Earnings Labs

STERIS plc (STE)

Q4 2007 Earnings Call· Tue, Oct 9, 2007

$212.78

-3.17%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-0.79%

1 Week

-3.79%

1 Month

-6.86%

vs S&P

-0.91%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. Welcome to the Cantel Medical Corporation fourth quarter fiscal 2007 conference call. Today’s call is being recorded and will be available for replay beginning today and through October 10th by dialing 1-877-660-6853 and using passcode 286 and conference ID number 257125. This call is also being simultaneously broadcast live over the Internet on VCall.com and a replay of the webcast will be available on VCall for 30 days. I would now like to turn the call over to Richard Moyer of Cameron Associates.

Richard Moyer

Management

Thank you. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including without limitations the risks detailed in the company’s filings and reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Such statements are only predictions and actual results may differ materially from those projected. Now I would like to turn the call over to R. Scott Jones, President and CEO of Cantel Medical. Go ahead, Scott.

R. Scott Jones

President and CEO

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter and fiscal year-end earnings call. With me today are: Charles Diker, Chairman; Andy Krakauer, Chief Operating Officer; Craig Sheldon, Chief Financial Officer; Steve Anaya, VP and Corporate Controller; and Roy Malkin, President of Cantel’s Minntech division. We will all be available for questions after our remarks. As you all know, since our last earnings quarter, we’ve completed the acquisitions of Dialysis Services, Twist 2 It, Verimetrix, and most recently Strong Dental Products, and first I would like to welcome those new employees and customers joining us with these acquisitions. I think what you will see here today is that we are really building value, not only in Cantel but across our segments. As we move through today’s call, I would encourage you to think in terms of three key themes that we think relate to our building of that value. The first is that we’ve had very good core growth. Both the quarter and the year have exceeded consensus estimates in terms of revenues by a fairly good margin. We’ve made very substantial investments in the company during 2006 and 2007 and those are really now beginning to pay off in terms of top line growth. Just by way of reminder, those investments were the fielding of our MediVators direct sales force. We now have 21 direct sales people that are really hitting stride and doing a good job. We’ve substantially completed the R&D of our MDS Endoscope reprocessing premium care product. We’ve expended capital to accommodate order growth across virtually all of our segments. We’ve fielded marketing sales resources across virtually all of our segments and we’ve added several key executive leaders; notably, we appointed the President of our water purification and filtration division earlier in the year, and most…

Operator

Operator

Your first question comes from Michael Gaugler - Brean Murray. Michael Gaugler - Brean Murray: I will start off with the endo reprocessing segment. As we look forward to potential profits and margins, would you expect those to be in line with the company average? R. Scott Jones: They will certainly get there. We have full expectations that once we are up to a steady state with the launch of our new product and full penetration with our MediVators sales force that the endoscope reprocessing segment will be very much at par with the rest of the segment. Now that, of course, will take time. We are expecting to return to profitability forthwith. But that will ramp up over time and it won't be an immediate return to those levels, but we will certainly get there. Michael Gaugler - Brean Murray: Last quarter, the acquisition-related charges that we saw for the deals that were consummated in '07, are they essentially behind you now? R. Scott Jones: The acquisition charges for those acquisitions are behind us. They are specific to those acquisitions that we did. Michael Gaugler - Brean Murray: Finally, how does the pipeline for new opportunities look? I know that you were looking a little bit towards the west coast to build out the water treatment platform a bit more. Are you seeing anything interesting at the moment? R. Scott Jones: The pipeline looks great. We want to give credit to our corporate development function. Under Seth Siegel's leadership we have really identified a tremendous pipeline. As you can imagine, you've got to turn over a lot of stones before you find the right acquisition. So it's a matter of timing. We find we would like to continue fleshing out our service delivery network and we have identified an opportunity on the west coast. We've identified another larger opportunity that has several geographic fill-ins for us. So it's a matter of timing and valuation. Hopefully before long we will be able to execute on those opportunities.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Mitra Ramgopal - Sidoti & Co. Mitra Ramgopal - Sidoti: The organic growth for the year, was it 10% for the top line? R. Scott Jones: That's correct. Mitra Ramgopal - Sidoti: As you look out to '08 do you expect that to hold steady or even improve further? R. Scott Jones: We've got some good momentum across all of our segments at this point and again, we never know. There are no guarantees in terms of industry consolidation anywhere. Our objective is certainly to maintain that momentum that we have right now. So it is certainly our goal to keep up the pace. Mitra Ramgopal - Sidoti: I know you did address the dialysis line, but clearly the number this quarter was probably the best we've seen for some time. Anything in particular that is a good run rate to use going forward? R. Scott Jones: It's two things. As I mentioned, the consolidation with Fresenius and Renal Care Group is behind us so that certainly had a big impact on certainly the first couple of quarters in the year. Our largest client is growing very rapidly and we continue, as I said, fourth quarter we had 33% growth in Renatron unit sales. So that's terrific. In those numbers however, and I will let Roy Malkin comment on this as well, in those numbers we continued to have a very robust set of orders for dialysate concentrate. And that includes the company that does single use. We are also a big vendor to them. So it's a mix of Renatron sales, both from the U.S. and International as well as very strong orders for the concentrate. Roy, do you want to add anything to that?

Roy Malkin

President

I think you are right on, Scott. The major impact in the fourth quarter was some substantial sales to Latin America of our concentrate product. As we've reported over the last few years, we have really taken advantage of opportunities where they exist and last quarter was a very, very good quarter for us. Also, we had an excellent quarter in Asia for our renal product. So all in all, I think that renal growth will remain reasonably constant this year. That really depends on our continued success in Latin America. R. Scott Jones: What I would add is what we're seeing is procedure growth is growing in the upper single-digits. If I were to gauge what the appropriate growth would be in the segment, I would rather link it to what procedure growth is at, so 7% or 8% is probably reasonable. It takes a while to translate procedure growth into our order rate, but that's what I think we would like to think of it as for the coming year. Mitra Ramgopal - Sidoti: With regard to stock compensation expense, I know it picked up a little this year. Looking ahead to fiscal '08, should we assume it's going to be pretty flat? R. Scott Jones: The majority of the stock comp expense is divesting of existing options and restricted shares that had been issued years ago. So that's the majority of our stock expense and as we add new executives, a vital part of the yearly compensation for the leadership team is the equity compensation. So we would expect to layer on more equity as the years go by. But again, really, the bulk of it is the legacy vesting.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Mark Cooper - Wells Capital. Mark Cooper - Wells Capital: Did you give us the D&A and the cash flow number for the fourth quarter or for the year? R. Scott Jones: The cash flow will be in the 10-K. Is the D&A in there also? Craig Sheldon: Yes. Everything will be in the 10-K. R. Scott Jones: That, as I said, will be out no later than Monday. It is probably the best source of that. Mark Cooper - Wells Capital: You don't have that information now? R. Scott Jones: Just hold on that because we are still under audit at this point and we are just not ready to file the K.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to management for closing comments. R. Scott Jones: That about wraps it up. Once again, thank you for your continued interest and support. I look forward to interacting with all of you. If you have any questions, please feel free to call. Thank you.