Bernard Birkett
Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open
Thank you, Eric, and good morning everybody. So let’s review the numbers in a little more detail. Our financial results are summarized on Slide 8 and the reconciliation of non-GAAP measures are described in Slides 13 to 17. We reported for the fourth quarter, net sales of $422.5 million, representing organic growth 3.6% on a constant currency basis. Excluding Vial2Bag recall, organic constant currency growth would have been 6.3%. Gross profit of $133.2 million is $4.6 million or 3.6% above Q4 of 2017. Gross profit margin was 31.5%, a 60 basis point expansion from the same period last year. Adjusted operating profit of $67.1 million compared to Q4 2017 $60.4 million shows an improvement of 90 basis points. And adjusted diluted EPS of $0.73 as compared to $0.64 last year representing EPS growth of approximately 14%. Looking more closely at each segment of our business, Proprietary Products organic sales increased 3.7%. Our high-value products represented 56% of the Q4 2018 sales, approximately the same level as achieved in Q4 2017. For the full year 2018, we had mid-single-digit sales growth in high-value products as expected. Contract Manufacturing net organic sales increased by 3.1%, slightly above our expectations. Continued growth in support of diagnostic and delivery systems for treatment of diabetes are driving much of the increase in sales. On Slide 9, we showed the contributions to sales growth in the quarter. Volume and mix contributed $18.4 million, or 4.4 percentage points of growth. Sales price increased – increases contributed $2.5 million or 0.6 percentage points of growth. Changes in foreign currency exchange rates reduced sales by $7.9 million or a reduction of 1.9 percentage points and the loss of a consumer contract manufacturing customer of $6.1 million or 1.5 percentage points. Moving onto margin performance, Slide 10 shows our consolidated gross profit margin of 31.5% for Q4 2018, up from 30.9% in Q4 2017. Proprietary Products fourth quarter gross margin of 37% was 220 basis points above the margin achieved in the fourth quarter of 2017. This continued improvement in gross margin is primarily due to higher efficiencies and positive sales mix, which more than offset the impact from the voluntary recall, unabsorbed overhead from Waterford and a higher raw material costs. The Waterford facility generated its first sales of commercial product in Q3 and we expect continued improvement in operational efficiencies as our utilization of this facility increases throughout 2019. Contract Manufacturing fourth quarter gross margin of 16.4% decreased by 370 basis points compared to the prior year quarter. The year-over-year decrease in margins is due to unabsorbed overheads from plant consolidation activities, start-up costs associated with the launch of new programs and unfavorable sales mix. However, margins continued to improve with an increase over contract manufacturing gross margins in Q3 2018, which was in line with our expectations and comments on our Q3 call. We have continued confidence that contract manufacturing margins will improve further into 2019, as we complete our restructuring activities, continue to improve our efficiency and utilization levels and deliver on the new customer programs. Q4 2018 consolidated SG&A expense remained relatively flat versus the prior year quarter. As a percentage of sales, fourth quarter 2018 SG&A expense was 14.1%, a decrease of 20 basis points as compared to the fourth quarter of 2017 and in line with our expectations. Slide 11 shows our key cash flow metrics. Operating cash flow was $288.6 million for the full year 2018, an increase of $25.3 million compared to full year 2017. Part of this improvement is the non-recurrence of a $20 million voluntary pension contribution made in the prior year. Our full year capital spending was $104.7 million, $26.1 million or approximately 20% lower than a year-ago. As we have completed our major construction projects in Ireland and as we begin to see the early benefits from our global operations initiatives on capacity utilization and optimization. Reviewing some balance sheet takeaways, our cash balance at December 31 of $337 million was $101.5 million more than our December 2017 balance, an improvement of approximately 43%. Debt at December 31, 2018, of $196 million is roughly the same level as at year-end 2017, and on a net debt to total invested capital ratio basis, we are completely delevered. Working capital of $610.7 million at December 31 was $146.7 million higher than at prior year-end. In addition to the increase in our cash balances and cash represents 69% of the increase, most of the remaining increases in receivables related to the growth in our business and an increase in our day sales outstanding metric. We have seen improvements in our inventory metrics as our days in inventory have reduced by approximately 2%. As we consider Q4 results and look ahead to 2019, we have provided our sales and adjusted diluted EPS guidance for 2019, which is summarized on Slide 12. We expect our full-year sales to be in the range of $1.795 billion to $1.82 billion, representing an expected constant currency organic sales growth of 6% to 8% over 2018 reported net sales. This assumes a negative impact of approximately $30 million to full year 2019 sales based on current foreign currency exchange rates. We expect full year 2019 adjusted diluted EPS of $2.77 to $2.89, which assumes operating profit margin expansion of approximately 100 basis points, and guidance excludes tax benefits from stock-based compensation. Excluding this, EPS growth is in the range of 6% to 10%. Growth excluding FX and tax benefit from stock-based compensation is in the range of 8% to 13%. To be clear, this guidance format is returning to the format we used in 2017, where we also did not include tax benefits from stock-based comp in guidance. To try to forecast these tax benefits would mean trying to forecast items we do not control, such as stock option exercises by our former and current employees. Instead, we expect to recognize potential tax benefits as they occur. As a result, as we recognize them, we expect to see upside in our adjusted diluted 2019 EPS guidance. CapEx for 2019 is forecast to be in the range of $120 million to $130 million. So to summarize the key takeaways for the quarter, we saw continued consolidated sales growth, gross margin increases in our Proprietary Product segment and improving margins in our Contract Manufacturing segment. Strong growth and adjusted diluted EPS over Q4 2017, together with strong operating cash flow growth. All projections for 2019 are in line with our long-term construct of 6% to 8% revenue growth, operating margin improvement of 100 basis points and EPS expansion. I now like to turn the call back over to Eric Green.