Earnings Labs

IRIDEX Corporation (IRIX)

Q2 2021 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 12, 2021

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the IRIDEX Q2 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Hunter Cabi, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Hunter Cabi

Analyst

Thank you, and thank you all for participating in today’s call. Joining me are Dave Bruce, Chief Executive Officer and Fuad Ahmad, Interim Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, IRIDEX released financial results for the quarter ended July 03, 2021. A copy of the press release is available on the company's website. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws, which are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical facts, including but not limited to statements concerning our strategic goals and priorities, product development matters, sales trends and markets in which we operate. All forward-looking statements are based upon our current estimates and various assumptions. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated or implied by these forward-looking statements. Accordingly, you should not place reliance on these statements. For a discussion of the risks and uncertainties associated with our business, please see our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filings with the SEC. IRIDEX disclaims any intention or obligation, except as required by law, to update or revise any financial projections or forward-looking statements whether because of new information, future events or otherwise. This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast today, August 12, 2021. And with that, I will turn the call over to Dave.

Dave Bruce

Analyst

Good afternoon and thank you all for joining us. As we announced a very strong quarter for IRIDEX, I can't help remembering that entering last year's second quarter COVID had plunged our company into shocking changes to our market environment. And as a result, we took steps to ensure the security of our business. These included implementing significant cost controls and cash preservation measures to extend our operating runway. And today our cash is about two and a half times what it was then. And we have significantly improved cost structure allowing us to invest for growth. In addition, we prioritize re-engaging with our significant installed base while expanding awareness of the benefits of our non-incisional MicroPulse Transscleral Laser Therapy procedure for new customers. A year later, our installed base exceeds 2000 systems and glaucoma probe sales reached record quarterly levels. And lastly, we continued to pursue initiatives that would deepen our market penetration and improve gross margins. Today we are seeing an investment in expanding the U.S. sales and marketing team beginning to show results. In addition, we're achieving efficiencies in manufacturing costs, overhead absorption on higher sales, and an increasing percentage of our revenue from higher margin disposables, which helped to improve gross margins to over 45% this quarter. An integration of the PASCAL product line acquired earlier this year from our collaboration with Topcon is going smoothly. Overall we meaningfully strengthened and positioned our company for long-term growth. Turning now specifically to second quarter results. Revenue was $13.4 million, 116% year-over-year increase and a record high going all the way back since 2007 when IRIDEX was a very different company. We also saw significant growth in our glaucoma business, including a new record 16,000 Cyclo G6 probes sold. Our retina business had a robust return on sales,…

Fuad Ahmad

Analyst

Thank you, Dave, and good afternoon, everyone. I will now summarize our financial performance for the second quarter of fiscal 2021. Starting with revenue. Total revenue for the second quarter of fiscal '21 was $13.4 million, up 116% from $6.2 million in the second quarter of last year, and up 12% sequentially. Revenue from our glaucoma product family in the second quarter of fiscal '21 was $3.6 million, up 70% compared to the second quarter of fiscal '20, and up 7% sequentially. We sold 16,000 G6 probes in the quarter, up 103% from the same period last year, and 18% above the first quarter of fiscal '21. As was the case in the first quarter, we again saw strong year-over-year growth in OUS, up over 126%. We sold 47 Cyclo G6 systems in the second quarter of '21, compared to 42 in the prior year period. Our retina product line revenue improved significantly in the second quarter of fiscal '21, posting a 190% increase compared to the same period last year. Our results for the second quarter of fiscal '21 included $2.1 million of revenue from PASCAL product line acquired from Topcon. However, even adjusting for the PASCAL revenue, year-over-year growth was approximately 108%. Other revenue which includes royalty services and other legacy products and revenues related to exclusive distribution rights were approximately $2.3 million in the second quarter of fiscal '21, up 50%, compared to the prior period. The growth is due to higher service revenue and increased field activity inclusion of additional services revenue from the PASCAL product line and recognition of distribution rights revenue from the Topcon transaction. Gross margins in the second quarter fiscal '21 increased 680 basis points to 45.5% compared to the second quarter of fiscal '20. The gross margin improvement is attributed primarily…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Jon Block from Stifel. Your line is now open.

Jonathan Block

Analyst

Great. Thanks, guys, and good afternoon. Maybe I'll start just a really strong probe number, you took up the guidance for probes for the year. Maybe give some more commentary, in other words, is it broad base in the accounts, is that a reflection of the bifurcated sales rep approach that I believe you recently implemented? Is it a steeper adoption curve and some of the accounts that adopted the new probe? Just a little bit more color on the nice step up in probe utilization, please?

Dave Bruce

Analyst

Sure. Hi, Jon. The strongest component was growth in international probe usage. And it had been delayed from in the third and fourth quarter last year when the U.S. was rebounding strongly. And it really started coming on in the first and second quarters of this year. So that's the most significant piece, and a broader set of units installed in the first half of the year has increased that - the site placements and therefore broader set of people using. In the U.S., it's still growing at - not at the same rate as internationally and we have expanded the team, but they're coming up to speed on the expanded territories. And so, we haven't seen as big an impact in growth. But again compared to where we were third and fourth quarter last year and got the search domestically, we're comfortable with that growth and we continue to reach out to all of the potential opportunities, including moving existing users toward more moderate stage patients and broadening the pool of applicable patients as well as additional users in those sites where we may have one or two. But there are numerous additional people who could come on board, as well as new site placements. So our focus is really on driving adoption and utilization and secondarily pursuing new sites.

Jonathan Block

Analyst

Okay, got it. That was very helpful and then maybe just a follow-up to that. You guys reporting maybe a week or two later than some others and I mean everything is evolving and changing with COVID unfortunately in the Delta variant. Is there anything to call out a recent trends that you're seeing in some hotspots that I think might also be some pretty big glaucoma ask markets like a Florida or a Texas? I'm just curious if you're seeing any pullback in some of those hotspots due to Delta that may have started to take hold over the past two to three weeks.

Dave Bruce

Analyst

It's probably too short a timeframe to see any results in revenue. But we are anecdotally hearing a lot of the old COVID restrictions on access from our reps, for our reps and supporting cases, visiting the offices, all of those restrictions in numerous markets are coming back. And so, our teams are - as focused as ever on communicating. And it may have some impact. It may flatten things a bit as you look forward, but we don't see it as a major headwind. The ability to have either a phone or Zoom conversations still exists. And so, we'll just manage through it, but we are seeing - as is in the general news, we're seeing restrictions that at the margin will affect our abilities. However, we're still scheduling cases, live cases and support, as well as education sessions in the practices and those kinds of things, just with, I would say, increased restrictions on the requirements for the reps to show up.

Jonathan Block

Analyst

Got it. And last one for me. Well, I'll make it two parts, one for Faud. Even in light of some of the challenges that Dave called out, you're still increasing guidance. But do we take some of those headwinds into account and think about anything on the cadence? In other words, is the seasonality - when we think about the back part of the year, is the seasonality in 3Q more pronounced relative to what we've experienced in past years? And then, Dave, maybe just to conclude, the Topcon training, I think you've called it out, you mentioned good progress there. Is it complete? Is there anything to do - anything more to do from a training perspective of their sales force for your products? Thanks, guys.

Fuad Ahmad

Analyst

In terms of the seasonality, I think, if you look at the experience Q3 has - is typically the low right period, the Europe shuts down for some period of time. So, I think, we're seeing the same level of seasonality and Q4 still expected to be the strongest quarter of the year. So I think that we're still comfortable with that cadence holding out for the year.

Dave Bruce

Analyst

And then on the training side, well, first of all, the training has never done. But going through the first phase where the new sales teams are adapting are going to be selling IRIDEX products, for example. We did it in two stages. We did kind of a global training session that is loaded on Topcon's - what's called Topcon University, and that's their general training tool. And then we went country by country with our team engaging with the local team to work on IRIDEX products both the retina side and then the glaucoma side to be sure that they had the detail of how we go about pursuing, for example, glaucoma opportunities and taking people through validation processes and those kinds of things to drive adoption. We expected to continue and our focus and our requirement is that we do as much as is needed to try to make it seamless and it just continues on. And there's kind of a minimal coming up to speed period.

Jonathan Block

Analyst

Perfect. Thanks for your time, guys.

Fuad Ahmad

Analyst

Thank you.

Dave Bruce

Analyst

Thanks, Jeff.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time, I'm showing no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to David Bruce for closing remarks.

Dave Bruce

Analyst

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for attending the call. We're very pleased with our performance this quarter and we're going to stay focused on our growth trajectory and execution. So thanks, everyone.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thanks for participating. You may now disconnect.