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Henry Schein, Inc. (HSIC)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Tue, May 3, 2016

$75.77

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Henry Schein First Quarter Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Carolynne Borders, Henry Schein's Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Carolynne.

Carolynne Borders - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Diana, and my thanks to each of you for joining us to discuss Henry Schein's results for the first quarter of 2016. With me on the call are Stanley Bergman, Chairman of the Board 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. These forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements contained in Henry Schein's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, all comments about the markets we serve, including growth rates and market shares, are based upon the company's internal analysis and estimates. The content of this conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of the live broadcast, May 3, 2016. 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 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 one hour we have allotted for the call. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Stan Bergman. Stanley M. Bergman - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Carolynne. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We are so pleased with our first quarter financial results.…

Carolynne Borders - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Diana?

Operator

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Dave Francis, RBC Capital Markets.

Dave Francis - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Good morning, Stanley and Steve. Thanks for all of the commentary. Two quick questions, first, on the dental side, Stanley, can you comment on the strength of the equipment sales that you guys have been experiencing? Is there something going on in the market beyond just general strength and confidence of your practitioners in terms of driving the high-tech and other equipment sales, or is there something structurally from a tax or other perspective, that's impacting the demand side of the market there? Stanley M. Bergman - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah, Dave. Good question. Generally, I think dentists are feeling good about their practices. I think there is stability in patient visits. And I think dentists are understanding that investing in newer technology provides for better quality dental care, a better experience for the customer, and actually results in a more profitable practice, of course, combined with quality of care. So I would say it's driven, to a large extent, by some of the newer technologies in the imaging side, on the prosthetics side, and we have a very good offering today of products that match the needs of the marketplace. We did add the A-dec line in North America, which is contributing. Having said that, I think our sales, across the board, even with the existing portfolio of traditional equipment, has been good. So, overall, it's good dynamics in the marketplace in terms of the dentists feeling good, the newer technology available, and a little bit the result of us expanding our offering with the A-dec product line, but I wouldn't put that much emphasis on that, that is, A-dec is doing well with us, but it's also a relatively small part of the entire equipment portfolio, but it is doing well. Steven Paladino - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Director: I would just add one other thing, Dave. Specifically, the CAD/CAM category was very strong for us in North America. And, as we mentioned on the last call or two, for us, CAD/CAM is not just selling complete end-to-end units. We also sell a number of scan-onlys and we're seeing strong growth in the scan-onlys, which, for us, we think is very positive in the initial sale, but also positions the customer to come back to us in the future when they're looking to do chairside milling, and they can then buy the additional components from us at a later date. So, CAD/CAM, the total category of complete systems and scan-onlys, was very strong for us. But it truly was across the board, because traditional equipment as well as high-tech, was both strong.

Dave Francis - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Great. That's helpful commentary. And as a quick follow-up on the medical side of the business, obviously strength there, but wanted to follow up relative to your relationship with Cardinal Health. Cardinal just signed a large relationship with Kaiser Permanente and was wondering if you guys participated with them on the outpatient side and if you could give some other, more tangible, examples of where you guys are participating on a joint bid basis? Thanks. Stanley M. Bergman - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: On Cardinal in general, our relationship is advancing. As we mentioned, the physician business is integrated, working well and we also have assumed the business in a number of ASCs the Cardinal physician sales force was servicing. So the majority of Cardinal's physician-related alternate care customers have transitioned to our platform. And we are working together on a number of IDN sales opportunities. We've actually generated some very nice sales together. The particular situation or the particular opportunity with Kaiser that Cardinal, the business they have won, is less in our wheelhouse than the business we undertake day-to-day. I believe that is more of a bulk distribution arrangement. And Cardinal is handling that from their distribution system. So, that is not exactly the kind of business we anticipated working on together. But there are many, many IDNs that we are working on together and actually have landed quite a bit of business in that regard.

Dave Francis - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brandon Couillard at Jefferies.

Unknown Speaker

Analyst

Hi. Good morning. This is Sachin (46:20) for Brandon. Just a question on cash flow, given the 1Q dynamic, will you provide us with an update on your free cash flow expectations for 2016? And what sort of conversion are you factoring into your projections? Steven Paladino - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Director: Sure. Again, although it was negative cash flow for us for the quarter, if you look at the components, it was really driven by working capital, which is typical for us in that typically, inventory purchases in Q4 are higher for a number of reasons and the payments for those inventory purchases occur in Q1. So, that's what drives it. But on a full-year basis, we're still looking at growing our operating cash flow probably consistent with our bottom-line growth rate, our net income growth year-over-year. So, we still believe we can generate strong cash flow on a full-year basis, with some growth similar to our bottom-line growth. We did also have during the quarter a little bit of duplicative inventory in consolidating some warehouses in Europe, specifically Germany. Over the balance of the year, that inventory level will come down. We did that as a precautionary measure as we're moving and consolidating distribution centers in Germany. We typically have inventory, excess inventory, that we manage through over the next few months. So, again, we still feel that operating cash flow will continue to be strong and grow over the prior year.

Unknown Speaker

Analyst

Got it. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ross Muken of Evercore ISI.

Ross Muken - Evercore ISI

Analyst

Hi. Good morning, gentlemen. So, it seems like based on obviously the growth rates in your commentary, share is moving still positively in your direction. I mean, I guess, on a sequential basis or on a trending basis, is there any of the business segments where you're seeing a materially more positive shift than others? And if so, I guess, what is the key driver of that? Steven Paladino - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Director: Well, I'm not sure that we can say that there are material improvements over the last quarter or two. It's really more gradual improvements. You can see, again, that the U.S. Medical business was our strongest grower. It was the fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit sales growth. That's a strong number. We would like just for that to continue. I don't think acceleration there is something that we can expect. But we do expect that for the foreseeable future that it can continue to put up high single to low double-digit sales growth. I think we're pleased that across all of our businesses and all of our markets, we think patient traffic has been healthy. U.S. dental patient traffic has been healthy, as well as even in the European markets, although not in every market. But as we said in the prepared comments, even markets like Spain, that over the last year or two had some challenges in market growth, was a strong grower for us. So I think we feel like the overall markets are continuing to cooperate. We do believe that there's the potential for some very modest continued gradual improvement in underlying market conditions, but we're happy with the overall 6%-plus constant currency growth that we achieved as a company.

Ross Muken - Evercore ISI

Analyst

Thanks, and maybe just on M&A pipeline, I mean, obviously, you guys are regular buyers of tuck-ins. But I guess a lot of volatility in public markets. You typically trade in the private market. Any change in willingness of sort of smaller private owners? Are you seeing more assets come to market in any one segment versus another, or is the funnel pretty consistent? Stanley M. Bergman - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: So, Ross, the deals we do and have actually done past 20 years and even before we went public are really not so much dependent nor actually related to specific financial market conditions. What drives our deals is generally the synergies that and the interest of potential sellers and potential partners to work with Henry Schein to advance their business for particular family reasons, management reasons, shareholder reasons, et cetera. And so the pipeline is as full as ever. Of course, there's no guarantee as to when we can close a deal. Deals with us often take many years from the time we start talking to people to the time we close. And there's not much that's related to the financial markets, per se. So we remain quite optimistic that we'll continue with our internal growth and supplement the growth with acquisitions. We have committed that we will use our cash flow in three ways. One is to buy shares. One is to invest in the business, although investing in the business sometimes is not as important from a cash flow point of view because we're a net generator of cash, but we nevertheless do invest in the business some of the cash flow, but it's essentially from the buying of stock and the investment in acquisitions. And we continue to expect that trend to continue, as it has for years now.

Ross Muken - Evercore ISI

Analyst

Excellent. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jon Block of Stifel. Jon Block - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Great. Thanks and good morning. Hopefully, I can slip in two questions. So the first one is just, Stanley, over the past year and change, you've made some really interesting acquisitions in vet skill, Vetstreet, et cetera. Can you just talk to the positioning of the North American Animal Health business sort of 18 months after IDEXX going direct? In other words, can diagnostics still sort of be accretive to your overall North American vet growth rate with sort of the products and positioning that you currently have on hand? And then, I got a follow-up. Thanks, guys. Stanley M. Bergman - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. So let me start a little broader and then get specific. Our Animal Health strategy encompasses two major focus. One is to advance geographic presence throughout the world; wherever there's a middle class that is interested in pets, we like to be there and selectively in the production side but very, very selectively. And it's not necessarily where the largest markets are, but there are opportunities. So, for example, we do a good job in dairy in Ireland and New Zealand. And then those kinds of opportunities, plus some opportunities in equine. So, we want to get a large geographic footprint. And then we want to focus on a couple of things. First is pharma market share around the world and in that connection, we work with the large pharma companies but also some of the generic companies. Two, is we want to find unique products to put through these channels. And in that connection, there are opportunities in the areas such as instruments, where we acquired a company, Veterinary Instruments, (53:59)…

Operator

Operator

We have one final question coming from the line of Jeff Johnson.

Unknown Speaker

Analyst

Morning. This is Jason (1:00:34) actually on for Jeff. Thanks for taking the questions. Just a couple for Steve, first, on the revenue side, some very good growth rates in Animal Health and Medical, even after normalizing for some of the agency buy-sell (1:00:44) shifting we saw this quarter, but hoping you can help us with how we should be thinking about the top line contributions from this shift over the balance of the year. Do you expect a similar benefit as to what we saw here in 1Q? And then the follow-up to that question would be how should we be thinking about the operating margin progression for the rest of the year, in light of these moving parts of the top line, as well as what seems to be maybe a step-up in stock comp here to start 2016? Steven Paladino - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Director: Sure. So first on the sell side, we should see on the Medical side the normalized sales growth continue at a very healthy rate. And I said earlier, normalized somewhere in the high-single to low double-digit range is what we think is achievable. We should see the impact of the agency sales shift related to the Cardinal transaction decrease in Q2 and virtually go away beyond that. Similarly, on the Animal Health side, we would see the growth that we experienced, which was 7%- and change, we'd like to see that continue. There might be a little opportunity for acceleration there. And the agency shift will probably continue for the next few quarters. With respect to operating margin, the goal is still to get operating margin expansion for the full year. Now, we typically don't see much of it in Q1, for a number of reasons. But again, stripping out some of those unusual items, we did get 23 basis points of margin expansion in Q1. But we expect to get further operating margin expansion for the full year. And I'm trying to remember, Jason, (1:02:20) there was a third part to your question, but not sure I remember it.

Unknown Speaker

Analyst

Yeah. I mean, you hit on most of that there. Just actually one follow-up, if I could. The North American consumables performance, pretty solid, but it did slow against what we saw last quarter. Last quarter, just may be a bit above normal or maybe we ticked back down here in 1Q. But I know you mentioned this kind of in some of the prepared remarks, the market's still pretty solid, but how would you qualify end market at this point? I mean, are we seeing any softening versus 4Q, or are things still pretty stable and solid? And maybe any color you can provide on April would be helpful as well. Thanks. Stanley M. Bergman - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: So, Jason, (1:03:01) I think the markets for dental consumables are in the couple of hundred basis point growth. It's not much more than that at this stage, maybe a little bit more than 200 basis points. And it depends, again, on the mix. In some areas, we're growing faster than others. We may be picking up a little bit more market share here and there. But I think it is safe to assume that we're growing around twice the market rate, around that number, and the markets have been pretty stable for quite a while in North America.

Unknown Speaker

Analyst

Okay. Thank you so much. It's helpful. Steven Paladino - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Director: Yeah. Just specifically, patient traffic, as we said earlier, continues to be healthy. And that's more than just a dental comment. That's a dental, a medical, and an animal health comment, both domestically and internationally.

Unknown Speaker

Analyst

Okay. Thanks, guys. Steven Paladino - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Director: Okay.

Operator

Operator

There are no further... Stanley M. Bergman - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: So, I think – sorry, Operator?

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. Stanley M. Bergman - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. Thank you, Operator. And thank you, everybody, for calling in. We did promise to end at 11:00. We're six minutes late. Sorry. But wanted to handle that last question and sorry to others that wanted to ask and we're just not able to accommodate. But please feel free to call Carolynne Borders, our head of Investor Relations at Henry Schein, 1 – what's the number, 843...

Carolynne Borders - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

It's actually 631-390-8105. Stanley M. Bergman - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Or Steve Paladino at 631-843-5915. I can remember the number. So, thank you all for calling. We are quite optimistic about the markets that we're in, about Henry Schein's strategy, long-term strategy. We think we're executing well on our strategic plan. We're right in the middle of the 2015, 2016, 2017 strategic plan. I think we've positioned our management team well. We've made some changes that are really part of a progression in advancing our effectiveness as a team. We're very pleased with the heads of all of our different business units, all executing well. The Dental team, led by Jim Breslawski, is doing a very, very good job as well, and has for decades now; and Jim Harding, our Chief Technology Officer, and the software businesses all operating well. Of course, there's no business that doesn't have challenges. We have challenges, and we're dealing with them. But the opportunities are exciting. Each one of these areas is chock-full of ideas, change, opportunity to take advantage of the change, the demographics, technology, the markets we're in. So we're very, very excited about our future and where we're heading. Thank you for your interest, and we'll be back in 90 days.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for participating in today's Henry Schein first quarter conference call. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect at this time.