Judy L. Brown
Analyst · Bank of America
Thanks, Joe. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first earnings conference call at Perrigo Company PLC. As you just heard, the team recorded its best financial quarter in history with record revenue, adjusted earnings and margins. We delivered solid consolidated operating results while managing through a highly dynamic consumer environment. At the same time, much effort was invested to promptly close the acquisition of Elan before the end of the calendar year, a goal that we were pleased to execute against. Now let me review the fiscal second quarter results by business segment. Beginning on Slide 9. The change in net sales in Consumer Healthcare was due primarily to an increase in sales volumes of existing products of $19 million, primarily in the smoking cessation and gastrointestinal categories; along with new product sales of $17 million, primarily in cough/cold and smoking cessation categories; and $5 million of incremental sales attributable to the Velcera acquisition. These increases were offset by a decline of $46 million in sales of existing products, primarily in the contract manufacturing and analgesics categories. I'm sure you all like to understand why we saw year-over-year declines in CHC, so let me walk you through the key drivers. First, sales within our contract manufacturing business were down over 40% year-over-year. The biggest contributor of this decrease was a certain contract customer to whom we supplied significant product in the past year as they resumed production at one of their own facilities, reducing the need for products sourced from Perrigo. While we continue to supply a sizable amount of product to this customer, the volume of sales compared to last year is down significantly. Such is the nature of the contract manufacturing business. Were we to exclude this declining contract sales, Consumer Healthcare net sales would have increased approximately 4% year-over-year. Second, as we stated, the cough/cold/flu season in the second fiscal quarter started later in the United States versus last year. This, combined with lower incidence of cough/cold and flu, yielded a very difficult year-over-year sales comparison. In fact, as of today, in all of the data we've reviewed and according to IMS FAN data, the incidence of cough/cold and flu is down double digits year-over-year versus last year's season. And third, the expected return of product to market by a specific national brand competitor impacted year-over-year sales, particularly in the analgesics category. So after all of that, I'm happy to note that within the nicotine replacement category, sales of our store brand nicotine lozenges, notably the recently launched mini lozenges, are performing extremely well with sales up by more than 40% year-over-year. Adjusted Consumer Healthcare gross margin expanded 50 basis points, attributable to product mix as well as the Velcera acquisition, and the adjusted operating margin was impacted by our decision to accelerate investments in new product R&D. On Slide 10, you can see that net sales within the Nutritionals segment increased 15% year-over-year as existing product sales rose $15 million and new product sales were $4 million. As Joe noted, consumer acceptance of the plastic tub within the infant formula category continued to increase as store brand market penetration is now above 12%. Our customers have attributed this increase to a few factors: first, the side-by-side presentation of our product next to the national brand on the shelves; second, consumer appreciation of the superior design and functionality of the powders group compared to the national brand; third, increased shelf space versus this time last year; and fourth, more effective digital promotions targeting young families. The adjusted gross margin in the Nutritionals segment increased 270 basis points, driven by greater absorption levels in our manufacturing facilities and improved efficiencies over last year. The adjusted operating margin expanded due to DSG&A leverage on increased volume. As you can see on Slide 11, the Rx team continues to outperform expectations on all metrics. Net sales within our Rx segment increased 52% to $247 million due to incremental net sales of $26 million from the Rosemont and Fera acquisitions, new product sales of $24 million, and product mix. Adjusted gross and operating margin increased due to acquisitions, favorable product mix versus last year and higher margins on new product sales. Next, on Slide 12. Net sales in the API segment declined to $30 million due to a decrease in existing product sales of $17 million as a result of increased competition, partially offset by $7 million in new product sales. Gross and operating margins were impacted by the decrease in sales in existing products I just referred to, partially offset by lower selling, general and administrative expenses. Turning to Slide 13. I'd like to walk you through how our new Specialty Sciences segment will be reported. Specialty Sciences includes the revenue we receive from Biogen Idec sales of Tysabri, currently at 12% of their total global product sales, and which you may remember will increase to 18% on May 1, 2014. The revenues we record drop fully to the adjusted gross profit. As previously disclosed, we expect to incur operating costs in this segment consisting of R&D for the D5 Phase II clinical program and SG&A for Irish-based costs, including facilities, legal and finance, among others, in the future. Now let's discuss our consolidated adjusted effective tax rate for this quarter, which was approximately 14%. As we have discussed in previous calls, we are required to annualize our effective tax rate in accordance with GAAP accounting rules. This GAAP accounting requirement causes benefits of the positive jurisdictional mix of earnings from Elan and the new corporate structure to be recognized in the quarter it is implemented. Since we closed Elan during the second quarter, we realized the benefit of the Elan jurisdictional mix and the new corporate structure on an annualized basis in this period. This impact significantly reduced our effective tax rate for the quarter. Now some quick highlights on our balance sheet. Excluding cash and current investments, working capital was $718 million at the end of the quarter compared to $707 million at June 29, 2013. As of December 28, 2013, total current and long-term data on the face of the balance sheet was $3.3 billion, up $1.3 billion sequentially from last quarter due to the recently completed acquisition of Elan. Net debt -- that is gross debt less cash, cash equivalent and current securities -- was $2.7 billion, which equaled the net debt to total capital at the end of our second quarter of 24.1%. Year-to-date, net cash flow from operations was $220 million even with the inclusion of an estimated $103 million of transaction and acquisition costs, cash flows related to Elan. Now I'd like to discuss our updated earnings outlook for fiscal 2014. Looking to our segment on Slide 14, we continue to anticipate healthy demand for our products in our Consumer Healthcare segment. However, we are making adjustments to revenue and adjusted margins to reflect some recent developments. First, our current February 6 expectation of our ability to have our Guaifenesin 600-milligram ER available for the rest of this cough/cold season has been further risk adjusted. Joe will discuss this in more detail momentarily. Second, as noted earlier, the cough/cold season began later and, despite some initial indications of an uptick in early January, has not yet surpassed the incident rates of either last year or the rolling 5-year averages of what we would normally see at this point in the season. As such, our outlook for the remainder of the cough/cold/flu season is down versus our original plan. Third, our contract manufacturing business is now anticipated to be lower than our projections from the beginning of the fiscal year for the reasons I noted earlier. And lastly, we are lowering our probability weights on the launches of the broader Guaifenesin family of products based on current information from our partner. Given the momentum in the Nutritionals segment with the continued growth of store brand infant formula and increasing manufacturing efficiencies, we are raising guidance for this segment's net sales and adjusted gross margins. Revenue in the Rx segment is now projected to grow 26% to 30% year-over-year with a more favorable margin structure and new product launches. A deep pipeline and favorable market dynamics enable continued outperformance for this segment. Within the API segment, we are adjusting our revenue growth to reflect the increasingly competitive market dynamics of the products in our portfolio. Looking at Slide 15, you will see the changes to our detailed consolidated guidance include the acquisition of Elan and the overall dynamics within our portfolio of businesses. We are now estimating consolidated year-over-year revenue growth to be in a range of 15% to 18% with adjusted gross and operating margin expansion. As previously discussed, due to the jurisdictional mix changes related to Elan and our new corporate structure, we expect the effective tax rate to be approximately 22% for this fiscal year. Also, as a reminder, we continue to expect our total shares outstanding to be approximately 134 million shares on a go-forward basis, which equates to a full year fiscal 2014 weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 116 million shares. All of this leads to a $0.10 increase in our adjusted diluted EPS guidance range for fiscal 2014. The increase in operating cash flow guidance includes an estimated $180 million to $190 million of operating cash outflows related to Elan. The diversification of the Perrigo business model was evident this quarter as the team demonstrated its flexibility to deliver double-digit top line growth. With the closing of the Elan acquisition behind us, we remain focused on solid execution as a basis for continued growth, both organically and as we further cultivate our business development pipeline. Now let me turn it back to Joe.