Operator
Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q3 2015 Teleflex Incorporated Earnings Conference Call. My name is Mark, and I'll be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today, Jake Elguicze, Treasurer and Vice President of Investor Relations. Please proceed, sir. Jake Elguicze - Treasurer & Vice President-Investor Relations: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Teleflex Incorporated Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. The press release and slides to accompany this call are available on our website, at www.teleflex.com. As a reminder, this call will be available on our website, and a replay will be available by dialing 888-286-8010, or for international calls, 617-801-6888; passcode 53575576. Participating on today's call are Benson Smith, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Liam Kelly, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; and Thomas Powell, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Benson, Liam and Tom will make some brief prepared remarks, and then we'll open up the call to Q&A. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that some of the matters discussed in this conference call will contain forward-looking statements regarding future events as outlined in the slides. We wish to caution you that such statements are, in fact, forward-looking in nature and are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual events or results may differ materially. The factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially include, but are not limited to, factors made in our press release today, as well as our filing with the SEC, including our Form 10-K, which can be accessed on our website. The format for this morning's event will be similar to our prior conference calls with Benson providing a high-level overview of our quarterly results and an update on some key strategic initiatives. He'll then turn the call over to Liam, who will review our product line and geographic revenue results, provide updates with regards to recent GPO and IDN developments, new product introductions and regulatory approvals, as well as highlight an acquisition that was completed in the quarter. Following Liam will be Tom Powell. And Tom will review our third quarter financial results and provide an update regarding our financial guidance for 2015. And finally, we'll open up the call to Q&A. With that said, I'd like to now turn the call over to Benson. Benson F. Smith - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Jake, and good morning, everyone. To start, we view our underlying business fundamentals for the third quarter to be healthy and as a result, this boosts our confidence in a robust fourth quarter and our confidence in our longer-term goals outlined in May. Since Liam and Tom will go into the numbers in significant detail, I want to use my time to emphasize some particular highlights. We were pleased to see that revenue growth this quarter was particularly strong within our key North American franchises of vascular access and surgery, each of which generated their highest constant currency growth rates of the year. In addition to these areas, we also saw a year-over-year and sequential constant currency growth rate improvement from our Anesthesia franchise. Our Anesthesia is still low by comparison to these other two franchises, but we fully expect to see continued improvement in our Anesthesia business as we focus more resources on higher margin, higher gross products, such as MAD Nasal and pain pumps. Additionally, just this week, we launched the LMA Protector in the United States and we're quite gratified by the positive reception received at the Anesthesiology Meeting. As you might remember, our general revenue growth thesis for our three-year plan anticipates continued growth in the North American markets. These favorable third quarter numbers give us confidence as we exit the year and further support what we have been saying for the past few quarters now, which is that the North American healthcare market is improving and more importantly, the Teleflex is taking market share. In addition to strength in North America, we also saw a return to double-digit constant currency revenue growth within our Asia segment. And this was despite the fact that growth in China was not as robust as it was several years ago due to that country's economic issues. Revenue growth generated from Asia this quarter was broad based was comprised of our continuability to increase the average selling prices of our products within the local markets, this exceptional integration of acquisitions and distributor conversions, and an improvement in underlying volumes in areas like Southeast Asia. However, during the third quarter, not all of our businesses in regions performed at their peaks. Our respiratory therapy business is showing a decline. Although on closer examination, our sales into dealers in North America is lagging behind dealer sales to hospitals. We expect this lag to correct itself by the first quarter of 2016. That correction, along with anticipated benefit from some GPO wins, lead us to believe that respiratory therapy revenue growth will be in positive territory in 2016. Latin American businesses also experienced year-over-year revenue declines. This is primarily due to oil-producing countries like Venezuela we simply didn't have the funds available to order products. To a lesser extent, European revenue growth, whilst still positive, was diminished as a result of lower sales to Russia and the Middle East. I would add that while it's possible we could see some near-term improvement in these oil-producing countries, we are not counting on any rebound in order to hit our fourth quarter expectations. Turning to adjusted earnings per share, it was $1.60 in the third quarter of 2015, up approximately 2%. And while at first glance, 2% earnings growth may not seem impressive, in this case, that couldn't be further from the truth, as we had to handle significant year-over-year foreign currency headwinds. And these once again met underlying gross and operating margin expansion and earnings growth. Thanks to leverage generated from our higher margin products in regions, targeting operation expense cost containment initiatives and reduced interest expense and an improvement in our tax rate, the company was able to overcome a 17% foreign currency headwind and deliver adjusted earnings per share that was higher than our most recent internal projections. And before turning the call over to Liam, I would like to provide you with a brief update on the status of our manufacturing footprint consolidation plan and financial guidance for 2015. We continue to remain on track with our updated timetable for our manufacturing restructuring program and expect that we will begin to see the initial benefits in our gross and operating margins beginning in the fourth quarter of this year. While from a timing and synergy generation perspective, there are no changes from the comments we made in our second quarter earnings conference call as we continue to believe that we will be substantially complete by the end of 2017, generating annual synergies of between $28 million and $35 million on a pre-tax basis. This takes me to our 2015 financial expectations. As we've been saying all year, 2015 is a fourth quarter story for Teleflex and we expect a strong close to 2015, with revenue growth accelerating from a 4.7% level that we have achieved during the first nine months of the year. This acceleration in fourth quarter constant currency growth is based on a few key factors, including continued strength within North American markets, incremental revenue generated from already completed M&A and distributor conversions, easier comparables for our business in China and one additional shipping day as compared to the prior year's fourth quarter. Regarding our gross margin goals, we were negatively affected in the third quarter primarily by some additional expenses related to recalls. While this will modestly affect our overall gross margins for the year, we do not expect it to interfere with our 54% target for the fourth quarter. And finally, as it relates to our adjusted EPS, we are seeing strong sequential improvement each quarter this year and expect the same change to continue into the fourth quarter. This morning, we narrowed our adjusted earnings per share range between $6.20 and $6.30 per share and anticipate ending the year of close to the midpoint of that range. This new midpoint is an improvement from the midpoint of our previously provided adjusted earnings per share range. Perhaps more importantly, I'm happy to report that we are not cutting back any of our investments in Percuvance, LMA Protector, MAD Nasal or Vidacare. In fact, we continued to be quite bullish about the opportunities these products present for us. Just yesterday, we had a very exciting percutaneous presentation and demonstration from one of our leading U.S. clinical sites, and we see a lot of enthusiasm going around this product line. In summary, given our year-to-date performance, status of our end markets, the successful integration of acquired businesses and a more robust product pipeline, we feel very good where we are as a company and anticipate a strong close to 2015. I will now turn the call over to Liam and he will you provide you with an update on our strategic business unit results. Liam? Liam Kelly - Chief Operating Officer & Executive Vice President: Thank you, Benson. And good morning everyone. For the consolidated company, third quarter 2015 constant currency revenues grew 4.2%. The major driver of revenue growth this quarter came from improved volumes associated with our Vascular and Surgical North America, and APAC businesses combined with acquired revenue and distributors that we converted to a direct sales model. A particular note was our growth in North America, which was 5.7%, this was up from 4.3% in quarter two and solidifies our view on our quarter four and full-year growth projections. During the most recent quarter, revenue growth coming from acquisitions and go-directs contributed approximately 160 basis points towards our overall revenue growth. This was the highest contribution year-to-date and is a reflection that capital that has been deployed in terms of acquisitions is yielding returns. In addition, we also had approximately 112 basis points of growth stemming from new product introductions. This was a sequential improvement from quarter two levels, and was driven by increased revenues of our European ASK CVC kits, surgical product introductions stemming from our partnership with a robotics provider, new OEM product sales to other large medical device companies, and increased revenues of our Rusch disposable LED laryngoscope. Additional sales coming from new product introductions in the quarter were somewhat offset by a decline in new product sales within our Vascular business. This was due to the lingering effect of the ArrowADVANTAGE PICC recall that occurred late in the second quarter of the year. I'm pleased to say that we expect to have this issue rectified and behind us by the middle of the fourth quarter. Moving next to product volumes. The increase this quarter on our overall revenue growth rate from product volumes increased from approximately – increased with approximately 115 basis points. This came from two key areas. Vidacare constant currency revenue growth rebounded from quarter two levels, generating approximately 66 basis points of overall company revenue growth, while poor core product volumes increased by 49 basis points. Vidacare revenue growth was particularly strong in the Vidacare OnControl bone marrow and biopsy product lines. The market for these products is still somewhat in their infancy, but we are very encouraged by the growth rate they exhibit in the quarter. As it is our belief that these products offer a superior patient clinical outcome and have the opportunity to address a market that currently uses a very manual and often painful approach to bone marrow and biopsy procedures. Year-to-date, Vidacare continues to track in the high teens range as a revenue growth percentage. We still believe this will continue and improve through the fourth quarter. Core product volumes was led by a very strong North American central venous catheter volumes and Asia volumes, which were up approximately 2%. These increases, however, were somewhat offset by year-over-year volume declines due to macroeconomic issues in Latin America, particularly in Venezuela, and European volumes which were relatively flat as compared to the third quarter of 2014. Our volumes was also impacted by the previously mentioned recalls, which occurred late in quarter two and were not completed – completely resolved in quarter three. Finally from a core product pricing standpoint, we saw the average selling price of our products expand. As such, this led to additional revenue growth of approximately 37 basis points, and was a sequential improvement from the second quarter in which product pricing was relatively flat. The ability for Teleflex to continue to drive positive product pricing is promising. As in the quarter, product pricing was particularly strong within our North American surgical and cardiac businesses. Next, I would like to provide some additional color surrounding our segment and product-related constant currency revenue growth drivers. Vascular North America third quarter revenue increased 8.6% to $82.6 million. The increase in Vascular revenues was largely due to sales of central venous and arterial catheters, Vidacare EZ-IO and OnControl devices and catheter navigation products. Moving to Anesthesia North America, third quarter revenue was $47.6 million, up 1.6% versus the prior year period. Growth in this segment during the quarter was driven by increased sales of LMA MAD Nasal Atomization products, as well as higher sales of laryngoscope Airway Management devices. Turning to our Surgical North America business, its revenue increased 11.1% to $39.6 million. The increase here was due to higher sales of automatic polymer ligation appliers, access ports, chest drainage products and the positive contribution from the MiniLap acquisition, which occurred in December of 2014. Shifting to our overseas businesses, EMEA revenues totaled $120.9 million in the quarter and generated a constant currency revenue growth of 1.1%. This was down slightly compared to the performance this segment realized in the first half of the year. Our strength in Vascular, Anesthesia, and Urology sales were somewhat offset by declines in surgical product sales. Surgical sales were lower year-over-year due to the discontinuation of some low-margin products, which occurred in late 2014, which impacted the overall growth in EMEA by roughly 1%. As such, this led to a difficult comparable for European surgical products. While the discontinuation of these products has a negative impact on our year-over-year revenue comparable, it has a positive relative growth margin percentage impact as the discontinued products have lower margins than our core business. Moving to Asia. Our third quarter revenue increased 11.3% to $61.9 million. The quarterly increase in Asia revenue was primarily due to higher central venous catheter sales within China and improvement in respiratory sales within Australia and the impact from the acquisition of Human Medics and Stenning, as well as our go-direct initiative in Japan. Turning to OEM. Revenue in the third quarter increased 2.5% to $39 million and was primarily due to higher sales of introducer, dilator and catheter products. Similar to our European surgical products, our OEM business has a tough comparable as in the third quarter of 2014, it benefited from a spike in suture product demand due to the ordering patterns from some of its large customers. As we transition to the fourth quarter, our OEM division does not face the same difficult comparison and as such, we expect OEM revenues to improve from the constant currency levels achieved in quarter three. And lastly, our all other segments revenue for the quarter was down 2.7%, totaling $52.1 million. The decline in other revenue was due to lower sales within Latin America and respiratory products that was referred to earlier. Latin America was impacted by the devaluation of local currencies within Brazil and Venezuela, which resulted in lower amount of U.S. dollar denominated sales. We do not see this having a long-term impact to Teleflex as these geographies only represent approximately 1% of our global sales. Next, I would like to shift gears and update you on additional group purchasing organization and IDN agreements that we received. During the third quarter, Teleflex is awarded a total of 12 agreements. This represents the largest amount of agreements awarded in any single quarter dating back to the fourth quarter of 2014. Of these agreements, two are brand new, while 10 were renewals of existing awards. The two new GPO wins were both sole source awards and were in the surgical instruments and chest drainage product areas. The remainder include items such as CVCs, antimicrobial PICCs, laryngoscopes, hemodialysis catheters, surgical ligation, and laryngeal mask product categories. We continue to be quite pleased with the progress we are making in these areas and believe that these GPO and IDN wins continue to position us for growth in 2016 and beyond. Next, I would like to update you on a recent product regulatory approval that we received, as well as an award we were bestowed within the industry. The ARROW brand name is synonymous with leadership in the CVC space. And recently, we've been expanding our expertise into catheters to include peripherally inserted and hemodialysis product offerings as well. To this end, we have been investing behind our dialysis product lines and during the third quarter, we received 510(k) Market Clearance from the FDA for our ARROW Triple Lumen Pressure Injectable Acute Hemodialysis Catheter. While our dialysis access product sales make up a small amount of our total company revenue to-date, the revenue growth rate from these products is approximately 6% on a year-to-date basis. And it is our belief that the hemodialysis space will continue to be a growth driver for the company in the future. This particular device, which is available in our ARROW ErgoPack System, will help hospitals maintain compliance with current vascular access guidelines and standards while improving maximal barrier protection against infections and should contribute to future dialysis sales growth. Another area of investment for the company has been in the area of minimally invasive laparoscopic access. This includes the recent acquisition of MiniLap and the limited market release of our Percuvance product line. It also includes our Weck brands for surgical products including the Weck EFx Shield Fascial Closure System, which was recently selected as a 2015 Innovation of the Year by the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons. This new device is designed to allow surgeons to provide fast and safe closure of laparoscopic port sites and is the only shielded port closure device that provides enhanced shaft protection for consistent and uniform closure, an innovative technique with unassisted suture retrieval and an intuitive wing development. We are honored that this product has been awarded the distinction of the 2015 Innovation of the Year, and we are enthusiastic about the future growth potential of this product. Finally, before turning the call over to Tom, I would like to review an acquisition that we recently completed and we believe will benefit our Surgical division. As many of you already know, Teleflex has a strong presence in the area of ligation clips with our Hem-o-lok product line. During the third quarter, we continued to bolster our position within the ligation space with the acquisition of certain assets of Atsina Surgical. Atsina, a portfolio company of Option3 and Research Corporation Technologies, is a developer of surgical clips. This acquisition complements our existing surgical ligation portfolio as the Atsina gauger clip has proprietarial angular element or elbow that secures and then pulls the tissue proximally during closure. This all cash acquisition is yet another example of Teleflex executing upon its strategy of acquiring innovation, pre-revenue – sorry, acquiring innovative pre-revenue technology, that allow us to take years off the product development cycle and eventually leverage our sales platform to support new product growth and capture additional margin. That completes my prepared remarks. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Tom. Tom? Thomas E. Powell - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thanks, Liam, and good morning, everyone. Given the previous discussion of the company's revenue growth drivers, I will begin my prepared remarks with the gross profit line. Before I do, I'll reinforce the point made earlier, which is that, underlying operating performance remains on solid footing. Additionally, we remain on track to achieve our full-year 2015 constant currency revenue and adjusted earnings per share objectives. Consistent with second quarter results, foreign currency impacts have again hampered revenue, margin, and earnings growth. For the third quarter, we estimate that the impact of foreign currency was to reduce adjusted earnings per share by approximately $0.27. If we were to exclude the currency impact, earnings per share growth would have been approximately 19%. And given the magnitude of the currency impact, I'll break out currency as I reviewed third quarter results so that you can gain a better understanding of Teleflex's underlying operational performance. Turning now to results. For the third quarter, constant currency revenue growth was 4.2% and reported revenue decreased 2.9%, reflecting an adverse currency impact of approximately $32.8 million. For the third quarter, adjusted gross profit was $230.5 million versus $238.1 million in the prior year quarter. Adjusted gross margin was 52%, which was down 10 basis points and compared to the prior-year period. During the third quarter, we realized the benefit of favorable product mix, principally in the Surgical North America, Vascular North America, and Asia segments, as well as the impact of improved pricing largely within the Asia segment. Additionally, we realized improvement in adjusted gross margin for manufacturing cost improvement programs, distributor conversion, and the acquisitions of Truphatek and MiniLap. However, these improvements in adjusted gross margin were offset by both the unfavorable impact of product recall-related expenses that served to reduce gross margin by approximately 50 basis points, and by higher costs incurred while in the manufacturing transfer/start-up phase. Additionally, foreign exchange rates reduced gross margin by approximately 50 basis points, during the quarter. We continue to have success controlling discretionary and overhead spending. For the quarter, adjusted SG&A expense was down slightly from year-ago spending levels. As percentage of revenue, third quarter adjusted SG&A was 27.9%, and marking a 100-basis point sequential decline from that of the first quarters and second quarters of 2015. Third quarter adjusted operating profit and margin were $94.1 million and 21.2% respectively versus $99.1 million and 21.7%, respectively, in the prior-year quarter. The decline in adjusted operating margin was due to the combination of the unfavorable impact of foreign exchange and recall-related expenses. In addition, in the third quarter of 2014, we had an atypically high operating margin, marking for a tough comparable. On a sequential basis, operating margin increased by 80 basis points in the second quarter of 2015. Again, if you were to normalize our results to exclude the impact of currency, adjusted operating margin in the quarter would've been approximately 22.7%. Adjusted net interest expense was approximately $11 million in the quarter and down sequentially, following the second quarter refinancing of six and seven and eight senior subordinated notes, as well as the repayment of approximately $50 million in revolver borrowings during the third quarter. As a result of these transactions, we anticipate that adjusted net interest expense will remain in the $11 million range for the fourth quarter. Moving next to our adjusted tax rate. For the third quarter of 2015, the adjusted tax rate was 13.3%, a reduction of 550 basis points as compared to the prior year period. The year-over-year reduction is primarily due to a tax benefit associated with U.S. Federal tax return filings and a benefit associated with a reduction in the estimated tax with respect to non-permanently reinvested income due to an increase in the estimated tax credits available to reduce the U.S. tax on any future repatriation. On the bottom line, third quarter adjusted earnings per share was $1.60 or an increase of approximately 2%. If we were to eliminate the impact of foreign currency, earnings per share growth would have been approximately 19%. Turning now to select balance sheet and cash flow highlights. While the year-to-date cash provided by operations was approximately $177 million, which is running behind year-ago levels, largely the result of increased accounts receivables as well as a decrease in accounts payable, and accrued expenses. The increase in accounts receivable are primarily due to increased collections of receivables during the first nine months of 2014 primarily in Europe. Accounts payable and accrued expenses decreased primarily due to the timing of both interest payments and select vendor payments, and we look to make these timing issues up in the fourth quarter. In addition, we experienced an increase in employee-related benefits and compensation payments earlier in the year. As we look to the fourth quarter, we expect an improvement in cash flow and project that full-year cash flow from operations will be approximately $275 million. From a balance sheet standpoint, at the end of the quarter, cash on hand totaled approximately $276 million of which approximately $39 million was based in the United States. Turning next to an update of our full-year 2015 financial guidance. As discussed, we remain on track to achieve our full-year 2015 constant currency revenue and adjusted earnings per share objective and look to finish the year with a strong fourth quarter. As such, we are narrowing our constant currency revenue growth range to 4.7% to 5.5% for the full year. We expect a strong fourth quarter will push our full-year constant currency growth rate above the 4.7% growth achieved through the first nine months of the year. The acceleration in fourth quarter constant currency growth is due to one additional shipping day, which is estimated to deliver an additional 90 basis points of growth in the fourth quarter. And we also have an easier comparable on China during the fourth quarter. Further, we expect to generate incremental revenue from already completed M&A and distributor conversions. And finally, our North American markets have performed well through the first nine months and we expect for this robust growth to continue into the fourth quarter. On an as reported basis, our outlook is for full-year revenue to be in the range of minus 1.5% to minus 2.3% versus a year-ago level. And we're currently projecting closer to the midpoints of both the full-year constant currency and as reported revenue ranges. Continuing down the income statement. On our last earnings conference call, we've guided 2015 adjusted gross margin to be in a range of between 53% and 54% for the year, stating that we expect it to be closer to the lower end of that range. We now project 2015 adjusted gross margin to be between 52.5% and 53%. The revision is primarily attributable to expenses incurred in connection with the previously discussed quarter three calls. The current projection represents an approximate 100 to 150-basis point improvement in adjusted gross margin versus 2014, and it includes an unfavorable currency impact that we estimate will reduce full-year gross margin by approximately 50 basis points. Consistent with our previous comments, we expect fourth quarter adjusted gross margin to improve sequentially from the third quarter to approximately 54%. The projected sequential improvement in adjusted gross margin is based on the assumption that we will not incur a similar level of recall-related expenses in the fourth quarter. In addition, we project improved manufacturing overhead absorption from increased fourth quarter volumes and a positive margin impact of distributor go-direct and continuing efficiency gains from manufacturing cost improvement programs. Moving on to adjusted operating margin. For full-year 2015, we now expect adjusted operating margin to increase by approximately 150 to 200 basis points to a range of 21.5% to 22%. This range is lower by 50 basis points from previous expectations to reflect the reduction in our full-year adjusted gross margin range. Similar to gross margin, we expect both our sequential improvement in a year-over-year improvement in the fourth quarter adjusted operating margin. This improvement reflects both strengthening fourth quarter gross margin and improved fourth quarter SG&A leverage. Similar to gross margin, we expect the foreign exchange headwind to adversely impact adjusted operating margin. Currently, we estimate that adjusted operating margin would have been approximately 100 basis points higher, if not for foreign exchange. And turning to taxes, given our third quarter results and expectations for the balance of the year, we are improving our full-year adjusted tax rate assumption to a range of 18% to 18.5%. This is a reduction from our previous full-year estimated rate of between 20% and 21%. Of note, our current rate estimate does not assume a benefit from a potential 2015 R&D tax credit. Turning to EPS. We are narrowing our adjusted earnings per share range to between to $6.20 to $6.30 per share versus a prior range of $6.10 to $6.35 per share. This new range translates to EPS growth between 8% and 9.8%. In closing, with nine months of 2015 behind us, we are pleased with our results today. Our largest market, North America, continues to perform well, allowing us to deliver year-to-date constant currency growth of close to 5%. We expect to finish the year strong, which should set us up for a good start into mid-year. Throughout the year, we've successfully integrated distributor conversions and smaller acquisitions that will enhance revenue growth and margin expansion as we close out the year. In addition, the previously announced manufacturing restructuring program remains on track and we're taking steps to further reduce our operating expense cost base to drive additional financial leverage. And finally, we've been able to absorb significant foreign currency headwinds and remain on track to achieve our adjusted earnings per share target. That concludes my prepared remarks. At this time, I'd like to turn the call back over to you, operator, for questions. Operator?