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Henry Schein, Inc. (HSIC)

Q2 2012 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 2, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Henry Schein Second Quarter Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Susan Vassallo, Henry Schein's Vice President of Corporate Communications. Please go ahead, Susan.

Susan Vassallo

Analyst

Thank you, operator, and my thanks to each of you for joining us to discuss Henry Schein's second quarter results. With me this morning are Stanley Bergman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Henry Schein; and Steven Paladino, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to state that certain comments made during this call will include information that is forward-looking. As you know, risks and uncertainties involved in the company’s business may affect the matters referred to in forward-looking statements. As a result, the company's performance may differ from those expressed in, or indicated by, such forward-looking statements. Also, these forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements contained in Henry Schein's Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The content of this conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of the live broadcast today, August 2, 2012. Henry Schein undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this call. I ask that during the Q&A portion of today's call, you please limit yourself to a single question and a follow-up before returning to the queue. This will provide the opportunity for as many listeners as possible to ask a question within the 1 hour we have allotted for this call. With that said, I would like to turn the call over to Stanley Bergman.

Stanley M. Bergman

Analyst

Good morning, everyone. And Susan, thank you very much for that introduction. Today, we are reporting growth in earnings per share of approximately 10%. While we are pleased with the performance of each of our business units, our financial results were somewhat adversely affected by foreign currency exchange, particularly relating to the euro and the Canadian dollar, by general economic conditions and by challenging prior year comparisons related to increased sales from the bi-annual IDS show in Germany. So on balance, if you take a look at our internal growth of the business in total, I think we could all agree that we're doing well as a company, gaining market share across-the-board in each of our business units in this country and abroad. Of course, the euro translation has an impact on the top line and to some extent on the middle, on the bottom line, on the operating margin side, cushioned to some extent by our opportunity to buy products at a bit of a lower price also. And we did have an impact from the Canadian dollar. We have a very nice business in Canada, also gaining market share and very profitable. But also the economic conditions, I think, in some parts of the world are impacting our growth somewhat. But in general, our ability to gain market share has enabled us to feel confident about reaffirming guidance, which you'll hear about a little later and are quite confident about the rest of the year. Of course, in Europe, our main business is our German business. And with respect to our German business, that -- we had tough comparables because we had a very, very successful IDS show last year. Having said that, we are quite confident with the strength of our German business. There are no major…

Steven Paladino

Analyst

Okay. Thank you, Stan, and good morning to everyone. I'm also pleased to be reporting overall solid financial results for the second quarter of 2012. I'd like to point out that our 2012 second quarter results include approximately $3.4 million pretax of restructuring costs, and that is approximately $0.03 per share. We announced this restructuring on our fourth quarter 2011 conference call. And you'll see on Exhibit B to this morning's earnings release that we have reconciled GAAP to non-GAAP income for this item. We have now completed the restructuring, and we do not expect any further cost from that program for the remainder of 2012. Turning to our financial performance. Our net sales for the quarter ended June 30, 2012 were $2.2 billion, reflecting a 3.3% increase compared with the second quarter of 2011. This consists of 6.5% growth in local currencies and a 3.2% decline related to foreign currency exchange. In local currencies, our internal sales growth was 4.6% and our acquisition growth was 1.9%. You can see further details of our sales growth that are contained on Exhibit A of our earnings news release. Our operating margin for the second quarter of 2012 was 7%. This was a decline of 7 basis points compared to last year's operating margin for the second quarter. However, I think it's important to look at the operating margin excluding restructuring costs, which we believe is a more appropriate measure. And when looking at it that way, our adjusted operating margin for the quarter actually improved by 8 basis points to 7.2%. I also like to point out that the current year acquisitions, if we would exclude those because they initially come in at lower margins, until we can integrate and get some synergies, if we exclude those current year acquisitions also,…

Stanley M. Bergman

Analyst

Thank you, Steven. So let me review the highlights from the second quarter for the 3 business units. You know we now have our 3 global business units, the Global Dental business unit, the global Animal Health business unit, the Global Medical business unit, which is primarily a business unit focused in North America at this time, and -- or shall we say, the U.S. and then, of course, there's a fourth unit, the 3 verticals, and then there's horizontal units of Technology and Value-Added Services, which is global in nature, but supports our Global Dental, Animal Health and Medical groups. So let's talk about the Global Dental to start with. We believe that we continue to gain, as noted early in my opening remarks, market share, and I think Steven reaffirmed that, the market share in our Global Dental business during the quarter, with particular strength in the North American equipment business, as we mentioned earlier. The dental specialty markets are important components in our growth, and we recently strengthened our global orthodontic business with the acquisition of Ortho Technology. So we are building a nice orthodontic business. We started out Ortho Organizers, added on a couple of businesses there to expand the offering, and the Ortho Technology gives us more products and certainly more sales. And it's a nice market that's complementary to our overall Henry Schein dental business. The Ortho Technology business offers a complete line of orthodontic supplies and serves approximately 10,000 customers worldwide. So it's a relatively small business with a lot of customers, and the opportunity to increase sales to these customers is there because we have the penetration but we didn't -- in terms of access to customers, but we have relatively small amounts of sales to each of these customers. The business…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Glen Santangelo with Crédit Suisse. Glen J. Santangelo - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: I just wanted to ask a quick question about the consumables business. When I look at what the experience or what you guys posted in Europe, clearly, probably a little bit faster than what I would have expected. And then if I look into U.S., probably a little bit slower than what I would have expected. And is that kind of -- was that in line with your expectations, or were you surprised as well?

Stanley M. Bergman

Analyst

That's a good question, Glen. I think you really have to be very careful in measuring one quarter as stand-alone. I mean, last quarter, we cautioned that maybe the numbers were a little too high, this -- and it was not reflective of the markets nor of our market share gain. And I think this quarter, one has to be careful to draw conclusions from the quarter as to whether the strength -- the underlying strength of the market is reflected in the numbers. One thing is for sure, we have checked with our major manufacturers, and I think that you can do the crosschecking yourself, we continue to gain market share. And so at the same time, I would not draw a conclusion that Henry Schein is gaining market share, albeit modest market share, but we are gaining market share in the key products. I would not draw the conclusion that because Henry Schein's gaining market share and Henry Schein's internal growth was not as strong as the previous quarter, that the market is really challenged. I think that would be too narrow a view. So it would be very hard for me to predict the next quarter, but I think one has to have a much more nuanced view than to conclude that the first quarter, the market was racing ahead, and the second quarter, it's going in a completely different direction. I think the dental market is a solid market. I speak to dentists. In most parts of the country, they're feeling good. There are parts of the country where they're not feeling as good, and there are parts of the country where they're ecstatic. So we're in a solid business, and I think we have to be careful to draw conclusions from one quarter versus another and take a more long-term view. Glen J. Santangelo - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: I appreciate that. You mind if I just ask one more follow-up question on the Animal Health business? The company continues to post pretty solid results there. And Steve, you've called out flea & tick sales now for a number of quarter. I'm kind of wondering how long can that continue. And then I recognize your comments that you're gaining market share within that business. Maybe could you assess what you think that market is growing organically so we can sort of put it in a little bit better context?

Steven Paladino

Analyst

Well, on the flea & tick, remember, this is primarily a seasonal product. It will continue through the summer months. And then when it gets to the winter time, it generally tails off. It's a seasonal product, as I said. Basically, the season started earlier this year than from prior years. Again because we had a very mild winter. And that caused parasites on animals to start quicker. It's difficult to measure the overall market. We think the overall market is somewhere in the mid-single digit growth range. And again, we're growing at least 2x that. I'm not sure where the market share is coming from because some of the other big players are also performing well, so I guess it's coming from the smaller players. And right now there's still a lot of momentum in our veterinary business.

Stanley M. Bergman

Analyst

Glen, just to be sure, I don't know how many quarters any company could sustain 14%. I think that was the number of internal growth rate. So we're not counting on that. We would hope that our Animal Health people continue to gain market share, and -- but I think it's unrealistic to expect those kinds of numbers to be posted going forward on a regular basis. I think because of our unique platform that has come together, we have the widest variety of products. I think we have a great sales organization, terrific delivery, a great brand. And so I think you can expect us to continue to gain market share at this point. The globalization of our business there has huge opportunity. But, I think, to expect 14% growth in any one quarter going forward on a regular basis, I think, is certainly something we can't count on.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Robert Jones with Goldman Sachs.

Robert P. Jones - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Just digging into your comments about Dental equipment and consumables and looking at the overall internal growth. It seems like you've had continued strength, obviously, in Dental equipment. I was hoping maybe you could share a little bit more detail around the category that you're specifically seeing the most growth. And then taking a step back and looking at the global picture, seems like a fairly wide disparity between the North American equipment growth and the international growth. Just any more insight on the differences there that you could share would be helpful.

Stanley M. Bergman

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Well, first of all, Steven is going to give you the categories, but let me just give you 2 macro points. The first is that I think we've pointed out that the -- in our first quarter call, that the first quarter sales were a little bit depressed because some of the backlog got shipped, some of that in the U.S. in the -- or were going to be shipped in the second quarter. That took place. So on the one side, I think the second quarter -- the first quarter was a little depressed, and the second quarter, I think, is a bit more on the positive side than one would expect to continue. On the flipside, you have Europe where we had tremendous growth in our #1 equipment market, #1 by far, Germany because of the IDS and now, we had very good growth, we think, in terms of market share in Germany. But it's on the heels of these comparables. So again, I think one must be very, very careful in drawing conclusions from one quarter to another. And so Steven will give you the exact categories where we've done well, and I'd be very careful to conclude that because we've done well in one quarter, it's a trend. But I think Steven will give you a trend line thinking as well. And we remain, by the way, quite positive about our dental business. We think we have a very good offering on both sides of the Atlantic and have further realigned that offering recently. But why don't you, Steven, talk about...

Steven Paladino

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Sure, sure. So our equipment growth by category was pretty broad-based this quarter. In North America, we had very strong traditional equipment growth. Again, we said that we were going to focus on it last quarter. We felt that there were opportunities there in the marketplace. And we were able to capitalize on that. But the leading grower for us was the CAD/CAM or E4D segment. That was our fastest growing category within the high tech segment. It's been our fastest-growing category for a little while now. We would expect that to continue. But again, I would say that North America was very broad-based on our equipment sales growth. If you look at international, Bob, I think it's important to remember the IDS trade show. This is not unexpected to have a very difficult comparison with the strong equipment sales, especially in the Germanic countries last year in Q2. So that was the primary reason why equipment sales growth internationally was not strong. So it's really the comparison. The other thing that is impacting it is the Italian market. The Italian market, because of the overall economy, equipment is down somewhat in the market. We're actually doing better than the market, both on equipment and consumables, but we still have the reality of the Italian market. So hopefully, that provides some additional color to you.

Robert P. Jones - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

No, it does. It's very helpful. Actually, if I could just follow up on that, Steve. So within the CAD/CAM space, you mentioned E4D obviously being the strongest growth in North America. Is that, in large part, do you feel because of share shift, or do you feel that this category is finally starting to pick up broader acceptance? And then if I could just sneak one in on Medical, impressive North American growth, especially in this market. I was wondering if you could maybe just parse out for us underlying market growth versus maybe some share shifts within North America and Medical?

Stanley M. Bergman

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Yes, Bob, I think what is very, very, very important here is that we don't use these investor calls to put one supplier against another. We have to be very careful. So let me talk about CAD/CAM. The CAD/CAM market, globally, has good opportunity. And the market, I think, will grow nicely. I think as dentists understand the importance of this product, there will be more opportunity. Henry Schein was precluded from the CAD/CAM market in the U.S. for about 2 decades. So we didn't have the product to sell. So we are now selling this product and perhaps our own customers did not buy the CAD/CAM product until they saw Henry Schein had an offering. We started offering the product, and I'm not sure if it's market share that we've taken from another manufacturer or not, what I can tell you is that for us, we are growing, and we'll continue to grow. We saw exactly the same in the sensor market. Henry Schein, for a long time, didn't have a good sensor. And when we had a good sensor and made it available to our customers, in collaboration with Danaher, the DEXIS sensor, we have done well. And I don't want to talk about whether we're #1 or #2 because depending on how you define it, we are #1 or #2. Is it units, is it sales, is it a quarter? The bottom line is, I think we have grown from virtually nothing in the sensor business to a significant player in the United States, albeit with the support, and terrific support of Danaher, and I think we will do the same in the CAD/CAM space. This is no different to the chair story, where we didn't have a chair many years ago. And we partnered with Pelton…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from John Kreger with William Blair.

Roberto Fatta

Analyst · William Blair.

This is actually Robbie Fatta in for John today. Just to go back to organic growth, realizing that the first quarter was maybe a bit of an anomaly and the second quarter isn't really indicative of a trend, is it fair to say that growth will be in between those numbers going forward, maybe in the 4% to 5% or maybe even a little bit higher than that range, or what's an appropriate expectation for organic growth going forward?

Stanley M. Bergman

Analyst · William Blair.

Robbie, the one thing one cannot do -- and it's not you only, but it's Wall Street in general, we cannot give you any guidance within basis points of the market share growth and how we expect to do. The bottom line is, analyst data doesn't exist for dentistry. There is so much being written in this area, and it's all over the place within a range. So I think we can conclude that dentists are doing quite well relative to the marketplace. I think one can conclude that there is a growing demand for dentistry, the public is becoming more and more aware. Are dentists going to be subject to some price pressure and therefore, may be looking for lower-priced products? Some of them will be. Are they going to look for more generics, which carry a lower selling price but a higher margin? Yes. The bottom line is we are investing in dentistry because we believe this is a great industry, lots and lots of upside in this country and abroad. To give you a precise number as to whether it's going to be between last quarter and this quarter, I think, it would be irresponsible. How could anyone give you that answer? We don't know. But what we do know is the trends are okay. Dentists are feeling good. They are under price pressure. There are certain plans emerging that are bringing more traffic to sit in their chair, albeit at a lower price. Capitation is alive and well. The growing group practice movement is out there, although some of the practices are doing well, others are not. I think a large part of Henry Schein's growth is coming from the group practices. But they're under pressure, too. There's private equity going in there, they want lower prices. Bottom line is, I think Henry Schein is positioned to take advantage of these dynamic changes on the heels of a market that is relatively stable compared to where it was, for example, in October 2008.

Roberto Fatta

Analyst · William Blair.

Fair enough. And if I could just ask one more on margins. In the second half, can you frame for us the impact of your other recent acquisitions? I know you talked about AUV being about a 10-basis point hit. Can you give us a sense if on a consolidated basis you still expect some expansion in the second half?

Steven Paladino

Analyst · William Blair.

Yes, the other acquisitions, because of the size, really, will not be significant to the operating margin. It's really the AUV which, if you remember, was about $270 million in revenues. And we did say that will be about 10-basis points impact. Remember, we don't look at that as a negative. We will see significant opportunities with AUV to increase their operating margin. We feel that it will prove to be a great acquisition over time. Right now, it's right on plan to what our expectations have been. And again, we look at it as it's resetting the base of our operating margin. So I think other than AUV, the current acquisitions don't really move the needle enough. And again, we do expect to get operating margin expansion in the second half of the year also.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Brandon Couillard with Jefferies. S. Brandon Couillard - Jefferies & Company, Inc., Research Division: Guys, was the vitality in the North American Dental equipment largely a function of the backlog position you had exiting the first quarter, or did you see some better new order trends in the period? And then how did the backlog shape up exiting the second quarter? And then Steve, any chance you could break out the impact of the IDS show on the international dental equipment side?

Stanley M. Bergman

Analyst

So Brandon, I think we covered this also a couple of times on the equipment. First of all, in last quarter call, we said that the number was artificially depressed because of our backlog. And I think we played that out. Our backlog, within basis points -- I don't have the exact number in front of me, Steven probably has it, if it's worth -- if it's material to even go through that, is not too different to what it was last year. I mean, it's within a range. So basically, the Dental equipment market took a deep dive in 2009, end of 2008, 2009, started recovering in 2010 and '11. And I think we're in the same place today. I think some of the equipment, take the sensors, there's more of them, but that's at a lower price, E4D is growing. I think one quarter, we get a lot more traditional equipment; one quarter, we don't. I would say it's a pretty stable market. There's 2 good things that are working in our favor, one is interest rates are extremely low. We have great deals in that area. I don't think we have any deals that are materially different to others, perhaps it's just we don't mark up our money as much as others do, but it's quite stable and very low prices in terms of money. Money is readily available. I think 90% of all leases are quickly approved, and we've got 5% we got to go look and scrounge and then it's 5% that are not typical patterns in the post-2011 period. Yes, there were -- cash was available much easier prior to 2008 but at a higher rate. Now it's available a little less, but readily available, at a slightly lower rate -- or quite a bit lower rate, shall we say. So I think the finances are there. And then we've got the accelerated depreciation, which is going to help us again in the fourth quarter. So it's hard to tell you exactly what the growth rates are going to be, but it's a positive market. So there's absolute great reason to buy a CAD/CAM machine. I think there's still 60% on the market that doesn't have sensors. That market is going to go towards sensors -- kind of, if sensors is going to be this year or next year, I can't tell you. I think from a Henry Schein point of view, adding Planmeca becomes a plus. Planmeca is the #1 in the industry for the 2D panoramic and general panoramic machines. These are all exciting areas, so I think this all bodes well for Schein. But again, the trading range we're talking about in terms of growth is so finite that it's -- it would be, I think, it would be foolhardy for Steve and I to give you an estimate.

Steven Paladino

Analyst

Yes, I completely agree. Just the second part of your question on International. When you look at it on a country-specific basis, again, the Germanic countries was down, but it was expected to be down because of IDS. That was the main reason that reflected the equipment's negative sales growth on the overall international basis. And a smaller reason was really, as I said earlier, the Italian market. The Italian market, we saw declines in the market, and our equipment sales were also -- were declining, although they declined less than the market. So those are really the 2 reasons. We think the IDS is a timing thing. Italy, I think, won't get worse, and hopefully, will improve somewhat over time. So we're feeling like the markets are still relatively stable, and our goal, as always, is to grow faster than whatever the underlying market growth is. S. Brandon Couillard - Jefferies & Company, Inc., Research Division: Okay, I'll move on. I believe GSK recently started initial shipments of the flu vaccine for the upcoming season. At this stage, do you have a view on how you expect [ph] the actual shipments to fall between the third and fourth quarter? And then how is your sell-through pricing shaping up relative to last year if you have a view at this stage?

Steven Paladino

Analyst

Okay. So it's still very, very, very early. So I'm happy to give you our guess, and I really will say it's a guess because we're totally reliant on when we get product from the manufacturers. But my guess is that product will come early similar to last year in the market. So it may be a little bit more weighted towards Q3 than Q4. But really, I would be very cautious on that because we really just don't know, and what we're happy to do on the Q3 conference call, as we've done historically, is we'll talk about what we shipped that quarter and we'll -- since we're releasing partially into Q4, we'll probably know the bulk of what we will have shipped for the whole year. And we always are very transparent on that and provide that detail. Pricing, no major -- pricing is still early also to be -- but I'm not seeing any major changes from pricing also at this time. Again I just want to repeat, it is still very early in the process.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Larry Marsh from Barclays.

Lawrence C. Marsh - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst

Just a couple of quick ones. Maybe just get you elaborate on 2 of your prepared comments, Stanley, and first is, it strikes me that last November when you gave guidance, you had sort of called out some uncertainties in Europe. And it feels to me that, that's kind of coming to fruition as you sort of talk about it. So I don't think that's a surprise to you guys. I think you specifically said Germany is still very strong, the comps versus last year on equipment are down. But maybe as you think about Germany, Stanley, when you say strength in the market, as you think about that, is that still a business that you believe you can grow at market over the next couple of years? And again as you think about IDS for 2013, is this going to be as big a deal as normal given the environment, or it's always a big deal?

Stanley M. Bergman

Analyst

Actually, Larry, you're asking a question that we ask internally on a regular basis. I mean, we ask this question at our monthly meeting with our German team and then every third day on the e-mail just to validate the answer. I'm being a little facetious here. But you're in the right area. You're asking a good question. So the only thing I can say, and I don't want to set a precedent in these calls, by the way, for what I'm about to say. All I can tell you is, we develop budgets. They get -- they start being developed, I think, in June or July, right Steven? When do we start up?

Steven Paladino

Analyst

We're just starting now.

Stanley M. Bergman

Analyst

Now, right? So we're starting now. And then we have the grand meeting in Europe, I think, is in October, when Steven gets together with all the managers. What I can tell you is the German business is delivering in accordance with budget. No one knew -- and I don't want to start referring to budgets on future businesses because I don't think it's germane to go into budgets on all of our businesses. But the point here that I'm trying to address is, we did expect that something would give, whether it was too high comparables in the previous year versus potential for this year, the foreign exchange issue, perhaps the fact that the Germans were already getting a little excited about having to fund the rest of Europe, we didn't expect any reimbursement adjustments in Germany. That's too politically a hot potato. No one wants to mess around with a dentist reimbursement. It's insignificant. And everyone in Germany takes advantage of this. So it's different to going after hospitals and drug companies. So that was something that we didn't take into account. Having said that, I think the business is growing. I know the business is growing and is more or less in the plus column, delivering in accordance with expectations. We had a management change about 1 year and plus -- 1.5 years ago, which has gone very well. We've got great management. I think there's opportunity to grow on the equipment side, but I think there's huge opportunity to grow on the consumable side. We have a very important equipment presence and our consumable presence is not as good as our equipment because if you'll recall, the genesis of our major part of our business in Germany extends from the former Siemens Dental. And so our team are extremely good at equipment. At the same time, our team is more comfortable sometimes selling $150,000 product or EUR 100,000 product than may perhaps going after the disposables. So we have built plans in, in the last 2 or 3 years to do that. I think there's opportunity to go after the consumable business, the specialty business. So I think the German market is relatively stable, but our opportunity for growth is quite good. So that goes right into the IDS question. I think if the manufacturers continue to come up with good products, I think our major manufacturers, the ones that I'm in dialogue with, seem to have good plans for new products. They launch those new products at IDS. I'm not sure we'll have huge growth, but we'll have growth.

Lawrence C. Marsh - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst

Okay, great. And maybe a quick follow-up for Steve. I just want to make sure I'm thinking of FX right. I think you had said $0.03 this quarter that you fought through. So does that suggest -- in my mind, that's going to be at least $0.03 a quarter, Q3 and Q4, maybe even a little bit more. So you're confirming the guidance is despite this big negative headwind on FX. Is that the right way to think about it? And what am I missing?

Steven Paladino

Analyst

Well, first on the current quarter. And I'm glad you asked the question because I think -- we did say in the prepared remarks that we had $0.03 negative impact in the quarter purely related to foreign exchange. And that's just the difference between average exchange rates that existed Q2 last year versus applying the current average rate. And just to highlight that, last year, the average rate for the euro, and again, that's our biggest currency, was somewhere around $1.44 or $1.45. And this year, the current average rate for the quarter was somewhere around $1.28. So it's a big movement. And I do think it's a testament to our core business that we were able to still deliver strong growth and fight through that $0.03 headwind. The headwind, assuming again -- and I don't want to predict foreign currency rates because I don't think it's truthful and I don't think anyone really knows how, but assuming rates stay where they are, the impact will lessen because the euro did weaken last year. So if this stays the same, the impact will be lessened in Q3 and Q4. So after saying all that, I'd like to point out again that we feel confident in our guidance. We're trying to be a bit conservative on exchange rates as we sit here today, and we feel confident that we'll deliver our EPS guidance, for the year unless some really unusual thing happens in the world that we're not expecting.

Operator

Operator

We have time for one more question, and it comes from Jeff Johnson with Robert Baird. Jeffrey D. Johnson - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: Just a couple of follow-ups here and, Stanley, I hear what you're saying on not wanting to give us growth guidance and to focus on the big picture, I get that. But let me ask one question, if I can try to tease a couple of things out. I think we're all pretty confident that June is when dental demand really started to lighten up in the U.S. At least, that's what I'm hearing pretty clearly in my checks. I know you also pulled a lot of your sales reps out of the field that month for the sales meeting. A lot of those guys went down and enjoyed maybe a week with family in Orlando and that. How much is -- as those sales reps are now back in the field and that, the 1.9% consumables number that we saw in the third quarter or in the second quarter, is that a reasonable level to assume, or should we think about as though sales reps are back and that maybe a bit of strengthening in the next couple of quarters on that consumable side? And then also in Europe, is it fair to think of the European dental market, just in general, staying in positive territory the rest of the year, or how do you read those tea leaves?

Stanley M. Bergman

Analyst

Jeff, I want to put this as diplomatically as possible because I think you're probably -- you are, I think one of the most knowledgeable analysts in the dental space. We are dealing with tens of basis points right now. And for me or for anybody in the dental industry to give you an opinion on that would be very difficult. Yes, June was an unusual month because we had our national sales meeting. And I think that always takes people out of the field. But I don't want to take that and extrapolate it for the rest of the year because it's a factor. There are other factors, too, positive and negative, mostly positive, I would say. Now as it relates to the growth rate we experienced, to extrapolate that for the rest of the year, I don't know. It would be very, very, very difficult. There are so many factors. Is there a movement from more expensive products to less expensive products? I think it could be that. How are our specialty businesses doing versus perhaps some of the mature products? What I'm quite comfortable with is, we will not lose market share and quite comfortable that we will move into positive. How much positive in market share? I don't know. I don't know if the visits to dentists are really down. What I do know is there was a good traffic into the dental office in the first quarter because of the weather. And my sense is that appointments that could have occurred perhaps a little later in the year were pulled into the first quarter because dentists probably called their customers and said, "I've got 2 extra days or 3 extra days." Let them say it this way, but they found they had 2 or 3…

Stanley M. Bergman

Analyst

And our Technology businesses are bringing in nice profits as well. And although the sales are not material, the profits are. Jeffrey D. Johnson - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: Understood. Steve, just last question then. With regards to IDEX, I'm sure you don't have necessarily anything firm you can say there, but how much business do you do with IDEX outside the U.S.? And how important do you think that is in maybe maintaining that relationship on a worldwide basis?

Steven Paladino

Analyst

I don't have a specific number for outside the U.S. I'd have to get back to you on that.

Stanley M. Bergman

Analyst

It's not material. Outside the U.S. is not material. We had -- we work with IDEX in a couple of markets, but the market is extremely fractionalized amongst a lot of manufacturers outside of the U.S.

Steven Paladino

Analyst

And just overall on IDEX, unfortunately, there's really not any important new news from the last call. We're still waiting to hear what IDEX is doing and what they're doing with the FTC. So we're hearing that sometime late August, early September, we'll hear more information. But I don't have really an update other than that. We feel -- still feel good, very good about our relationship with IDEX. So that's a positive on our side.

Stanley M. Bergman

Analyst

So I'm sorry, we went over the mark today, but there really is a lot going on in the business. And I think it was well worth the extra 20 minutes or so. So thank you, everyone, for participating in the call. Steven is ready to handle additional calls. You can call Susan Vassallo in our Communications department, Gerard Meuchner in our Communications department. And I think people have the number, if not, just Steven is (631) 843-5915, and Susan, 5562. And please feel free to call. We'll be very pleased to answer questions. I think we're feeling good about the company. I just visited a number of our businesses in North America in the last 2 weeks and spent a little time before that in Europe. Heading to Europe again in the next -- doing some business there in the next month although parts of Europe are on vacation, but the parts I'll visit will not be so heavily on vacation. And the impression I have from our management coming in and out of headquarters and in the field is that the morale is good, and generally, we feel good about winning. So thank you very much for your interest, and we'll be back in 90 days.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's Henry Schein's Second Quarter Conference Call. You may now disconnect.