Matthew M. Mannelly
Analyst · William Blair
Good morning. Thank you, Dean. And thank you, all, for joining us this morning since I know this is a very busy earnings week. Joining me also this morning, as Dean said, is Ron Lombardi, our CFO. Ron and I will take you through the presentation that's on our website. I will start out and provide some of the highlights of the first quarter, then I'll spend a little bit of time talking about Care Pharma, our recent acquisition, then Ron will walk you through the financials and I'll come back and wrap it up with a few comments and we'll then take some questions. So with that, if you'll turn to Slide 4. Slide 4 is a reminder. This is from our first ever Investor Day that we held at the end of May. And as we stated at the meeting, our long-term goal is to build Prestige into the best midsized public company in the consumer health care market. We think we can do this by focusing our efforts on delivering shareholder value through the long-term growth of sales, profits and cash flow. As we've said, we believe we can do this by creating innovative products against specific consumer needs and engaging in real partnerships with our retailers as well as our suppliers; and finally, by providing an environment or a culture that our people can thrive in. And with that, if you'd move to Slide 6. This slide also was highlighted that our Investor Day. And I think it's really a critical slide for us moving forward. And we talked about our proven formula for how we deliver continued EPS growth to our shareholders, and then talked about the combination that core OTC and free cash flow play in delivering solid EPS over time. And you can see that we delivered a strong 14.3% EPS growth in the first quarter. In addition, it highlights the third key prong of our long-term strategy and that's our proven and repeatable M&A strategy. And like I said, while this is a long-term strategy, we're pleased to announce, a few weeks ago, an exciting acquisition for Prestige, a terrific company called Care Pharma in Australia, which I'll speak a little bit more about a little bit later. So if you'll turn to Slide 7. In terms of the first quarter highlights, before Ron goes into the numbers, I would highlight the following. I think we had a very strong quarter, delivering over 14% growth of EPS in a very tough retail environment. $143 million in revenue is down 1.9%, excluding the sale of Phazyme. This is as a result primarily of the competitive returns to the marketplace, which we indicated at the start of the year was going to be a challenge we'd face in FY '14. We continue to make progress on the gross margin front, achieving a record 58.4% gross margin, and cash flow from operations was nearly $25 million. From an M&A standpoint, we're very pleased with our first international acquisition because it's such a good fit. And more importantly, it opens up possibilities for the future for us and I'll talk more about that a little later. And finally, from a brand building standpoint, we continue to invest in our core OTC for the long term. We're getting growth in '14 where we expected and we're seeing the anticipated declines due to the return to the marketplace of competitive brands as we expected as well. The first quarter marked 3 very important key new product introductions as well as a major new ad campaign for 1 of our key brands. If you'll move to Slide 8, you'll see that our core OTC portfolio, excluding the impact of pediatrics and the return of Tylenol and Motrin, as well as our GI category, where we shifted merchandising programs for Dramamine and moved advertising support for Beano to the beginning of the second quarter, the core OTC portfolio was up 4.5%. If you include these 2 categories, our core OTC was down 1.2% for the quarter. From a consumption standpoint, the patterns were similar, with the core OTC brands outperforming the category 3.6% to 3.1% ex-pediatrics and GI. And if you include it, we are up 8/10 of a point, with the category being up 3.1%. On to Slide 9, you can see that we had a very busy quarter from a new product standpoint, with 3 key new introductions in analgesics and GI that we talked about at our Investor Day. If you move to Slide 10, the first one, Goody's Headache Relief Shot we're really excited about because this is a very innovative new idea and form that we're bringing to the marketplace. And in our new TV ad campaign, which just broke last week, we talked about the fact that in sports, speed is everything. And in headache relief, speed is the only thing. And we believe Goody's is going to deliver on this in a convenient great tasting way. Slide 11, BC Cherry builds on a great franchise by adding the popular new flavor cherry and bringing it to the consumer in an innovative form, in terms of the new stick pack delivery system. As many of you know, BC and Goody's is very big in the South. You may also know that we signed a sponsorship agreement with the SEC. So as we roll into football season in the fall, we expect this -- that this -- we're very confident that this new flavor is going to bring fast relief to many football fans in the South and be quite successful there. Moving to Slide 12. Finally, from a new product standpoint, we introduced Fiber Choice Fruity Bites in the first quarter to promote better GI health. And one of the reasons we're particularly excited about this introduction is that in the product testing phase, it was ranked #1 in taste over the competition. So we're quite optimistic about the potential of this new item as well. Moving on to Slide 13. From a marketing standpoint, we're very excited. We introduced a major new ad campaign last month featuring Vanessa Williams to deliver our healthy eyes message and we believe no one has better eyes to deliver that message than Vanessa Williams. Moving on to Slide 14, I'll spend a few minutes and I'll talk about the Care acquisition and tell you why we're excited about this and what we think the potential holds in the future. So if you move to Slide 15, just a little bit about Care Pharma for those of you that don't know much about it, since it's an Australian company. It's a great OTC company that's headquartered in Sydney, does approximately $20 million in Australian dollars. And has a very similar heritage to Prestige in that its management team really prides itself on developing new products to meet consumer needs and providing professional and consumer and marketing support to build the business long term, and they've been very successful at that over the last 10 to 15 years. It's made up of 35 employees, which includes a 17-person sales force to serve the retail marketplace. The customer base in Australia is different in that it's made up primarily of 5,000 independent pharmacies. However, Care Pharma's business model is very similar to ours in that they outsource manufacturing, so it's an asset-light model, which allows them to focus on their core competencies, which is sales, marketing and new product development, which again, is very similar to Prestige. If you move to Slide 16, this is a chart that should look familiar to you because it's very similar to many of our core brands in the U.S. in that they're market leaders in niche categories. So just to pick out a couple, the Fess brand; Fess is a line of saline nasal products and it's the #1 selling brand for nasal congestion, from flu -- from colds, flu, allergies or hay fever. And the tag line for Fess is, 'Fess beats colds and flu by a nose.' And all the products are non-medicated and target the different causes of nasal congestion. There's also a Fess product designed for travelers to help improve comfort during air travel and Fess for children. And from a children standpoint, Care is also very well-known for their line of pediatric OTC products. In addition to Fess, they market 3 little products, Little Eyes, Little Noses and Little Coughs. Coincidentally, none of these are related to our Little Remedies line, but we think there's great potential and synergies as a result of that. Little Eyes is the #1 eye wipe brand for kids and these are sterilized cleansing wipes to remove the secretion children get when they are sick. Little Coughs can be used in children as young as 6. And non-medicated Little Noses products help babies breathe easier when they have colds. Moving on to the next slide. From a strategic rational standpoint, these are some of the reasons why we believe this is such a great fit with Prestige. First of all, it gives us -- establishes a true local presence in Australia and New Zealand. You've also heard us talk quite a bit in the past about building platforms. This allows us to strengthen our platforms in cough, colds, eye, ear care and pediatrics. It also allows for consolidation of our Murine business into Care Pharma giving us direct control of that brand in the region. And even though we didn't announce the specific details, the financial profile and transaction economics were very attractive and very similar to our previous acquisitions. And finally, something I think that is very important to us is that, over time, this really is going to help serve as a regional platform to help deliver organic growth as well as acquisitions. So if you turn to Slide 18, to give you a little idea in terms of the road ahead, very similar to our other acquisitions. We have a very methodical plan in terms of how we integrate our acquisitions into the company. John Parkinson, our SVP of International and Malcolm Yesner, the CEO of Care Pharmaceutical are working off a very detailed and a very thorough 100-day plan as we speak right now, first 100-day plan. In terms of where we're going, as you can see here, step 1 in the acquisition, first and foremost, this is a very profitable and a great stand-alone OTC business for us, so it doesn't distract from the rest of our businesses. The management team there is very strong and proven in terms of their ability to do both build brand and M&A, similar to the competencies that we have at Prestige. In terms of the integration, this really gives us a hub in Asia Pacific for some of our aspirations there. It also allows us to leverage our supplier base to access technologies and expand our product offerings across the region as well. In terms of regional expansion, we'll be able to leverage Prestige's current distributor network to do that. We also are very excited from a product development standpoint in terms of some of the things they're doing and we'll be able to create not only a regional center of excellence for new product development there, but cross-fertilize with our U.S. new product development process as well. And then, as I said, finally, and most importantly, this is going to be an opportunity for us to actively pursue acquisitions and opportunities in this region. You can see on Slide 19 how our International business has methodically grown over time. First of all, with the acquisition of the GSK brand in North America last year, you can see how much more important International became. Now you can see International has taken really another step function in terms of importance. In addition to, and like I said, it opens up us to expand our presence in the attractive Australasia market. Slide 20. This also comes from our Investor Day presentation. And at that time, we talked about our ability to source M&A opportunities from multiple sources. Again, this latest acquisition, I think, proves it out quite well. And the reason is here's a good example of a business that's on the other side of the world, that we were able to access and get an exclusive process to Prestige to and bring into the fold. So we're quite excited about that and I think it really proves out our model. Page 21 also demonstrates the fact that we pursue a multitude of opportunities that span a number of different sources and transactions and processes, and all these contribute to our M&A strategy over the long term. So, with that, having given a little bit of a highlight in terms of the business, as well as Care Pharma, some background on it and where we're going, I'd now like to turn it over to Ron who'll take you through the financials.