Operator
Operator
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Masimo Corporation Fourth Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. The company's press release is available at www.masimo.com. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please note today's conference is being recorded. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to your host for today, Eli Kammerman, Masimo's Vice President of Business Development and Investor Relations. Eli Kammerman - VP-Business Development & Investor Relations: Thank you. Hello, everyone. Joining me today are Chairman and CEO, Joe Kiani; and Executive Vice President of Finance and CFO, Mark de Raad. This call will contain forward-looking statements, which reflects Masimo's current judgment, including certain of our expectations regarding fiscal 2015 financial performance. However, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our projections and forecasts are discussed in detailed in our SEC filings, including our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. You will find these in the Investors section of our website. I'll now pass the call to Joe Kiani. Joe E. Kiani - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Good afternoon and thank you for joining us for Masimo's fourth quarter earnings call. We ended 2014 on a high note with strong core product revenues of nearly $154 million, higher product gross profit margins, and continued control over our operating expenses resulting in $0.40 earnings per diluted share. Specifically, our SET pulse oximetry business grew by 17% over the same quarter a year ago. Some other important highlights for our quarter are that we shipped 44,000 Masimo SET pulse oximeters and rainbow Pulse CO-Oximeters in the fourth quarter, marking the seventh consecutive quarter in which we've shipped over 40,000 drivers. As a result, our global installed base grew by 9% year-to-year. Adjusted for the impact of foreign exchange rates, international sales rose a strong 15%. And as we expected, our fourth quarter product gross margins improved again, marking the fourth quarter in a row in 2014 with sequentially higher product gross profit margins due largely to the impact of the value engineering initiatives that we initiated over the recent years. Capping our 25th year anniversary marked by breakthrough innovations, 2014 was a very fruitful year for new product launches as we introduced a variety of new groundbreaking products, including fully featured Root patient monitoring and connectivity platform with capnography, gas and brain function monitoring; Radius-7, wearable rainbow Pulse CO-Oximeter and rainbow Acoustic Monitor for ambulatory patients, O3 optical organ oximeter; iSpO2 mobile phone oximeter, MX-5 board for OEMs. We expect multiple new patient monitoring companies to introduce rainbow in 2015 with the MX-5 board, including General Electric and Philips. ORI, Oxygen Reserve Index, rainbow DCI mini-SpHb sensor for infants and small children, TFA-1 transflectance forehead single-patient adhesive sensor, Eve screening application for critical congenital heart disease, and last but not least, Patient SafetyNet version 4.5 with MyView and many other features. Needless to say, with the renewed strength in our core SET business and this type of new product introductions, the future is looking bright. In a few moments, I will provide you with an overview of our focus and overall expectations for 2015. But first, Mark will review our fourth quarter financial performance in more detail and then provide you with our 2015 financial guidance. Mark? Mark P. de Raad - Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer: Thank you, Joe. And hello, everybody. Reported total revenue and product revenue for the fourth quarter was $161.8 million and $153.9 million, respectively. Product revenue rose 14.2% or 16.8% on a constant-currency basis versus the fourth quarter of 2013. It's also noteworthy to know that this 2.6 percentage point difference represents a record $3.4 million reduction in quarterly revenues. To be clear, our constant-currency computations are based on the difference between the average current quarter FX rates and the prior-year average FX rates, applied to the current quarter local currency revenues. Also, we did benefit from one extra holiday-shortened week in the fiscal fourth quarter. However, even without that extra week, we estimate that our comparable 13-week revenues were up about 11%, marking the second sequential quarter in which our year-over-year quarterly revenue growth has exceeded 10%. Q4 2014 rainbow product revenue totaled $14.1 million, down by 4% from $14.8 million in the prior-year period. The lower year-over-year rainbow revenues were due partly to the difficult prior-year comparison related to a large $2.2 million order in the prior-year period. Without that order, our year-over-year total rainbow revenues would have been up 12%. Encouragingly, our SpHb revenues rose 12% to $3.7 million, reflecting the continued progress within this important rainbow category. Still, our total Q4 rainbow revenues were clearly below our own expectations and, based on this, in a few moments, Joe will provide some additional comments on this part of our business. In the quarter, approximately 39% of total rainbow revenues were consumables, down from 47% a year ago as the year-ago large OUS rainbow order included a large amount of disposable sensor revenue. Our worldwide end-user or direct business, which includes sales through just-in-time distributors grew 13.6% in the fourth quarter to $132.2 million versus $116.3 million in the year-ago period. Our direct business represented 86% of total product revenue in the quarter, level with the prior-year period. Our OEM sales comprised the remaining 14% and rose by 14% versus the prior-year period. By geography, total U.S. product revenue increased 17.9% to $105.3 million compared to $89.3 million in the same quarter of 2013. We estimate that the extra holiday-shortened week added approximately $4 million in additional Q4 2014 U.S. product revenues. The remaining $12 million increase was due we believe to the impact of the first year-over-year increase in hospital admissions in over a year and most likely this year's early and very severe flu season. Our OUS product revenues of $48.6 million rose 7.1% in the fourth quarter of 2014 or 14.7% on a constant currency basis versus $45.4 million in the same period last year. The increase was due primarily to strong growth in Europe and Canada. International revenues represented approximately 32% of total product revenue or 33% on a constant currency basis compared to 34% a year ago. As Joe mentioned, our fourth quarter 2014 product gross profit margin rose to 65.8%, including a 40 basis point reduction due to the impact of foreign exchange rates compared to 61.5% in the year-ago period. This improvement is due primarily to our ongoing value engineering programs and also due to a more disciplined cost of ownership based pricing strategy and hence more stable pricing. Additionally, the significantly higher sequential product margin revenues allowed us to also benefit by leveraging the fixed cost portion of our manufacturing infrastructure. Our fourth quarter total gross profit margin including royalties was 67.5%, a notable improvement versus the 63.6% margin we posted in the year-ago period. Reported fourth quarter 2014 total operating expenses were $76.5 million, a 1.8% decrease from $77.9 million in the year-ago quarter. However, recall that we incurred an $8 million legal and related charge in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013. Without this charge, our year-over-year operating expenses rose $6.6 million or approximately 10%. This increase was due primarily to higher employee and employee-related costs, legal and marketing-related expenses, partially offset by approximately $1.3 million in lower OUS expenses due to the impact of foreign exchange rates. Our selling, general and administrative expenses were $61.5 million, up 10% from $55.9 million in the prior year period for the reasons previously mentioned while R&D spending of $15 million rose by 7.8% from $13.9 million as increased spending on product development and clinical studies rebounded, as we expected from lower levels earlier in 2014. Fourth quarter 2014 operating income was $32.6 million compared to $12.7 million in the prior year period or $20.7 million adjusting for the $8 million prior year fourth quarter legal charge. The increase in operating income was attributable to the combined effects of higher sales growth, improved product gross margins and lower operating expense growth. Q4 2014 non-operating expense was $1.4 million compared to $751,000 in the prior year period. These expenses relate primarily to the negative translation impact of movements in foreign exchange rates but also included approximately $300,000 in net interest expense associated with our line of credit borrowings. Our fourth quarter 2014 effective tax rate rose to 30.2% up from 22.8% in the same period last year and higher than our previous projections of 25% to 26%. The higher than expected Q4 tax rate was due to a combination of factors, including the benefit of the R&D tax credit offset by the unfavorable impact of the Q4 exchange rates on the mix of our U.S. versus OUS income, as well as other cumulative year-to-date tax adjustments also impacting the mix of our U.S. versus OUS income. Conversely, the lower prior year tax rate was due to the impact of the 2013 fourth quarter legal accrual, which again shifted our mix of U.S. and OUS operating income. Our average shares outstanding for Q4 was 53.1 million, a decline from 58.1 million in Q1, 2014 due primarily to our repurchases of approximately 4.5 million shares during 2014, primarily in fiscal Q2 and Q3. Fourth quarter 2014 net income was $21.2 million, or $0.40 per diluted share compared to $9.3 million or $0.16 per diluted share in the same prior year period, or compared to $0.31 if you exclude the $0.15 Q4 2013 special charge. It is also noteworthy that the net impact of foreign currency transactional and translation adjustments reduced our reported 2014 Q4 earnings per diluted share by $0.04. We are encouraged that for the second quarter in a row, we've been able to deliver financial results that demonstrate the inherent leverage within our business model and provide us with confidence as we enter 2015. In the interests of time, I'm going to defer a summary review of our year-to-date financial results but I'll direct you to today's press release and the Form 10-K which will be filed later today for more information on our full fiscal year 2014 financial results. As of January 3, 2015 our days sales outstanding was 45 compared to 52 as of December 28, 2013. Over the same period, our inventory turns declined from 3.7 to 2.8. The decline in our inventory turns over the past year has been directly related to our goal of increasing selected inventory levels to ensure that we can meet our higher customer demand and improve our disaster recovery plan. Total cash and cash equivalents as of January 3, 2015 were $134.5 million compared to $95.5 million as of December 28, 2013. The increase in fiscal year 2014 cash is the result of net cash generated from operations and $125 million drawdown on our credit line, partially offset by the acquisition and ongoing construction of our new corporate headquarters for approximately $56 million, as well as $102.5 million for stock repurchases throughout 2014. Now I'd like to turn to our 2015 financial guidance, which is based on the best information we have available to us. In addition, because of the recent significant volatility in the foreign exchange rates markets and the impact of those rates on our 2015 GAAP financial guidance, we are going to highlight the impact of the FX assumptions on that guidance. We are providing this information because we believe it is important to be able to understand the key improvements that are occurring within the business that unfortunately are likely to be hidden due to the impact of the recent severe foreign exchange rate volatility. Our total fiscal 2015 GAAP revenue guidance is approximately $605 million including approximately $577 million in product revenues and $28 million in royalty revenues. Included in the $577 million product revenue is a reduction of an estimated $20 million due to the expected negative impact of foreign exchange rate movements. Our projected 2015 foreign exchange rates are based on the lowest exchange rate of the major currencies versus the U.S. dollar in the last 60 days. For example, included in these assumptions are euro foreign exchange rate of $1.12, a British pound exchange rate of $1.50 and a U.S. to yen exchange rate of $1.21. The $577 million in GAAP product revenue guidance represents a year-over-year increase of 3.6%. Importantly though, without the impact of FX, our fiscal 2015 product revenues would have been $597 million representing a 7.2% annual product revenue increase. And also, just as we benefited from an extra holiday-shortened week in Q4 of 2014, we will have one less week in fiscal 2015. We estimate that the impact of this calendar change which has already been reduced in the previous growth rates that I mentioned, accounted for approximately 100 basis point reduction. We expect 2015 GAAP revenues for rainbow to be approximately $57 million including a $3 million reduction due to the impact of foreign exchange rates. Without the impact of foreign exchange rates, our projected $60 million rainbow guidance represents an approximate 15% growth rate. We expect our GAAP 2015 product gross profit margins to be approximately 65% including a 50 basis point reduction due to the impact of foreign exchange rates. As in prior years, we expect product margins to be slightly below this average in the first half of the year and higher in the second half of the year. We expect our 2015 total operating expenses including approximately $7 million for the medical device tax to be approximately $306 million reflecting a modest increase of 3% over our FY 2014 operating expenses of $297 million which are adjusted for the $10 million credit resulting from the legal award reversal in 2014. The $306 million in projected 2015 GAAP operating expenses includes a reduction of approximately $6 million due to the impact of foreign exchange rates. Without the impact of foreign exchange rates, our constant-currency operating expenses would be up approximately 5%. Based on current foreign exchange rate assumptions, we expect our effective tax rate to be approximately 27% to 29%, and we expect our annual interest expense to be approximately $2.5 million, based on the assumption that we will continue to borrow approximately $125 million throughout 2015. We are projecting average weighted outstanding shares for the year to be approximately 54 million. Based on all these assumptions, we expect our 2015 GAAP earnings per share to be approximately $1.30, including $0.15 per share reduction due to the impact of foreign exchange rates. Also, recall that our 2014 $1.30 earnings per share included a $0.09 gain related to the Q1 2014 legal accrual reversal. So, excluding this legal expense reversal, our 2015 GAAP EPS guidance of $1.30 is up 7.8% from 2014. Excluding the same 2014 legal accrual reversal and the estimated $0.15 negative impact of foreign exchange rates in 2015, we would have seen an approximate 20% increase in earnings per share in 2015 over 2014. Unfortunately, as you can see, the extreme FX movements have made it more difficult to see the underlying growing strength in our business and the leverage that we believe our business can generate. Therefore, as we go through fiscal 2015 we expect to continue to present both our GAAP results as well as highlighting the impact of these foreign exchange rates on those results. In addition, as a result of foreign exchange rates on our 2015 financial results, we are also evaluating other non-GAAP reporting structures that will more accurately reflect our core financial operating results. And with that, I'll turn the call back to Joe. Joe E. Kiani - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Mark. We have many reasons to be optimistic about our outlook, the first of which is the confidence we have in our ability to realize accelerating growth in our earnings. As Mark mentioned, our expectations for an expanding gross margin coupled with strong discipline for controlling operating expense growth will, we believe, will continue to produce visible leverage, which should be rewarding to our shareholders. Our 2015 guidance reflects these expectations which are clearly illustrated when currency effects are taken out. Our core SET business is performing well and we expect this performance to persist as we continue to win market share. Improvements in U.S. hospital census trends now materializing also provide us with a positive view for greater utilization of our large install base. We believe that our prior multi-year investment in our OUS business sales, clinical and infrastructure, will allow us to continue to see strong above market growth in many international locations, including Europe, Latin America, India and the Middle East. We are seeing evidence that our longstanding investment in our rainbow technologies, including SpHb and SpCO support a more positive outlook for rainbow that our Q4 results seem to indicate. Our sales pipeline of probable new deployments for SpHb has expanded significantly and our ability to secure new hospital is rising with each successful deployment. As I have said in the past, although we don't know when the inflection point will occur, we do know that our SpHb list of interested hospitals is increasing. In fact, we are seeing rising visibility for our continuous non-invasive hemoglobin monitoring technology with the recent journal publications of two clinical trials that showed clear value for this parameter. Acknowledgement of the value of SpHb led to our first large scale deployment at Allegheny Health System, which encompasses all of Masimo's FDA-cleared monitoring solutions across an entire health system including continuous non-invasive hemoglobin monitoring in concert with Pleth Variability Index, SedLine brain function monitoring, Masimo SET pulse oximetry, Masimo capnography and Patient SafetyNet. We believe that Allegheny Health System is the first of many world-class health systems that are beginning to recognize how Masimo's full suite of innovative solutions can help hospitals address their patient care and financial challenges while improving patient safety and outcomes. It is significant that eight additional thought-leading institutions within and outside the U.S. have made the clinical decision to broadly deploy continuous non-invasive hemoglobin monitoring in concert with PVI and as such have submitted their requests for the capital budget to purchase licenses for SpHb and PVI. An increasing number of hospitals have now made the clinical decision to broadly deploy SpHb across multiple departments and although the capital budget approval process takes longer than we would like, we are happy to see an increasing number of hospitals moving forward with their budget approval process every quarter. Another positive development for rainbow includes the recent updated Fire Rehabilitation Standard, NFPA 1584 from the National Fire Protection Association that now requires firefighters exposed to smoke at incident scenes and during training to be assessed for carbon monoxide poisoning. The previous version of the standard issued in 2008 did not include a formal requirement for the assessment of CO poisoning. We believe our rainbow SET technology provides the only non-invasive measure of carbon monoxide in the blood and also provides two other vital signs measurements required by the NFPA 1584 standard: oxygen saturation and pulse rate. With the support of Congressional Fire Services Institute and other organizations, Masimo will expand its efforts to help departments and agencies nationwide implement the new standard. When additional major OEMs begin the introduction of their new monitoring platforms that include rainbow functionality which we anticipate through 2015, rainbow opportunities should continue to grow. Rainbow or SET, we intend to deliver on our 10-year plan which was initiated seven years ago from SvO2 to ORI, SpHb to PVI, SpCO to SpMet, Root to Patient SafetyNet, MightySat to iSpO2, RAM to Capnography, SedLine to O3, value engineering and a couple of more innovations we're working on that have the chance to not only further reduce our costs but to enhance our product offering. We intend to make 2015, 2016 and 2017 not only the best years for our customers and the patients they serve but the years our long-term shareholders have been waiting for. With that, we'll open the call to questions. Operator?