Jeff Duchemin
Analyst · Janney Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead
Thank you, Cheryl. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2015 conference call. I'm pleased to be addressing you today of our Harvard Bioscience first quarter results, while we’re disappointed about our financial results, which we’ll discuss momentarily. We remain firmly focused on our long-term growth strategy. And we believe the company is stronger now than it has ever been. We’re on track with and fully executing the strategy we put into place at the end of 2013. Thanks for the efforts of our new leadership team and the work of our employees worldwide. Let me give an overview of the quarter, which had its many challenges, but was also a very exciting and rewarding one as well. As approximately 35% of our business is in Europe our financial this quarter like so many other companies in our sector. We’re adversely affected by foreign exchange headwinds caused by the strengthening US dollar and the resulting impact of grants and budgets denominated in Euros. In addition, we continue to see softness in the academic and government markets, which comprise up to 80% of our revenue. On a positive note as of quarter progressed we saw the performance in both sectors. What did address -- what we did to address the softness in our top line was to take immediate action. Our sales and marketing teams have been working closely with our customers implementing volume restoring programs. On the bottom line we’ve also initiated cost containment programs to help stay lean and constantly assess the operational efficiencies, while it’s still early in the second quarter we have already began to see improvement in our market. Everyone in the company is onboard and addressing our performance. Our sales and marketing teams are working diligently to improve sales levels as I mentioned our initiatives are working. As you saw today’s press release we have reduced our guidance for the year based upon the results of the first quarter and anticipated continued stronger than expected FX headwinds through the remainder of the year. Rob Gagnon, will provide more details of our guidance later on in the call. Let me provide you a brief overview of our financial results for the quarter. Revenue for the first quarter was $25.8 million and less than 1% decrease, compared with last year's first quarter revenue of $25.9 million. Including the revenue this quarter with the on target contributions from our three acquisitions Triangle BioSystems, Multi Channel Systems, and HEKA Electronik, excluding the effects of foreign currency translation. Revenue would have grown approximately 3.8% over the last year’s first quarter. Our non-GAAP income from continuing operations for Q1 was $0.8 million or $0.02 per diluted share, compared to $1.7 or $0.05 per diluted share in Q1 of last year. In terms of geographic breakdown sales in China continued to be on the lower side of our expectations due to the slower release of funds from the Chinese government. With Asia market still expected to produce very strong industry growth. We’ve prepared by increasing our channel relationships in Asia and expanding our commercial presence in those markets. Despite the lower sales volume we weren’t distracted from our long-term growth strategy. Our teams delivered in other phases of our strategy during the quarter and I’m really pleased to share our results with you. First let me begin with our acquisition of HEKA Electronik in early January. The integration of HEKA along with Triangle BioSystems and Multi Channel Systems, the two companies we acquired in Q4 of last year is going extremely well and on plan and contributed to our top line growth this quarter. While the HEKA acquisitions one of the highlights of the quarter our overall mission continues to be to deliver on each element of our strategy commercial excellence and organic growth, new product development, business development acquisitions, and operational efficiencies. Let me take a moment to update you on all four phases of our strategy commercial excellence and organic growth. Our sales and marketing teams are aligned and continue to implement global growth programs driving key initiatives such as expansion to the electrophysiology market along with geographic expansion. Last year our focus was China. In 2015 we’re focused on other emerging markets such as South Korea, Japan, and most recently Latin America, while also expanding our focus in China. In February we hired a new Vice President of Sales at our Denville Scientific Subsidiary. Denville remains an important part of our strategy and a growth driver for Harvard Bioscience. To drive growth in our Denville business we opened a new distribution center in Charlotte, North Carolina during the quarter along with moving customer service to Holliston Massachusetts. The new operation will deliver improved service levels to customers along with cost savings to the business. The second phase of our strategy we want to highlight is our new product development process. We continue to improve our product offerings such as the touch screen behavior products long with product line expansions. One other area that will growth in future quarters is the development of new products for our global OEM customers. And last we’ve received exciting news last month for a two year Topper grant to develop innovative wireless electrophysiology technology based on our TBSI expertise’s. The third element of our strategy involves business development acquisitions. Our successful acquisition of three companies in the electrophysiology market HEKA, Multi Channel Systems, and Triangle BioSystems contributed as planned toward our top line growth this quarter. Our portfolio of electrophysiology products now make us a market leader in this growing segment of research. Within a very fragmented market we continue to evaluate and pursue acquisitions both here and abroad that will help grow and diversify our portfolio of products into segments such as BioPharma and fit in well with our goals. We continue to take a very strategic approach to these opportunities. The fourth and final element of our strategy involves operational efficiencies. We implemented numerous steps to improve our operations this quarter most available with the shutdown of our New Jersey distribution center. We moved all distribution activity to our Denville Scientific distribution center in North Carolina in doing so we extended from 12,000 square feet to 40,000 square feet in the state-of-the-art facility. There is amazing example of engineering and efficiency. Additionally our relocating to North Carolina we’ll avoid many the weather related issues that impacted us in the Northeast during the quarter. We successfully implemented Phase I of our new ERP system, the new system will not only provide us better controls and information management, but will also enable to smooth integration of future acquisitions. We’re in the process of moving our Biochrom manufacturing facility from England and consolidating it into our Holliston headquarters, which will provide further cost savings, synergies, and controls. And last we achieved ISO certification for seven of our manufacturing facilities. So to recap the business strategy we put in place a little more than a year ago. When we began to realign our operations create organizational efficiencies, and embark and cost reduction initiatives, talent acquisition and geographic expansion is working well. We’re executing in all areas of our strategy as I outlined a moment ago. We have successfully completed and integrated three acquisitions. We expanded our commercial presence in China and elsewhere in Asia and revamped our new product development process to focus on our core products. We’re on track with all of our plans along with executing to our strategic plan we’ve added two new Board members both active CEO’s of publicly traded companies Bertrand Loy, with Entegris and James Green, with Analogic Corporation no relationship to David Green. The positions were created with the retirement of Chane Graziano in 2013 and most recently the retirement of Robert Dishman from our Board in April of this year. To sum up we had a challenging yet exciting quarter. Thanks all to our accounted worldwide employees for their incredible hard work and dedication, which makes our continued success possible. We intend to continue to execute on our strategy and look forward to additional success throughout the year. We’re energized and ready to perform for our shareholders and customers. At this point, I will turn the discussion over to Rob Gagnon, our CFO, who will provide more insight into our financials. Rob?