement quality remains on a consistently high level. Why don't we turn to Slide 5 and you can see that in print that our quality outcomes do remain on a high level our quality indicators do look quite well. I would like to make one point you probably saw an announcement from us a couple of weeks ago that we've created the global medical office. Wanted to make sure you understand that we believe we are at the right time in our company's history to really take more of a global approach to the medicine in driving the clinical outcomes across the regions as we continue to see product businesses turn into service businesses, and the opportunities to try to work closer with payers. I'm happy to say that Frank Maddux has been appointed the Global Chief Medical Officer. Frank has been with us a number of years and most recently was the Chief Medical Officer in North America. Frank will be working very closely with the other regional Chief Medical Officers and some small staff as well to help us make sure that we're delivering the best quality of care we can from the most developed markets, Germany, U.S., France et cetera to emerging markets in any region. And I think this will help us in the years to come. Turning to Slide 6 and looking at the update of the quarter very quickly. You know that NxStage the acquisition has closed and we're beginning the integration process. You also have seen previously from us that we were able to negotiate a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. government, as it relates to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and that is for international business, not business in the U.S. and we are glad to have that behind us and continue to move forward in our business. Now, looking at the underlying business performance, it was in line with our expectations. We were pleased that the revenue growth for the quarter was on a higher end of our guided range. Looking at our earnings, we did see earnings being supported by some agreements that came to us earlier than they were planned in the year but my main point here is simply that this is a shift within the year. These activities or these agreements that we reach were expected to come in this year and so there's no new change there, simply the categorization if you will or the accomplishment of it came a little sooner than Mike and I had anticipated. Then looking at our cost optimization program that is been initiated, so it is underway. And then lastly and most importantly, Michael talked more about this but our outlook for 2019 and 2020 has been confirmed. Turning to Slide 7, I do believe the first quarter was a solid start to the year. I will not run you through this slide, I will say however looking at the adjusted revenue EBIT and net income, you can see the performance, got a few bullets for you on the right part of the slide that probably give you a little more color. I would highlight for those of you that need more of a detailed reconciliation, we provided that to you on chart 19 and we hope that will be a benefit should you want to look at that. Turning to Slide 8, taking a moment to focus on organic growth. We had 6% organic growth across the world on a global basis and yet we also had good contributions from all of the regions. Obviously, when you look at the constant currency revenue in North America, you have to consider the impact of the sound divestiture which I know you're all well aware of, and if you do that and some other adjustments that we've stated for 2019, we see about 5% constant currency growth in North America, and the other businesses are as they are laid out on the chart for you. But again, we are seeing good contributions from each region and we're seeing some very nice progress in Asia-Pacific and Latin America as well. Turning to Slide 9 and focusing on the service organization in the quarter. I would say that what we are seeing is very good delivered growth was good, it was solid on an organic basis but additionally to the organic growth that we generated in the quarter, the volume or same market treatment growth was also very good If you paid attention and had a chance to dig into the press release, you know that we did highlight for you that the same market treatment growth in the United States was at 3.7%, which is an improvement for where we have been. We also are happy to report that we continue to see slight improvement in our payer mix in the United States. We had slight improvement in Q4 and we saw continuation of that in Q1, more to do, we are not where we want to be or where we need to be but we have some more quarters to continue to focus on that. Looking at EMEA, the positive development for their organic, due to their organic growth and acquisitions that's what contributed to their performance in the quarter and with Asia Pacific, their growth was driven by same market treatment growth and acquisitions as well. If we turn to my last slide, which is slide 10, take a minute and talk about the products business in the quarter. As you well know, our products and the technology that we bring to the market is the center of our vertical integration and I'm pleased to see that we delivered a solid first quarter with 5% organic growth in the new year and this is on top of strong performance in the fourth quarter as well, so we do like the trend that we are seeing here with the products business. If you take a moment and you look at EMEA, you can see the mix of products that they sold through the quarter to deliver their growth. You see the same with Asia Pacific, I won't lead you through each and every one of those, but needless to say, we're pleased with that. And yes, this was the first quarter in North America, where we used or we captured the revenue from next stage as a result of the acquisition closing, and we're happy to talk about that if you have some questions. In summary, Q1 was a good start for the year. We are seeing improvement in key areas that we know we need to improve in. We're not done. We believe that the guidance that we've given you is appropriate. We have a lot more to do and we will be very busy as we go through the rest of this year. And with that, I will turn it over to Mike and he can give you more color on the financials.