Jon Serbousek
Analyst · Jefferies
Thank you, Alexa. Welcome, everyone and thank you for joining us for our second quarter 2020 results conference call. Before getting into my prepared remarks, I’d like to introduce you to Alexa Huerta, who will be taking over as our Head of Investor Relations. Alexa has been with our finance group for over eight years, and we are excited to now have her in this role. Mark quick, who most of you have interacted with over the past, has taken a leadership role in our business development group. Mark will be transitioning IR responsibilities to Alexa over the coming quarters. On today’s call, I’ll start by discussing the impact of COVID-19 as it had on our business, after which I’ll provide an update on our second quarter performance. I will then review the progress we’ve made in each of our strategic initiatives before handing the call over to Doug, who will provide financial updates. I will close with our perspective on the business going forward, including an update on the trends we are seeing through July, before opening the line for questions. Starting with the COVID-19 update. I’d like to start by saying on behalf of everyone at Orthofix how thankful we are for the tireless work being done by everyone in the global healthcare community to address this crisis. I’d also like to thank each and every one of our employees who have executed incredibly well during this challenging times. The magnitude of this pandemic and the challenges presented for patient care created an unprecedented environment, and I’m truly proud of the resolve and adaptability of our team. With that in mind, we continue to actively monitor the situation with a focus on safely and effectively supplying our customers while taking care of their patient needs. On our last call in May, we provided you with an update on all the actions we took to keep our employees and their family safe and ensure we maintain business continuity. During the second quarter, we focused on making sure our facilities and operations were adapted to this new COVID environment and implemented new office procedures to ensure everyone feels safe in the office. As I will discuss during my later comments, I’m very proud of our proactive measures and accomplishments during this difficult time as represented by our ability to adapt operationally and execute on our strategic plan; effectively integrate FITBONE into our commercial channel. Our strategic progress toward creating a high velocity new product innovation program. The increase of safety stock for key products as a hedge against the potential supply chain disruption and successful management of cash as demonstrated by our election to repay $50 million of the $100 million advance we took in the second quarter. Now shifting to second quarter performance. Total revenue in the quarter was down 37% on a reported and constant currency basis compared to the prior year quarter. The year-over-year decrease was largely driven by a significant decline in elective procedure volumes during the quarter, which represented the majority of our procedures. To provide more insight into our performance during the second quarter, I will provide you with our monthly sales during the second quarter. Total revenue compared to the three months of the second quarter of 2019 were as follows: April was the weakest month of the quarter down approximately 60% versus the prior year month; May showed recovery and was down approximately 40% versus the prior year month; and June was the strongest month of the quarter down approximately 15% versus the prior year month. Overall, we are very encouraged by the performance that we saw during the second quarter, which has continued into July, where net sales were down less than 10% compared to the prior year month. This reflects a strong execution and nimble management in face of our uncertainty. We believe the drivers of this recovery were patients, surgeons and hospitals as they address the surgical backlog in regions that reopened for elective procedures and the execution of our sales leadership team. We are very optimistic about the long-term opportunities in the business segments in which we operate, but remain cautious about the balance of the year. We believe it is too early to predict a return to normalcy in the near term and to the unpredictable nature of our current environment, including comfort levels of patients to return to the clinics, continuing localized shutdowns, increased unemployment leading to a lack of medical coverage, and hospital capacity constraints. Now let’s turn to the performance within each of our business units. Starting with Bone Growth Therapies. Sales were down 43% versus prior year. Bone Growth Therapies was greatly impacted by COVID in the quarter, particularly in procedure volumes during April and May. We saw a rebound in June as order volumes picked up nicely compared to the prior two months. Moving to Spinal Implants. Sales were down 20% constant currency versus prior year. This category is made up of our spine fixation and motion preservation products, which are, by and large used in elective procedures. US Motion preservation sales were $3.6 million in the quarter, up significantly over the prior year and also sequentially up over the first quarter. We continue to see strong M6-C adoption trends, with June being our best month we’ve had to-date in US sales. Our sales training team was able to virtually train over 75 US surgeons on M6-C during the second quarter of 2020, a subset of which performed cases that drove approximately $1 million of revenue in the quarter. In Biologics, sales were down 34% versus prior year, primarily as a result of reduction in election procedure volumes. After a slower start in April, our procedure volumes are now right in line with our Spinal Fixation volumes. Moving on to Extremities business. Sales were down 40% on a reported basis versus the prior year, primarily as a result of the impact of COVID on procedure volumes. While certain procedures in the Extremity business are non-elective, especially the trauma procedures, a large portion is comprised of deformity correction procedures, which are elective and can be postponed. Due to this mix of procedures, we believe the segment generally follows elective procedure trends. I would like to now provide you with a brief overview of the progress we have made within each of our strategic focus areas. Starting with our first initiative, structure and leadership. During the second quarter, we completed the integration of the Biologics and Spinal Implants product categories under a single sales management team. We are excited about this reorganization. By bringing these businesses under one sales management, we believe we can better leverage the portfolio and our brand or making it easier to do business with us as a company. Additionally by establishing a unified sales structure we can support our commercial team with market-by-market strategy and decision-making. With this new structure in place and with the completing hiring of all key senior leadership roles in our Global Spine business, we are very optimistic about the future of Global Spine. Continue with our leadership focus, we are pleased in our progress for the search of a new president of Global Extremities. We’ve identified several qualified candidates and are in the process of moving toward a selection. I look forward to making this announcement in the near term. Moving to our second initiative operational execution. We have addressed the challenges associated with COVID. We continue to constantly deliver for our customers, which is a testament to our team. We are proud to say that there are no supply or manufacturing disruptions in the -- during the quarter. This was due to in part to the rapid implementation of continuity initiatives put in place at the onset of the pandemic, as well as supply chain improvement initiatives implemented during the second quarter. We strategically realigned facilities to focus on near-term demand while at the same time, replenishing inventories to allow us to meet the future product demand. While the majority of our focus has been on the short-term initiatives, our mid and long-term programs are receiving focus as well. Our third initiative is product innovation and differentiation. We made solid progress during the quarter delivering new products to the marketplace. I would like to first highlight the Firebird SI Fusion System. In June, we announced FDA clearance in the first patient implant for the Firebird SI Fusion System designed to compress and stabilize the sacroiliac or SI joint during fusion, the Firebird SI Fusion System is a 3D printed bone screw with nano service technology and currently launching in the US for treatment of SI joint dysfunction. The new system is another example of our commitment to providing innovation solutions and options that complement our growing product and procedure solutions portfolio. This is just one of our upcoming product launches slated for this year’s NASS conference in early October. While our virtual conference and setting will be a unique opportunity, we intend to use this event to launch a number of new products across the spine portfolio. Our new product innovation process and team are still developing. But as you can see, we are starting to gain traction as our entire spine team is focused on building our portfolio with innovation products and procedures. We plan to use the NASS conference to further showcase this progress. Moving on, we continue to make good early progress with FITBONE. While we are still in the process of integrating the acquisition, building inventories and gaining additional regulatory clearance in the U.S., we have quickly delivered results by adding new surgeon users and bringing on new distribution partner. As we think about building out high volume surgical solution portfolios, one area of focus is the development of a market-leading limb reconstruction and deformity correction offering. It’s not every deformity is a candidate for external fixation. We are focused on offering both internal and external correction solutions. We made early progress toward this with FITBONE and now we’re adding JuniOrtho Plating Systems, which received FDA clearance and CE marking just recently. This innovative internal fixation system is designed to address the demands of advanced deformity and trauma reconstruction of the lower extremities, specifically for pediatric patients. The JuniOrtho Plating System is complemented by a preoperative planning software that assist in implant election prior to the surgical procedure. This unique platform enables to surgeon to actually plan the osteotomy position to visualize the implant in relationship to the anatomy. This aids in the selection of the size of the device to ensure the best fit and optimal positioning for the patient’s body. The JuniOrtho software is currently available in Europe and the U.S. release is planned for later this year. The JuniOrtho Plating System represents our continued commitment to advancing pediatric orthopedics by providing surgeons the devices they need to treat even the smallest patients. A targeted launch will begin in the U.S. during the third quarter of 2020. Our fourth and final initiative is our commercial channel development. We continue to focus on adding and developing long-term strategic partners and during the quarter, we continue to expand training and product knowledge with over 1,000 surgeon representative training sessions. There were over 90 events during the second quarter of 2020 to facilitate sales training. In order to continue to support our physicians and distributor partners, we have started using remote case preparation in some instances without a change in service level. As I mentioned earlier, there were over 75 new M6 physicians trained in the quarter. We will continue to enhance and utilize our virtual training platform into the future. So in summary, we are very proud of our second quarter performance, which highlights the team’s efforts and initiatives throughout our organization, as well as the growing demand for our evolving portfolio of products in the marketplace. While COVID-19 creates a level of uncertainty and looking forward. We have work to solidify our foundation, expand our talent, execute on our strategic initiatives, build a winning culture and position Orthofix for long-term success. With that, I’ll now hand over the call to Doug for further commentary on our financial performance. Doug?