Operator
Operator
Good morning, everyone and welcome to the IDEXX Laboratories First Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. Participating in the call this morning are Jon Ayers, Chief Executive Officer; Brian McKeon, Chief Financial Officer and Ed Garber, Director, Investor Relations. IDEXX would like to preface the discussion today with a caution regarding forward-looking statements. Listeners are reminded that statements that members of IDEXX management may make on this call regarding IDEXX's future expectations, plans, and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as expects, may, anticipates, intends, would, will, plans, believes, estimates, should, and similar words and expressions. Such statements include but are not limited to statements regarding management's expectations for financial results for future periods. Investors should be aware that any forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed here today. These risk factors are explained in detail in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please refer to these filings for a more detailed discussion of forward-looking statements and the risks and uncertainties of such statements. All forward-looking statements are made as of today, and except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Also, during this call we will be discussing certain financial measures not prepared in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is provided in our earnings release, which can be found on our website, IDEXX.com. In reviewing our first quarter 2015 results, please note all references to growth and organic growth refer to growth compared to the equivalent period in 2014 unless otherwise noted. Also when we refer to normalized organic growth, in addition to adjusting for exchange and acquisitions, we have adjusted for changes in distributor inventory levels. In order to allow broad participation in the Q&A, we ask that each participant limit his or her questions to one with one follow-up as necessary. We do appreciate you may have additional questions but please feel free to get back into the queue and if time permits, we'll be more than happy to take your additional questions. I would now like to turn the call over to Brian McKeon Brian P. McKeon - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: Good morning, everyone. Today I'll take you through our first quarter results and spend some time reviewing our updated financial outlook for the full year. Jon will follow with his comments and observations. We had a solid start to the year in Q1. In terms of highlight our first-quarter revenues were $382 million, up 6% on a reported basis. Foreign exchange was a significant headwind in Q1 resulting in a 6% year-on-year reduction in reporter growth. These changes reduced year-on-year operating profit by over $5 million or about $0.01 per share more than originally projected. Despite these impacts, we delivered EPS results of $0.98 per share on Q1, reflecting 18% year-on-year gains on a constant currency basis. Results were supported by strong organic growth and better than expected operating margins. Normalized organic revenue growth in Q1 was 11.4% and recurring CAG diagnostic gains were nearly 14%, supported by continuous strong growth in VetLab consumables and reference lab services across our U.S. and international markets. Instrument placements were very strong in the quarter. Worldwide premium placements increased 24%, reflecting 35% growth in Catalyst instruments and 13% growth in premium hematology. Globally, we achieved 925 Catalyst placements, including 425 in North America, with a significant backlog heading into Q2. While we posted high organic growth results in Q1, revenue gains fell below our raised growth expectations. Overall growth was constrained by tough weather conditions across much of the U.S. in the quarter. While consumable and reference lab sales remained strong, rapid assay results were below expectations reflecting lower sales of first-generation lines, that is, feline and single test canine products. Lower than expected revenues in our digital imaging business also moderated overall growth. Looking forward, we're recalibrating our 2015 financial outlook to reflect the continued strengthening of the U.S. dollar, which we estimate will reduce revenue by an additional $15 million and EPS by $0.05 per share in 2015 compared to rates used to calculate our original 2015 guidance shared on our January earnings call. We're also revising our full year organic revenue growth outlook by 1.5% to 12% to 13% to reflect Q1 results, expectations for moderate organic declines before margin capture benefits in our rapid assay business and revenue impacts from a transition in our Information Management business towards an increased focus on cloud-based services. Along with FX impacts, this revised outlook will lower our 2015 EPS outlook to $4.14 to $4.24 per share this year. We'll walk through our updated guidance in more detail later in my comments. Let's begin with a review of our Q1 performance. We achieved solid organic growth across our major business segments in Q1. Global CAG revenues were $325 million, reflecting 13% normalized organic growth or 9% growth excluding benefits from U.S. go-direct margin capture, driven by continued strong gains in instrument consumable and reference lab sales. Our Livestock, Poultry and Dairy business revenue grew 3% organically to $31 million, benefiting from growth in new products and overall gains in Asia-Pacific, which offset an expected moderate decline in European bovine sales. Our Water business also continued its solid gains, growing 6% organically to $22 million, reflecting continued new business inroads across major regions. Overall, U.S. revenues were $235 million in the quarter, up 13% organically, or 8% excluding margin capture benefits. U.S. gains were supported by normalized CAG Diagnostic recurring revenue growth of 15%, or 8% growth excluding margin capture benefits, reflecting continued high growth in instrument consumable and reference lab sales, which offset lower practice level sales and rapid assay. IDEXX's performance continues to outpace solid continued U.S. market growth, reflected in our broadened data set of 5,100 clinics. In Q1, patient visits increased 3.4% and clinic revenues increased 6.7% compared to the soft overall market results in Q1 of 2014. International revenues in the first quarter were $147 million, supported by 9% normalized organic growth. Normalized CAG Diagnostic recurring revenue growth was 11% in international markets in Q1, reflecting continued strong gains across major regions. As noted, global instrument placements were excellent in the quarter, driving 19% organic growth in instrument revenues to $20 million. U.S. premium instrument replacements increased 15% with an estimated 59% of Catalyst placements going to competitive and greenfield accounts. International premium instrument placements increased 32% supported by the European launch of Catalyst One. We also placed 291 VetTest Chemistry Analyzers in international markets, expanding our foothold in smaller clinics. Strong placement gains set a foundation for continued strong growth in CAG diagnostic recurring revenues. Global CAG diagnostic recurring revenues were $279 million in Q1, up 14% organically, or about 9% excluding benefits from go-direct margin capture. By modality, instrument consumable revenues of $98 million grew 22% normalized in Q1 or 13% excluding margin capture benefits. We saw continued strong gains across regions. In the U.S., we're expanding our penetration of premium analyzers, including solid continued growth in our Catalyst installed base, which now drives 93% of our consumable revenues exclusive of corporate accounts. This supported continued strong growth in consumable revenues well ahead of U.S. market growth rates. Our reference laboratory and consulting services modality with revenues of $123 million grew organically 12% in the first quarter. High growth continued across all our major regions including double-digit volume driven gains in the U.S. despite weather challenges. We expect strong continued growth in lab revenues going forward as we leverage our expanded commercial capability and benefits from our test menu expansion including SDMA. Continued high growth in consumable and lab revenues help to offset softer than expected performance on a couple of fronts in Q1. Rapid assay revenues increased 6% normalized in Q1 to $44 million. Excluding benefits from U.S. margin capture, rapid assay revenues declined about 3% in the quarter. In addition to impacts from tough weather conditions in the U.S., we experienced greater revenue declines than expected in our first-generation SNAP products. These impacts offset solid volume gains in our core canine SNAP 4Dx Plus and specialty test products, which make up the majority of our rapid assay revenues. Based on our Q1 results and our assessment of these trends, we're lowering our full year 2015 outlook for rapid assay revenues by about $15 million, below our earlier projections for low to mid-single digit growth before benefits from margin capture, to reflect expectations for mid-single digit declines in rapid assay sales this year, before an estimated 11% growth benefit from margin capture. Jon will talk more about dynamics in this area in his comments. Our digital business also fell short of growth goals in Q1 as a result of both increased levels of deferred revenue deals associated with bundled business commitments and the impact of new territory alignments with our expanded diagnostic sales reps. These impacts limited overall Information Management and Digital Imaging System revenues to $26 million in the quarter, or 3% organic growth, despite solid gains in Information Systems. We're also recalibrating our full year growth outlook to reflect expectations for more moderate revenue gains in Digital Imaging this year, as well as to reflect revenue impacts related to an accelerated transition towards a subscription-based software-as-a-service model in Information Management. We expect this will result in reported IM and Digital revenue growth of 5% to 10% this year, below our earlier estimates of 15%-plus gains. Despite these pressures and additional FX headwinds, we delivered strong financial performance in the quarter. Operating profit was $73 million, up 4%. Excluding currency impacts, operating profits increased 12%. Operating margins of 19% were better than expected, primarily reflecting timing and management of operating expenses in the quarter. Gross profit was $216 million in Q1, up 7% on a reported basis. Gross profit margins increased modestly, benefited from lower product costs. Foreign exchange hedge gains reporting gross profit were $4.5 million, or $0.07 per share in Q1. Operating expenses increased 8% in Q1 reflecting planned increases in capabilities supporting the U.S. go-direct strategy and global increases in commercial spending, in part reflecting stepped-up investments advanced in the second half of 2014. EPS was $0.98 per share, up 10% on a reported basis and 18% adjusting for higher than expected currency impacts. EPS growth benefited from share repurchases advanced over the last year, which reduced average share count year-on-year by nearly 9%. In Q1, we repurchased over 859,000 shares for $134 million. We ended Q1 with $1.05 billion in debt outstanding, including $150 million of new term debt issuance funded in February. Our leverage ratios as a multiple of EBITDA adjusted to exclude transition impacts associated with the all-direct change, were 2.8 times gross and 2.0 times net of $320 million in cash and investment balances at quarter-end, in line with our long-term target range. Looking ahead, we're updating our full-year guidance today. We're adjusting our 2015 revenue guidance range to $1.60 to $1.62 billion to reflect an additional $15 million of currency headwind at current rates, and our revised outlook for 12% to 13% normalized organic revenue growth. This outlook reflects expectations for 14% to 15% normalized growth in CAG recurring diagnostic revenues. At the exchange rates shown in our press release, we now estimate that effects from the strengthening of the U.S. dollar will reduce year-on-year revenue growth by about 6% and adjusted EPS by an estimated $0.27 per share, or about $0.05 per share more than estimated at the time of our January earnings call. Please note that our 2015 profit outlook benefits from about $22 million in pre-tax foreign currency hedge gains for previously established contracts, which mitigate the 2015 profit impacts from the stronger dollar. This equates to about $0.33 per share in after-tax EPS benefit. At current rates and timing of hedge contracts, we will not have the benefit of these hedge gains in 2016. We're adjusting the 2015 EPS outlook to $4.14 to $4.24 to reflect the incremental FX impacts and the net flow-through effects of our revised organic growth outlook. On a constant currency basis, this equates to 11% to 13% growth, but above 2014 adjusted EPS levels, which included $.065 per share benefit from the extension of the R&D tax credit. With our updated outlook for FX impacts, we now expect modest year-on-year declines in full year 2015 operating margins compared to 2014 levels adjusted for transition impacts. Other elements of our FX profit outlook are basically consistent with our prior guidance, including expectations for an effective tax rate of about 30%. Please note that our 2015 tax rate outlook does not assume the further extension of the R&D tax credit. We're also updating our free cash flow outlook to 80% to 90% of net income to reflect expectations for relatively higher capital spending levels of about $100 million this year, driven in part by a capacity expansion in our labs business and in our manufacturing operations in support of business growth. For Q2, we expect reported and normalized organic revenue growth to be relatively consistent with Q1, with operating margins down 50 to 100 basis points compared to the prior year, reflecting timing of spending and FX impacts. We expect our organic revenue growth rates to improve as we work through the year, reflecting the benefit of the maturation of our expanded direct commercial organization in the U.S. and the rollout of new product introductions, including our T4 addition to our Catalyst profile and the additions of SDMA and fecal antigen to our reference lab offering in the second half. That concludes our financial review. I'll now turn the discussion over to Jon for his comments. Jonathan W. Ayers - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay, thank you, Brian. In the first quarter of the year, we achieved strong performance across broad areas of the IDEXX portfolio. We're seeing strong market validation that our Catalyst One is the global blockbuster that we had hoped. In addition, we expect that an important group of true diagnostic innovations that have been years in the making – SDMA, T4, expanded fecal antigens and a new urine analyzer – will be introduced to the market in the next 12 months. However, we also face some new competitive headwinds this quarter in the U.S. rapid assay market that has impacted us at a time when we are perfecting our new direct sales model. Our products compete favorably with these new products in terms of test accuracy and integration; however, it is proving to take time to demonstrate these differences and reach veterinary practices with this message. I'll speak more about this later. Despite these impacts in one part of our rapid assay business, we remain on track for strong normalized organic growth of 12% to 13%, including 14% to 15% CAG Diagnostics recurring revenues growth. We had – we are well-positioned for strong sustained organic growth in quarters and years ahead. So let's talk about areas of progress supporting this momentum, starting with Catalyst One. Our 35% growth in Catalyst placements globally were helped by our international operations which achieved 66% increase in Catalyst chemistry analyzer placements. Europe placements grew over 100%. We benefited from both the launch of Catalyst One in Europe and very strong commercial performance in almost every international country. In Italy, for example, we placed an incredible 81 Catalyst analyzers in three months. And we have yet to launch Catalyst One in Asia-Pacific and Latin America geographies which will take place in Q2 and Q3. Catalyst One is proving to be the winning product for all geographies globally. We now have over 1,200 Catalyst One's in the field since the launch in Q4 and the performance of this product is virtually flawless, reflecting our deep experience in instrument development. We now have a direct in-country commercial presence for our CAG business in all major international country markets. The practice, education and reach accomplished by our well-trained and medically sophisticated sales professionals is showing signs of paying off with these outstanding early results. In the North America CAG market, we completed the transition to the expanded sales structure and new territory mapping in the U.S. Note that this involved adding 50 new sales professionals as we expanded from 125 to 175 sales territories. With these territory design changes, 9,000 out of 23,000 covered customers have a different veterinary diagnostic consultant representative than they did in Q4. While we expect these new relationships will take time to mature, we still achieved excellent gains in instrument placements and consumable growth in the U.S. while we're in the early stages of our new model. We also saw 59% of our instrument placements come from competitive and greenfield accounts in Q1, very close to a record. I expect this competitive and greenfield placement level to continue to be impressive in future quarters as new and competitive customers come to appreciate that Catalyst One is cost-effective next-generation analyzer that leapfrogs their practices, medical capabilities and economic success. We also saw strong continued reference lab growth in U.S. The expanded sales team is timely and effective in discussing the benefits of our reference lab, including our recently announced reference lab innovations – SDMA and fecal antigen – topics of keen interest to veterinarians. We also note from experience that after a realignment of territories, the field sales organization deepens relationships in their new territories and the new reps that are added to the company move through the learning curve. Our sales performance thus accelerates each quarter. Our experience with our salesforce transformation that was put in place in Q3 of 2013, saw a progression of increased performance each quarter thereafter. With a strong base of performance already in Q1 of 2015 in the first quarter of the expansion in territory alignment, we fully expect this same dynamic going forward. While overall organic growth continues to be strong, we are recalibrating our growth outlook for the rapid assay modality. As Brian mentioned, certain first-generation product lines within our rapid assay diagnostic modality faced new competition in 2015 that is impacting the overall revenue growth of this modality. These first-generation IDEXX products made up of our feline retrovirus SNAPs, canine heartworm single-line analyte SNAPs and certain smaller volume single analyte canine products have a level of differentiation, be it accuracy or integration, that is more subtle and thus a greater competitive risk as we refine our new sales model. In addition, these lines are also purchased by the vast majority of veterinary practices in the U.S., including customers where these are the only IDEXX products that they buy. Thus, we require different ways of marketing and we are learning to communicate more effectively to this broad group of customers by augmenting our field sales organization with other channels such as our inside sales professionals. Nonetheless, we are now estimating that with the new guidance that Brian gave, these first-generation products in the U.S. will now contribute approximately only $50 million to our 2015 revenues or 3% of the company total. Of course, many of our customers do appreciate the superiority of these lines, including those that have adopted SNAP Pro and its productivity and integration benefits. We believe we have correctly estimated the impact of the new competition, as the assumptions in the competitor trends for the full year 2015 are somewhat greater than the competitive impact we saw in Q1, even as we continue to refine our strategies with our new direct model. The rest of our rapid assay business remains highly differentiated and showed in the first quarter the growth we expected in volumes, revenues or both. These lines are made up of our fourth-generation canine SNAP 4Dx Plus, certain unique specialty SNAPs, and of course, our businesses outside the U.S. Note that unlike the U.S., we face competitive offerings in our international markets that are similar to the competitive offerings being introduced in the U.S. this year. While this adjustment to our growth as noted – with this adjustment – we've maintained our outlook of 12% to 13% organic growth for the year driven by broad based gains in the portfolio. This growth is supported by continuing set of important product launches, in addition to Catalyst One, coming out of our investments and innovation in R&D. So let me review with you five significant new competitive offerings that are expected to come to the market in the next 12 months. First is SDMA. As I mentioned in our January call, our next generation chemistry marker, SDMA, is the most important test innovation we have brought to the veterinary profession in the history of IDEXX, as a diagnosis of chronic kidney disease earlier in the progression of this irreversible condition than traditional parameters. Early diagnosis allows for earlier treatment. The launch of SDMA in our reference labs is now underway with the results already being provided to a couple hundred customers as part of our rollout process. The automatic inclusion into the chemistry panel for IDEXX reference lab customers in North America, well over 10,000, is now scheduled for the beginning of July. SDMA is proving to be of keen interest to veterinarians and its introduction is giving our expanded sales force of 175 U.S. veterinary diagnostic consultants, as well as those that we have in Canada, virtually unlimited access to veterinarians and decision makers. Our market research shows that perhaps 20% to 25% of reference lab costumers will consider switching labs just to gain access to SDMA and the chemistry profiles. And those that don't can still send us samples for SDMA testing at a price of $19.95 per sample. SDMA will augment IDEXX's reference lab growth and indeed our overall growth of the CAG recurring diagnostic revenues through new customer acquisition, strong retention and greater utilization. Second is fecal antigen. Next week, we will complete the launch of our expanded fecal antigen panels in our North American reference labs. Our new hookworm and roundworm antigen tests will be added to our already highly differentiated whipworm antigen offering. Our unique antigen panels catch the presence of adult worms earlier in the infection cycle than current egg detection methods, enabling faster diagnosis and treatment for pets. This innovation in fecal test will also continue to drive good growth in our reference lab mortality. Third is the T4 slide on Catalyst Dx. At the end of June, we'll be launching our already highly popular T4 slide available on Catalyst One since February, to our large Catalyst Dx installed base in North America. T4 is an important test for canines and felines and is already included by customers in over 60% of the panels that are sent to the reference lab. The T4 slide can be run conveniently with the rest of the chemistry panel on the Catalyst platform, a unique capability in in-house chemistry. Fourth is our advanced software-as-a-service practice management software. Later in Q3, we'll be launching a highly innovative SaaS-based practice information management offering in North America. We've launched a similar offering in Europe in Q4 and growth since launch has exceeded our already high expectations. We will also be launching a SaaS-based digital imaging software in Q3. A SaaS-based IT ecosystem for our customers, which of course, many are already using with VetConnect PLUS, adds a profitable subscription-based revenue stream, but importantly, supports increasing diagnostic utilization, customer retention and acquisition. Fifth, is a new analyzer, a urine sediment analyzer. In early 2016, we expect to launch a urine sediment point-of-care analyzer that is an extension to the IDEXX VetLabs suite of in-house analyzers. Virtually every practice performs urinalysis manually as part of the basic workup or the minimum – what we call the minimum database of chemistry hematology and urinalysis. This instrument system introduces an entirely novel way to perform a urine sediment review with unparalleled accuracy, staff productivity and turnaround time. We estimate that we will generate between $150 million and $200 million in profitable cumulative revenue over five years after launch and that's (26:10) between instruments and consumable revenues. The availability of this novel analyzer reinforces the value of the IDEXX integrated diagnostic offering. With SDMA, fecal antigen, T4 and Catalyst, new software-as-a-service offerings in 2015 and the new analyzer in early 2016, our innovation strategy remains in high gear. Our commercial organization, both in the U.S. and internationally, is in place and growing in capability with each passing quarter. The combination of a highly differentiated diagnostics and information technology offering and a highly effective direct global commercial organization that is representing our solutions effectively to veterinary practices gives us confidence of strong organic growth for years to come in the highly attractive market for animal health. With these comments, Brian and I are now willing to open the call up for questions.