Liam Kelly
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open
Thank you, Jake. And good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to speak with you today. The fourth quarter 2019 capped an excellent year for Teleflex as, during Q4, we once again generated upper-single digits constant currency revenue growth, but also achieving the highest adjusted gross and operating margins since becoming a pure-play medical device company. During the fourth quarter, revenues grew 7.1% on a constant currency basis. And like the first nine months of the year, during Q4, the strength in our top line performance was once again broad based and included 54.4% growth in Interventional Urology, 6% growth in Interventional Access and 4.6% growth in Vascular Access, while from a geographic perspective, we achieved particularly strong growth within the Americas where constant currency revenue growth was 11.7%. Fourth quarter constant currency revenue growth also included the benefit from one additional selling day. However, this was offset by a headwind resulting from the shutdown of a facility of one of our third-party sterilization providers during the quarter. From a full-year perspective, 2019 was the first year of our three year long range plan. And I am pleased that we were able to exceed our LRP constant current revenue growth expectations as our Interventional Urology business grew approximately 48%, our Interventional Access business grew approximately 10%, our OEM business grew approximately 8%, while both our Vascular Access and Surgical businesses each grew approximately 6%. Additionally, during 2019, we were able to proactively pull forward investment spending that we expect will pay benefits in future years. Finally, we ended the year with an adjusted gross and operating margin profile that provides us confidence in our ability to achieve our previously provided long range targets. As we transition into the second year of our LRP, we remain confident in our ability to generate significant constant currency revenue growth, margin expansion and adjusted earnings per share growth. And last, I am pleased to announce that, on February the 18th, we completed the acquisition of privately-held IWG High Performance Conductors, Inc., or HPC, an industry-leading manufacturer of highly engineered, minimally invasive medical solutions. HPC is expected to be accretive to our constant current revenue growth rate and our adjusted operating margins. Importantly, we also expect this acquisition to be accretive to our full-year 2020 adjusted earnings per share. With that as an overview, let's now review quarter four revenue in more detail. I will begin with a review of our reportable segment revenues. And unless otherwise noted, the growth rates I will refer to are on a constant currency basis. The Americas delivered revenues of $400 million in the fourth quarter, which represents an increase of 11.7%. This was driven by our Interventional Urology, Surgical, Interventional Access and Vascular Access product categories. But on a full-year basis, the Americas grew 10.6%. Moving to EMEA. It reported revenues of $145.9 million in the fourth quarter, which represents a decrease in 0.6%. The decline in EMEA revenue was in part due to the timing and phasing of certain distributor orders. On a full-year basis, EMEA grew 2.7%. Turning to Asia, revenues totaled $80.5 million in the fourth quarter, which represents an increase of 2.7%. From a product standpoint, growth was strongest within our Interventional Access and Anesthesia categories, while from a geographic perspective, our business in China grew 8.5%. This was somewhat offset by weakness in Australia, New Zealand and India. On a full-year basis, Asia grew 6.8%, led by growth within China of 11.5%. And lastly, our OEM business reported revenues of $54.6 million in the fourth quarter, which represents an increase of 4.3%. On a full-year basis, our OEM business grew 8.2%. Now, let me move to a discussion of our revenue by global product category. Like my comments regarding our reportable segments, my comments regarding our global product category growth will also be on a constant currency basis. Starting with Vascular Access. Quarter four revenues increased 4.6% to $154.6 million. This was driven by growth in PICCs and EZ-IO. Now to Interventional Access. Fourth quarter revenue was $112.7 million, which is an increase of approximately 6%. Growth was broad based and was driven by increased sales in complex catheters, biologics, OnControl and MANTA. It was somewhat offset by the divestiture of our catheter reprocessing product line, which had a very strong fourth quarter of 2018. Turning to Anesthesia, quarter four revenue was $85.3 million, which represents a decrease of 1.3%. It was primarily driven by a slight reduction in the buying patterns of US-based distributors. Shifting to our Surgical business, revenue increased 3.9% to $95.2 million. The increased revenue was driven by sales ligation clips. Moving to Interventional Urology, quarter four revenue increased a robust 54.4% to $89.1 million. This was a fantastic performance during the quarter, particularly considering it was up against a very difficult comparable. Our sales force continues to make excellent progress, driving physician adoption of the UroLift System as we ended the year having trained in excess of 500 new urologists, exceeding our goal of training 450 new urologists. Given that since the inception, we have trained over 20% of the 12,000 US-based urologists, coupled with an expectation that we will train at least 500 new urologists during 2020, we plan to begin a piloted national direct-to-consumer campaign as we move throughout the year. It is our belief that this campaign will further aid in creating awareness of the UroLift System and will help make UroLift the standard of care for the treatment of BPH. Transitioning to your UroLift 2. We continue to expect to begin the rollout of the UL2 during the first half of this year. And finally, since OEM was covered in [Technical Difficulty] summarize fourth quarter revenue for the businesses within our other category, which consists of our respiratory and urology care products. Revenues here were down 4.2%, totaling $89.4 million. Despite a rather robust flu season, these product categories declined as compared to the prior year primarily due to the sterilization issue that I referred to earlier. That completes my comments on quarter four revenue performance. Next, I would like to briefly discuss our recently received label expansion for the UroLift product. During January, the FDA granted the UroLift System an expanded indication for use to treat larger prostates, between 80 grams and 100 grams (sic) [80 cc and 100 cc]. The collection of data presented to the FDA demonstrated that the UroLift System treatment is safe and effective in men with larger prostates with outcomes similar to the pivotal L.I.F.T. randomized control trial. This new indication marks another exciting milestone, and is an opportunity for hundreds of thousands of more men to benefit from the UroLift system and the durable and long-lasting relief it can provide without any risk of sexual dysfunction. And finally, before I turn the call over to Tom, I'd like to take a moment to update you on the acquisition we announced this morning. On February 18, we acquired HPC for $260 million. HPC is a market leader in insulated ultra-fine wires and polyimide micro diameter tubing components and will become part of our OEM segment. This acquisition provides two highly complementary, differentiated capability platforms, including ultra-fine wired tubing components for therapeutic applications in fast-growing markets such as electrophysiology, peripheral management and pain management. The acquisition also gives our OEM business a platform with ultra-fine wire components for conducting electricity in healthcare applications. We are pleased to have been able to make this acquisition and it is expected to be accretive to our constant currency revenue growth rate and adjusted operating margin profile, both in the immediate and long term. It is also expected to be accretive to our adjusted earnings per share beginning in 2020. In closing, I would like to reiterate how pleased we were with our performance during the first year of our long-range plan. Revenue growth exceeded our initial expectations, driven by a broad spectrum of products and geographies. But on the bottom line, we were able to grow our adjusted earnings per share more than twice our as-reported revenue growth. After having completed the first year of our three-year LRP, we feel confident in our ability to achieve the goals laid out in May of 2018. I would like to thank our employees and management teams for their excellent execution and for their continued focus on reaching our goals. That completes my prepared remarks. I would now like to turn the call over to Tom for a more detailed review of our fourth quarter financial results and full-year 2020 financial guidance. Tom?