Amir Aghdaei
Analyst · Evercore ISI. Your line is now open
Thank you, Stephen. Good afternoon, and welcome to Envista's third quarter 2022 earnings call. Today, we are pleased to announce that despite a challenging macro environment in this team, has once again delivered a strong quarter with mid-single-digit core growth and over 20% adjusted EBITDA margins. Our culture shift around customer centricity, innovation, respect continuous improvement and leadership, coupled within Envista Business System, EBS, is what drives our performance and allows us to deliver on our long-term objectives of accelerating growth expanding operating margins and transforming our portfolio. Our strategic differentiation, a proven track record of execution gives us confidence that we can continue to deliver balance of accelerating growth and expanding margins. Before I turn it over to Howard to discuss third quarter results in more detail, I want to take this opportunity to reiterate our long-term vision, provide some insight on core end market conditions and offer a quick update on the progress towards our strategic priorities. I will also provide a brief update on how we are embedding sustainable environmental, social and governance, ESG principles into our strategy. At Envista, our focus is to partner with dental professionals to improve quality of life by digitizing, personalizing and demarketizing oral care. We continue to engage with our customers to learn, educate and lead the dental community. On September 7, we hosted over 1,200 dental professionals in Vienna, Austria at the sold out Envista Summit. This European event was a great opportunity to articulate our vision for the future of the dentistry while highlighting the combined strength and the scare of the investor portfolio. We provided high-impact training in orthodontics, implantology and digital workflows and introduce clinicians to the latest advancement in dental care that it transformed dentistry over the coming decade. The feedback from the event was very positive and highlighted the long-term opportunities in the dental market, the importance of our unique and individualized solutions, the desire for premium training and education and the opportunity for Envista to lead and shape the future of dentistry. While private and group practices and DSOs remain excited about the promising outlook for dental, there is no doubt that the impact of inflation and potential for an economic slowdown coupled with the various geopolitical risks around the world, including the contract in Ukraine continues to be heavy on clinicians' minds. While patient traffic remains robust and is scheduled for specialty procedures, including implants, remain food, doctors are more cautious and thoughtful about their investments. Having said that, both private group practices and DSOs continue to invest in expanding their specialty treatments and are looking for ways to enhance their capabilities, improve their workflows and digitize their offices. We see opportunities to improve the efficiency and predictability of their treatments. While we expect there to be some continued uncertainty in the market over the short term, we remain confident that dental market is resilient and has ample room for continuous improvement and growth over the long term. Turning to our Q3 progress. Our orthodontic business continues to deliver strong results. Spark delivered greater than 100% year-over-year revenue growth while also driving double-digit quarter-over-quarter growth in the number of active Spark doctors. We recently announced the launch of Smart Clear Aligners Release 13, which features differentiated integrated hooks the CBCT true root feature and real-time approval in the Spark approved software. All of the innovation aimed at further enhancing treatment planning while continuing to build a sustainable competitive advantage for Spark. In addition to Spark, our traditional Brand wire business and also growing and outgrowing the market delivering mid-single-digit growth globally. We continue to gain traction with our new Damon Altima system that provides Orthodontics more control for faster and more precise finishing. Our solution for implant-based tooth replacements grew mid-single digits in the quarter as we continue to improve our commercial execution and accelerate sales of our premium implants and regenerative solutions. We remain focused on delivering margin expansion while investing in our long-term growth initiatives. In Q3 2020, we achieved an adjusted EBITDA margin of 20.2%. This represents a 60 basis point of our margin improvement versus Q3 2021. In the quarter, we delivered 40 basis points of adjusted gross margin improvement driven by productivity improvements and 160 basis points of net pricing offset by meaningful inflation. We also took steps to strengthen our supply chain and add more flexibility across our businesses. In the spread of continuous improvement, we focus on streamlining our organization to both protect and expand margins while speeding up decision making. As we move forward throughout the balance of the year and into 2023 we will intensify efforts to further optimize our organizational structure to improve the customer experience while creating more flexibility to deal with uncertainties in the macro environment. The transformation of our portfolio continues as we emphasize our most differentiated solutions by making additional investments to our fast-growing specialty businesses and continue to add to our digital capabilities. In our traditional imaging business, we have made a strategic decision to focus on key geographies where we have a sustainable competitive advantage. This allows us to reduce structural costs while further optimizing our portfolio, leading to both accelerating growth and improving margins over the long term. In the third quarter, we took steps to set this business up for lasting growth. We have now fully rebranded the intraoral scanner to DEXIS and are expanding our customer reach and optimizing our global distribution. DEXIS portfolio offers a full range of intraoral scanners that are coupled with a powerful and intuitive software solution that enables accurate digital impressions, improve scanning procedures and speeds and flexible workflows. While the DEXIS is a scanner, a software and configured as an open and a stand-alone system, they also now work closely with our DTX Studio clinic software, providing clinicians the opportunity to bring all X-ray images, photos, 2D, 3D and extra oral and intraoral imaging formats into one clear comprehensive view, thus simplifying the diagnostics, workflows and increasing confidence in interaction with patients. CTX Studio Clinic includes assisted intelligence features like Smart Fusion, which automatically aligns the digital surface models from the DEXIS intraoral scanner with any CBCT scan and is a unique and powerful tool for efficient implant planning. We're honored that DEXIS DTX Studio software suite, which includes DTX Studio clinic has been awarded the Celeron best-of-class technology award for the second consecutive year selected by a distinguished panel of dental technology expert, Celeron award winners are recognized for groundbreaking technology that expands possibilities for the world of dentistry. In addition to our focus on digital workflows, we continue to expand our capabilities in implant-based tooth replacements. As previously announced, because the acquisition of Osteogenics' BioMedical, a U.S.-based manufacturer of regenerative solution in early Q3. Bone regenerative therapies are increasingly an important part of an implant-based tooth replacement procedure. By providing clinicians with the best-in-class solutions, we can better support them and delivering the best possible patient care while also capturing more value from each implant procedure. This business is off to a strong start. Within Envista, we are excited about it's ability to create lasting value for patients, clinicians and our shareholders. As we make progress in our journey to digitize, personalize and democratized Intercare, it's important to also keep sustainability initiatives top of mind. To that end, I'm proud of our recently released sustainability report. This report continues an all-time our progress in embedding environmental, social and governance principles in our strategic approach. While we are still relatively new as an independent company, we have made solid progress in quantifying our environmental footprint, addressing climate-related risks and opportunities and fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace for our employees. Some of our progress includes achieving 99% gender ethnic equity in the United States, ensuring an efficient and stable supply chain through proactive supplier management that reflects our values and support business continuity. Incorporating the task force and climate-related financial disclosures recommendation, identifying relevant climate related risk and opportunities and integrating oversight into our existing enterprise risk management processes, analyzing eight environmental metrics, including the Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption and waste generation. By investing in our ability to offer it sustainably, we intend to secure the success of our communities, employees, customers and shareholders. We're building upon the ESG initiatives that we have undertaken as a new newly public company. I'm pleased with our achievements today, and I look forward to further progress in our journey to partner with dental professionals to digitize, personalize and democratize dental care. I will now turn the call over to Howard to go through our third quarter financials and provide more details on our segment performance.