Eric Green
Analyst · Jefferies
Thank you, Quinitn, and good morning to everyone. Our team had a solid performance during the third quarter, which was in line with our expectations and consistent to prior quarter performance. Importantly, we saw an improved to positive growth in our Generics market unit and continued strength in our Contract Manufacturing business. We believe we are on track to finish 2017 with strong organic growth led by high-value products sales in the Biologics and Generics market units. I want to start this quarterly review by addressing the impact from the hurricanes during Q3. Our highest priority is always the safety of our employees, and I’m pleased to report that all our employees and their families made it through the storms unharmed. Our team did an excellent job of pre-storm preparations and post-storm cleanups and restarts. Puerto Rico continues to be a challenge. Damage to the regional infrastructure is extensive, and is affecting our employees and customers on the island. Our facility saw minimal damage and we are now partially operational due to the use of backup on-site generators. I’m proud of our employees on how they rose to meet the challenges of these storms, and we at West are committed to helping them with ongoing relief efforts. In the third quarter, we estimate that the weather shutdowns caused a negative sales impact of $2 million, over half to Biologic customers located on the island and the balance to Contract Manufacturing customers. In the fourth quarter, we could see another $5 million of sales impact, mostly due to delays in shipments to biologic customers in Puerto Rico. This risk is reflected in our revised 2017 guidance. Bill Federici will go over the Q3 financial details in a few minutes. So let’s move to Slide 4 for a discussion on the trends we saw in our specific market units and businesses. We generated 4% organic sales growth in the quarter and remain on track to generate approximately 6% for the full year 2017. Contract Manufacturing had another double-digit organic sales growth quarter. Our enhanced focus on serving customers in the drug delivery and diagnostics market is yielding strong performance, and we are encouraged with the expanding pipeline of new projects that is offsetting slower growth from our consumer products customers. We expect some moderation as we anniversary a strong Q4 from last year, and we expect to generate high single-digit growth for the full year. In our Pharma market unit, we had a slowdown from a few large customers after a strong first half of the year. We remain on track for a full-year organic sales performance, mid-single-digits. In Biologics, we had a low single-digit sales growth. If we add back delayed sales from the hurricane, growth would have been mid-single-digits and in line with our expectations. We remain on track for double-digit growth in Q4 and high single-digits for the full year. And finally, I’m pleased to report that Generics returned to organic sales growth in the third quarter. We are seeing more typical demand trends from our larger customers as our inventory management has stabilized. The Generics unit is on track to deliver double-digit sales growth in Q4, and we expect the full year to be flat compared to the prior-year. Turning to Slide 5. We often talk about our high-value component strategy that encourages our customers to move up the quality chain from standard packaging components to higher value offerings. Such as Westar RS, RU, Envision and NovaPure. This mix shift has been fueling our organic sales growth and we expect it to continue to drive growth in margin expansion for the foreseeable future. On this slide, we highlight new products that have been featured in recent press releases and will be featured at upcoming trade shows. Our industry is known for long customer adoption curves, and that is why we constantly strive to build a diverse portfolio of innovative products that will fuel our future growth. In Q3, we had another strong quarter for recently launched Envision and NovaPure components. These offerings address the highest quality requirements in the industry, and we are expanding our high-value product portfolio with the new elastomer portfolio offering called AccelTRA. AccelTRA packaging component helps Generics manufacturers meet increasing quality standards, ensure fast response to market volatility and move their product to market quickly. We are pleased with the initial reception to AccelTRA, more than 30 customers have requested samples and a number of these have started formal stability trials. This slide also mentions the Westar ID Adapter. We have a growing portfolio of administration devices used in hospital, healthcare and home settings. The ID Adapter is used by healthcare providers to enable successful intradermal injections. We recently highlighted a WHO study that used the ID Adapter in a trial for dose sparing polio vaccinations. Our Wearables portfolio is also expanding. At the November PDA conference in Vienna, we will feature extensions of our SmartDose drug delivery platform with enhanced usability and performance capabilities, such as Bluetooth connectivity to drive patient adherence. The expanded portfolio will now include dosing options as large as 10 ml. As you can see from the small example of the new products, we focus our R&D investments to broaden our product portfolio that includes high-value product components, wearable injectors and administration systems our customers seek. On Slide 6, we have updated full year 2017 guidance. We continue to expect approximately 6% organic sales growth for the full year. And we are raising the sales guidance range based on our Q3 performance, and a slight tailwind in FX offset by hurricane-related impacts in Puerto Rico. We are also raising our adjusted EPS range from $2.74 to $2.79. Turning to Slide 7. 2017 has been a transition year as we continue to work through our customers’ inventory management activities that started in 2016. We expect the return of a more typical growth pattern in Q4 of this year. Looking forward to 2018, we expect organic sales growth in the range of 6% to 8%, as a result of market volume growth and continued high-value product conversions. Our long-term outlook remains consistent with 6% to 8% annual constant currency organic sales growth. As we have stated in the past, we expect on average, about 1 point to come from price, 2 to 3 points from market volume and 3 to 4 points from market shift. A significant portion of our component volume sales is still in standard format, and with the increasing quality focus of our customers, we feel that we have significant opportunity for converting standard products to high-value products. Anticipating increased volumes over the next few years, we are also expanding our manufacturing capacity, including the completion of our Waterford site, which should commence commercial production in mid-2018. And as you saw in the prior slide, we have a portfolio of proprietary devices that will accelerate our growth as they gain traction in the marketplace. We expect gross margins to expand as product mix continues its trend towards high-value products. This, combined with the numerous initiatives to improve manufacturing efficiencies that our global operation team has put in place, will further improve our costs structure. We expect to benefit from operating profit margin expansion, on average, 100 basis points per year for the next several years as a result of these activities. CapEx is expected to be in the range of between $150 million to $175 million. A preferred capital allocation is to invest in our high-value growth products. We believe these investments will fuel the development and launch of the next generation of integrated containment and delivery solutions we know our customers are counting on us to deliver. I’ll now turn it over to our CFO, Bill Federici, who will take you through our detailed financial results for the quarter. Bill?