Stanley M. Bergman
Analyst · Robert Jones, Goldman Sachs
Thank you, Steven. Let me take a few minutes to provide additional detail on each of our business units. In doing so, I'd like to underscore the theme of our 2013 annual report, which shareholders recently received in the mail. That theme is Rely on Us, and it speaks to enhancing engagement with all 5 of our constituents, namely: our customers, our supplier partners, Team Schein Members, society and, of course, our shareholders. Let me start by reviewing our Dental business. Growth in North America was highlighted by equipment sales and service revenue, which posted robust internal growth in local currencies of 16%, albeit against a somewhat easier comparison to growth of less than 1% in the same quarter in 2013. The strong growth was evident across the board in our Dental equipment business. In our International Dental business, consumable merchandise growth accelerated sequentially with internal growth in local currencies of 3.7%. This is the highest we've seen in nearly 2 years. International equipment sales and service revenue, total growth was 11.7%, including 2.4% internal growth and was bolstered by strategic acquisitions. Last December, Planmeca announced a strategic investments in E4D technologies, the manufacturer of our E4D chairside scanning and milling system. Today, the system is marketed under the PlanScan brand, and reception by the dental community to date has been quite positive. Henry Schein continues to exclusively distribute the E4D product, the PlanScan technology, in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Planmeca has a reputation as a well-respected innovative, multinational dental equipment manufacturer. The alignment with E4D is expected to help improve continued adoption of chairside industry, and a strong knowledge of manufacturing should open the door to greater capacity in developing new systems, primarily in the E4D facility in Texas. In addition, Planmeca is delivering benefits in terms of seamless integration with digital imaging technology used in many dental practices today, and we are very pleased with our PlanScan E4D sales growth for the first quarter of 2014, which continues to be one of our fastest categories. Let me just also add that the E4D system will integrate with many other brands as well, but we are very pleased with the progress that has been made from a manufacturing point of view and from a sales and marketing point of view with the now PlanScan system that we are selling in these specific markets for U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The first part of every year is a especially busy time for Henry Schein as we hold various national sales meetings. The Dental Special Markets meeting brought together about 125 Team Schein Members throughout the country and approximately 100 representatives from the 60 supplier partners. Our Dental Special Markets business focuses on large group -- large corporate accounts. These are the large groups, government agencies, dental schools and other institutions. As is true with all sales meetings, this event included presentations by company executives, breakout sessions, educational seminars and, of course, the supplier exhibit. Importantly, the meeting presented opportunity for Team Schein Members and our supplier partners to learn from one another. By interacting directly, we can be sure that our sales team has the best possible knowledge of the market we serve and the products we offer. Prominently featured at this year's National Sales Meeting for our corporate accounts in Dental Special Markets group was the implant product line from our recently completed acquisition, BioHorizons, and we are pleased that BioHorizons is performing slightly ahead of our expectations. And a lot going on in the Special Markets arena. In particular, very large accounts and there's a group of midsized accounts. And as you would expect, Henry Schein is breaking down these various accounts into appropriate categories and providing the appropriate specialty sales support, backed up by specialty marketing support and value-added services for these groups of accounts. Certainly, we'd be happy to answer more questions on this in the Q&A. Let me now focus on the Animal Health arena. Although we face some challenges in the quarter due to weather here in North America, it's important to note that because we operate in a leadership position in an attractive market, we look forward to continued steady growth here in North America in the mid, potentially even towards the high single-digit in future quarters. These growth expectations are consistent with our previous comments and, of course, one has to take into account adjustments as one moves from GAAP sales to agency sales and back again. Indeed, during the first quarter, we were delighted to be named as the exclusive distributor in the U.S. for Iams' therapeutic line of dog and cat food solutions. Henry Schein shares a strong commitment to supporting animal nutrition and the veterinary care, and raising awareness of its vital impact on the overall pet market and pet health care in general. Our International Animal Health internal sales growth in local currencies during the first quarter was solid and was, in fact, the highest we have reported in 1.5 years. We saw particular strength in the U.K., Belgium, Spain, Portugal and Australia. And just at the close of the quarter, we announced the completion of the acquisition of approximately 80% of the shares of Medivet with annual sales of $86 million. As we have previously discussed, Medivet is the leading distributor of Animal Health products and services in Poland and provides a strategic base for expansion into Eastern Europe's growing Animal Health market. Now in early March, we held our Animal Health National Sales Meeting. This 5-day event featured a record number of more than 600 Team Schein Members and participants from suppliers. As with Dental Special Markets Meetings -- as with the Dental Special Markets meeting, this forum included a multitude of training and educational sessions along with opportunities to learn about new products and services offerings from suppliers and a sharing of best practices. Really, another very, very good meeting. If we look forward to the fall, we recently announced we will be hosting the second annual Veterinary Technology Summit in early September. This is a particularly exciting industry event that combines practice management courses with training on our cutting-edge software for veterinarians and their staff and more. We take pride in the technology leadership for many reasons, not the least of which is that it strengthens the bond between Henry Schein and our customers and allows veterinarians to run efficient practices while providing the highest level of clinical care. We are proud to have a leading market position in the U.S. for installed systems and believe that more than 50% of companion animal clinics are using one of our many software systems, 2 major systems and other 3 or 4 other systems. Continuing with our commitment to advanced technology and practice efficiency, early in the second quarter, we launched a free iPad app for our U.S. Animal Health customers. This app includes features such as product search capability and purchase history and ability to browse and select from more than 17,000 products available on the Henry Schein website in Animal Health space. Our new mobile ordering app raises the bar for flexibility and convenience, and coupled with expert advice and tailored solutions we provide makes Henry Schein Animal Health a unique resource to our veterinary customers. Let me now turn briefly to our Medical group. As I think everyone knows, North America represents 94%, about 94% of group sales. So it's primarily a U.S. business. Our strategic sales force for the past several years has been focused on large group practices and the IDN methodology, the IDN, integrated delivery networks. We are making solid progress with this strategy and are seeing positive results. Yet, I note that onboarding of these new accounts, these large accounts, generally takes longer than is for the small accounts or solo practitioners, so we're quite optimistic that this program, which has generated good interest amongst these larger accounts, specifically IDNs, will yield good sales results as the year goes by. At our annual Medical National Sales Meeting, more than 700 Team Schein Members, along with representatives from 145 exhibiting companies, gathered together to ensure our continued success in serving our physician customers. There's a lot of change occurring in this marketplace, and we believe we're still the fastest-growing provider of products to physician offices and alternate care sites. And we look forward to benefiting from the trends being driven by public policy as manifested by the Affordable Care Act, that are changing business models and deliveries of health care and as the movement towards wellness, the movements toward preventative care and the movement from the hospital to the alternate care sites, all we believe play well into our focus in the medical arena. So let me conclude my business overview with some discussion on Technology and the Value-Added Services group. Growth in this unit was driven by software sales, which were good, and Value-Added Services. More if anyone has any questions. But generally, sales performance in this area was heavily driven by recurring revenue as we leverage and expand our relationship with our software customers. This group remains a very, very good contributor to profits, but, more importantly, to providing value-added services and stickiness in terms of relationship building with our customers. So let me conclude. Some very good news, which I think many of our shareholders may be aware of. And I think these 2 points that I want to stress run to the success of Henry Schein, run to our corporate culture, which in the end has been the driver of success. The markets -- many of the businesses that we're in have lots and lots of competitors, and barriers to entry are relatively easy, but what has resulted in us being, we believe, so successful is our culture. We were recently recognized as 2014 World's Most Ethical Company by Ethisphere Institute, which is an independent center of research promoting best practices and corporate ethics and governance. We're 1 of only 144 companies awarded this honor across 41 industries, 22 countries and 5 continents. This is the third consecutive year Henry Schein has received this award, which recognizes organizations that continue to raise the bar on ethical leadership and corporate behavior. Also, we were ranked first on Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies list for 2014 in the wholesale health care industry. According to Fortune Magazine, the World's Most Admired Companies list is the definitive report card on corporate reputations. We also are first in each of 9 subcategories of ranking, an accomplishment we never achieved before. This year marks the 13th consecutive year that Henry Schein was named on the Fortune Most Admired Companies list. I think we became a Fortune company 13 years ago. So with that overview on our quarterly financial and operating performance, thank you for your attention. There's so much to talk about Henry Schein, so we'd be happy if shareholders or investors would like to ask specific questions about specific areas. So I'll turn the call over to the operator now.