Earnings Labs

Zimmer Biomet Holdings, Inc. (ZBH)

Q2 2020 Earnings Call· Tue, Aug 4, 2020

$82.88

-10.49%

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

+2.29%

1 Week

+5.79%

1 Month

+7.56%

vs S&P

+2.91%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Zimmer Biomet Second Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, August 4, 2020. Following today’s presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. At this time, all participations are in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Keri Mattox, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, and Chief Communications Officer. Please go ahead.

Keri Mattox

Analyst

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. I hope you are all well and safe. Welcome to Zimmer Biomet’s second quarter 2020 earnings conference call. Joining me virtually today are Bryan Hanson, our President and CEO; and CFO, Suky Upadhyay. Before we get started, I’d like to remind you that our comments during this call will include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements due to a variety of risks and uncertainties. Please note, we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements, even if actual results or future expectations change materially. Please refer to our SEC filings for a detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties in addition to the inherent limitations of such forward-looking statements. Additionally, the discussions on this call will include certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is included within the earnings release found on our website at zimmerbiomet.com. With that, I’ll now turn the call over to Bryan. Bryan?

Bryan Hanson

Analyst

Great. Thanks, Keri. And before we started, I just want to say that I certainly hope that you’re safe, your families are healthy, and that you’re doing everything you can to manage through this very unusual situation that we find ourselves in. Speaking of that, once again, we find ourselves in an earnings call where we’re in different places. We’re not held together. And my guess is, as we may have some mishaps, potentially anyway, when we hand off to each other, so I’m just going to apologize ahead of time for any mishaps that we see through the handoffs here, and potentially any background noises we might get. Obviously, this is an unprecedented time for all of us, very challenging time as we deal with the pandemic here in the U.S. and around the globe. And we, as a result of that, want to talk about the virus today. We want to talk about how we’re managing through it. We want to talk about how we’re modeling its potential impact. But, we really also want to make sure that we spend some time on our underlying strength of the business that we have and our plans for long-term growth. And along those lines, I’m really going to try to center the conversation around three main topics. The first one is obviously our execution and the financial results in Q2, but really spent time in Q2 on the strength of the underlying business and why we’re feeling confident in the things that we can control. The second thing would be around our broader modeling and our assumptions on a go forward basis associated with the pandemic. May not be associating as you want there, but we’re simply going to give you the best that we can on how we’re looking…

Suky Upadhyay

Analyst

Thank you, Bryan, and good morning, everyone. I hope all of you are well. I’d like to reiterate Bryan’s most recent comments that our underlying fundamentals remain strong and our long-term growth profile is compelling. Before jumping into the specifics, I would summarize our second quarter performance as simply being better-than-expected. Revenue was ahead of expectations, driven by fast recovery in most markets, which led to better margins, and we ended the quarter with a strong cash position and ample liquidity. Net sales in the quarter were $1.2 billion, a reported and operational decrease of about 38% from the prior year, driven by the pandemic. We saw the deepest impact on elective procedures and revenue in April, but then saw a rapid recovery with sequential improvement in May and June. While we’re not at normal procedure volumes yet, we are encouraged by the trends since April, as all of our regions and businesses performed better-than-anticipated, since our first quarter call. We will look more closely at our Q2 revenue trends, starting with regional performance and then hit it to our businesses. Moving forward, unless otherwise noted, my commentary will be on a constant currency basis. Beginning with Asia Pacific, the region decreased about 18% in the second quarter versus the same period in the prior year. While China demonstrated sharp V-shaped recovery since April, posting improvement in May and growth in June, most other markets in the region continued to perform below normal run rates. In Japan, our largest market in Asia Pacific, we’ve seen a different profile as that market never got to trough levels experienced in China and was stable in Q2, operating at about 80% of normal run rates. Australia and New Zealand, our third largest market in Asia Pacific observed a sharp decline and a sharp…

Bryan Hanson

Analyst

In closing, it’s clear that the challenge of COVID-19 has been significant to ZB -- to many, obviously. But we’re also very-encouraged by the early days of recovery, and I think really importantly, our ability to rise to that challenge as a team. And I’m going to leave you with three points from today’s call that I hope you take away. The first one is that the Q2 recovery clearly happened faster than expected, and we are encouraged as a result of that. But, we are still cautiously optimistic about the performance in the back half of 2020, just due to the variables associated with the pandemic that we still have to manage through. And two, while our business has been impacted due to COVID-19, our strategic focus and our progress has not been disrupted. And if anything, this challenge has provided us with learnings that are enhancing strategic components of our business. And then, three, we feel very confident about our underlying business strength, our core business strategy and Zimmer Biomet’s ability to drive long-term growth and value. This will take a minute before we close out to Q&A to say thank you to each and every one of our team members around the world. They’re doing just a fantastic job. And your commitment and dedication to ZB enables us to deliver the value to our customers, to our patients and to our shareholders. So, with that, I’m going to turn the call back over to Keri, and I’m looking forward to your questions.

Keri Mattox

Analyst

Thanks, Bryan. Before we start the Q&A session, a reminder to please limit yourself to a single question and one follow-up, so that we can get to as many questions as possible during the call. With that, operator, may we have the first question, please?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. We’ll take our first question from Rick Wise with Stifel.

Rick Wise

Analyst

Bryan, thanks for all the detailed information. Maybe if I could ask even more selfishly, if you could expand a little, give us a little more color on how you’re thinking about -- not just the cadence but the drivers of recovery from here. You highlighted sort of bit. But, when I look at the second quarter numbers and the weighted averages for their market for both [indiscernible] it looks like to me, Zimmer did outperform, declined less than the group averages both worldwide and U.S. specifically. Maybe help us better understand specifically the drivers. Is it execution, your execution focus, your products for keens, ROSA, is it all the above? Where do you think the emphasis points? And just bottom line of this, what’s the setup then as we look at ‘21 beyond? How quickly can we get to that mid-single-digit absolutely possible kind of growth? Thanks so much, Bryan.

Bryan Hanson

Analyst

Thanks, Rick. That was a lot of questions in there, man. So, I’m going to try to tackle this in maybe in two categories. One, I think, I’ll just deal from -- your question is, what’s kind of driving the underlying strength of the business, and I’ll give a little more color on that versus what I had in my prepared remarks. And maybe the second piece of it is just broadly speaking about the recovery from COVID, just any deeper thinking there. And then, maybe I’ll pass it over to Suky to get into some detail on -- maybe a little more detail even on how we’re looking June, July, and what we think that’s going to mean on a go forward basis. But I would say, first of all, the things that we can control right now are extremely important to stay disciplined on. And so, I truly do believe, that’s the reason why our strategy is being executed as flawlessly as it is. And that’s really important to us. Some of the major things that are alarming to happen is, number one, we don’t have the supply issues that we used to have. And you remember, what I used to talk about this. There was going to be post-traumatic stress disorder from the commercial organization in this category, and they wouldn’t believe us for a while that it was actually solved, they do now. They’re not wasting time anymore on this. They are fully focused on driving new business. That’s a big part of it. The second piece to that is you’ve got to have new products. You got to have innovation. Having supply is just basic hygiene. You got to move past that and actually bring new products to the table because that’s the lifeblood of…

Suky Upadhyay

Analyst

Great. Thanks, Bryan. And thanks for the question, Rick. So, we clearly saw really good performance and improvement through the back end of Q2. As I talked about June exits on a day rate basis, were down 13.5%. That compares to being down 70%, if you recall back in April. So, clearly a pretty steep V-shaped recovery in the quarter. Now, in spite of that what we saw was Asia Pacific was about overall Company average plus or minus. Some of the areas we’re really watching in Asia Pacific, our second and third largest market, China and Asia -- sorry, Australia and New Zealand, performing really well, getting very close or at normal wise run rates. The other big watch-out for us is Japan, which continues to operate in sort of that 80% to 90% range, and that is our largest market. So, we’re keeping a close watch on the recovery in that particular market. And, of course, we’re really struggling in a lot of smaller markets in Southeast Asia. As we turn to EMEA relative to that overall company average of down 13.5%, EMEA was down significantly more than that. And that’s simply because the recovery just started later in the quarter for that particular region. Seeing really good uptake with our larger markets, but we’ve got to keep our eyes on the UK, which continues to defer at a very high rate and emerging markets is lacking. That was already a pretty lumpy business with tendering. COVID has just made it that much more difficult to predict the trend. But again, recovery in the biggest markets within EMEA is really good in the back end of the quarter. Then, you turn to the Americas, and this is probably where we saw the biggest and sharpest return in the…

Operator

Operator

We’ll take our next question from David Lewis with Morgan Stanley.

David Lewis

Analyst · Morgan Stanley.

Just two for me. One, Bryan or Suky, just on recovery. Bryan, you mentioned this $700 million, $800 million backlog. I just sort of wonder how much of that has been worked out. And I’m assuming this dynamic of scheduled versus rescheduled patients is why you said recovery is less steep into sort of the back half. And just maybe talk about that backlog and whether you think you can get back to growth in the fourth quarter. And then, I had a quick follow-up on ROSA.

Bryan Hanson

Analyst · Morgan Stanley.

So, what I would say is that $700 million or $800 million is still out there. So, I would say, that’s the amount of backlog that is still out for future revenue, and none of that is I’m counting as being already captured. I do believe that when you think about the backlog, again, you’ve got to separate it into two different categories. First category would be those patients that were deferred in the very beginning. So, you absolutely know they’re deferred patients. And the other portion of that backlog are those -- I’m just going to call them category 2 patients, which are kind of just building right now and will continue to build until we get back to market growth. And so, that $700 million to $800 million will be future revenue for us. My sense is that, first category of patients, those that were deferred initially will likely be completely run through, by the time we get to the end of 2020, or most of them will. But you’re still going to have a pretty significant backlog left for 2021. I would say, the way you can calculate that is, when you look at your overall market growth delta between what we actually did in 2020 versus the market growth, whatever that delta is, in those procedures that are elective and also are connected to progressive diseases, a large majority of those patients will come back into the funnel. So, if you just look at that delta. Let’s say, you had 100 procedures or less than typical market, you could take probably 80% of those or 80 procedures and say that’s my backlog that will come into 2021. So, that’s kind of the way I’m thinking about it. The challenge is that you have these big variables that are still moving out there around patient fear and the resurgence of the virus. So, it’s difficult to say that the backlog coming back in is going to give us that tailwind that we want without the negative impacts of those two variables. But, what I’ll say again is, if we can move to the point where we have a valid vaccine or an effective treatment, that takes those two variables off the table. And then, you’ve got the backlog as a tailwind, which should be significant for us. And so, you could see a pathway, I guess what I’m saying. If things stay about the same, as you come into a vaccine, renew or mitigate those two negative variables, a very strong growth in 2021, the challenge is, those variables -- and I’m saying that need to go away are pretty significant, and we just don’t know if it’s going to happen or not. But certainly, you could see a pathway, just given again that backlog volume of strong growth in the back half in 2021. It just depends on how those other two variables play out.

David Lewis

Analyst · Morgan Stanley.

Okay. Just a follow-up there. It’s hard to be definitive on fourth quarter growth I think is what I’m hearing, that’s what in your comment there. And then, I’ll ask my second question as well. Just on ROSA, Bryan, obviously that number is kind of materially how the way the Street was thinking on ROSA placements and thanks for the detail. So, did placements accelerate here into the second quarter? I’m sort of curious, has the selling structure around this placement has changed at all as well as usage based agreements? And if you could just give us some sense from a competitive account perspective, where the systems are being placed, what percent are the traditional Zimmer majority accounts versus the competitive share capture? Thanks so much.

Bryan Hanson

Analyst · Morgan Stanley.

Yes, absolutely. So, it’s a combination. I would tell you that we are absolutely looking at both competitive as well as friends and family. So, even though the original strategy was to focus just on friends and family, because we’ve got a huge opportunity just given the amount of implant percentages that we have in the market, we are definitely seeing competitive situations and we’re winning in those areas. When I think about ROSA in general, I would just say that we continue to see sequential improvement in placements. And believe it or not, even in Q2 there was no disruption in that sequential improvement. That just speaks to the maturity of our commercial organization, the majority of the pipeline of potential customers that we have, and our ability to translate that pipeline into actual sales. And I would expect that to continue. I would say that more recently, as I referenced before, the mix in the way that we’re placing these is different. Most customers previously wanted to buy. And now, we’re seeing a shift to this opportunity to acquire the technology through volume commitments, which in reality, as I stated before, is actually the preferred method of placement for us. I would much rather have that annuity revenue that is linking me to the customer for a longer period of time than having upfront capital acquisition. And that’s what Suky referenced before. If you look in Q2, you look at our knee performance in the U.S., for instance, we actually had a headwind associated with robotics versus last year, was actually a slight drag to our growth rate in knees, because we had sold more last year than we did this quarter. So, again, I think, again, the pipeline is strong, excited about the product line and we’re seeing continued sequential improvement quarter-over-quarter.

Operator

Operator

We’ll go next to Matthew O’Brien with Piper Sandler. Matthew O’Brien: Just a follow-up on the ROSA side of things. When I look at, Bryan, the number that you’re thinking that you’re going to have in the field this year, that’s around 200 compared to how many you had out that you’re placing this year versus what you had out last year. So that’s pretty similar to what the market leader did as far as placements last year in this category. So, what I’m trying to figure out is kind of to David’s question, what’s the split between friends and family versus competitive accounts? And are you seeing a building improvement on the competitive account side, as we speak or kind of as you’re looking forward? And I do have a follow-up.

Bryan Hanson

Analyst

Yes. So, I would say, without giving specifics. I would say that the competitive accounts are probably greater than 50% of the placements. Again, that’s even increasing as we’re finding more customers looking at this opportunity to bring in the system, based on volume commitments. So almost by default, to be able to get a system placed like that, you’ve got to have a competitive situation, so that they can commit that volume to be able to get the robotic system placed. So I’d say, it’s north of 50% and it looks better right now because of the placement strategy shift, not from us, but from our customers. Matthew O’Brien: And then, on the revision side, and I didn’t hear much on cementless, I may have missed it. But, when I look back historically, you’ve lost, I think some somewhere around 300, 400 basis points a share on the revision side, cementless, as they incurred primaries in total, I think it was a couple hundred basis points. So, there’s a lot of users out there that are familiar with Zimmer. Are those the ones are getting back the quickest right now or even going into new accounts that you hadn’t really been present before? Because of those assistance, because of ROSA, and you feel comfortable. Again, I understand there’s some variability about outperforming the knee market, broadly speaking over the next several years?

Bryan Hanson

Analyst

Yes. I’d say, on the cementless, we continue to gain traction. I think we’re -- our product is being well received. And as we see more penetration of robotics in our accounts, you’re going to see by the very nature of robotics and the capability to use cementless more comfortably, you’re going to see a continued increase in the cementless percentage of our business. What I’d say on the revision side, it is absolutely a tip of the spear product. And we’re clearly going into accounts that have been using Persona and have not been able to use our revision system, and we’re picking up those accounts. Those are the obvious ones. But, it’s such a good revision said that we’re getting competitive surgeons that want to move to this. And as a result of that, we’ll get primary pull-through as well. So as much as that’s an exciting product, when I talked about close to $100 million opportunity there for this year, that’s not including the pull-through that we would get when we have competitive conversions on the primary need.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We’ll take our next question from Robbie Marcus with JP Morgan.

Robbie Marcus

Analyst · JP Morgan.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just a quick clarification. In the script, you said that at the end of June, the decline was only 3.6%, but adjusted for selling days, it was down 13.5%. Is the just more the exit rate of June versus the full month or is there something else going on there?

Bryan Hanson

Analyst · JP Morgan.

Hey, Robbie. That was the full month of June, as opposed to the final weeks.

Robbie Marcus

Analyst · JP Morgan.

Got it. Okay. And then, maybe, Bryan, it sounds like -- if I go back to dental and maybe spine, when times are tough, it’s easier to revisit different parts of the business that might not be some of your top performers or have the best growth rates going forward. How are you thinking about some of your businesses that have been underperforming lately and how are you thinking about potentially improving or monetizing them in this environment where there are a lot of willing buyers out there with recently raised capital? Thanks.

Bryan Hanson

Analyst · JP Morgan.

Yes. So, as -- the first focus is, as I said in the prepared remarks, we have certain businesses and sub businesses that will be the primary areas of investment. But, what I’ll make very clear is that does not mean that the businesses outside of that are not important to us, and it does not mean that I don’t expect results in those businesses. And they are getting investment, just not the same level. So, I fully expect my businesses in dental, spine, CMFT that I did not name as areas of extreme focus, I expect them with the investments they’re getting to perform. And if I think about spine specifically, we’ve got an opportunity there to do that. Now, it’s got to happen in a few different ways. We’ve had a lot of flux in our commercial organization that is now stable. Well, that stable commercial organization has to turn into a productive commercial organization. We have Mobi-C, which is the best cervical disc in the marketplace. We have a good traction to that. We have -- that as a tip of the spear product that we have not been taking advantage of and I need to see that. And we have Tether that Suky mentioned in the prepared remarks, that is an innovative change that dramatically changes the patient experience in scoliosis patients. That is an exciting product that we need to be able to use. And we have ROSA. So, we’ve got the components of success in spine with the investment level that we have. I need to see it transpire in the same way that we saw with the similar investment level, dental perform. And so, I just want to make sure that it’s clear that just because I don’t have those businesses as one of the primary growth drivers of the organization, it does not mean they’re not important to us, and it does not mean that we’re not going to continue to invest in some level, and it does not mean that I don’t expect results.

Operator

Operator

We’ll take our next question from Pito Chickering with Deutsche Bank.

Pito Chickering

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

Good morning, guys, and thanks for taking my questions. The first one is I wanted to follow up on David’s question on $700 million to $800 million of backlog. I understand that the backlog is out there. But, any chance you can give us the color as to procedures you guys saw in June or July, where the split between deferred procedures that happened to versus newly-diagnosed cases that were done. I’m just trying to understand the price of recovery and the sustainability of that recovery.

Bryan Hanson

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

Yes. What I would tell you is that, although we do collect data on this, it’s becoming more muddled. And the reason why is because you’ve got a complete mixture now of what is a deferred patient. If you need look at just those folks that we knew were deferred, then I can get a sense for how many of those are coming through. But, when I look at truly this growing backlog of deferred patients, it’s difficult to know which one of those is a new versus a deferred that’s created as a result of COVID. So, it is becoming muddled. I think, the easiest way to look at it again is to go back to in those areas that we have, large joints, shoulder, those areas that are elective, but are connected to a progressive disease. I would just look at the delta in market growth and just know that 80-plus-percent of those patients are eventually going to come back in. And I’d stop worrying as much about what is a deferred patient, what is a new patient. I just look at the total deficiency to market and know that history shows those patients eventually come back in the funnel at a pretty high rate. That’s the way we’re thinking about it. I think, spending too much time now trying to understand the deferred to new patient mix is just -- it’s too muddled, it’s too challenging to understand what that actually means.

Pito Chickering

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

Okay. A follow-up there. August, is typically a pretty slim month, surgeons take vacations. Any color from your sales force about how do you see surge in demand in August? And do you think that docs are motivated to work through their backlog and provide big growth and easy comps?

Bryan Hanson

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

I’d tell you, it’s interesting because particularly in Europe, you see August being a challenging month, because a lot of holidays. But, even in parts of Spain what we’re hearing is that people are going to take fewer weeks of vacation to be able to deal with some of the backlog. And that is an area that you typically don’t hear, that’s at a response. And it’s the same pretty much around the world. The general feedback that we’re getting from service in hospitals is they’re going to take fewer days of vacation to try to work through the backlog. Everyone recognizes there’s a bolus of patients that need to get served. And my general sense is that you’re going to see people try to work through that backlog. The only time that you would see maybe no -- something that would look different than that is in the public health system in Europe. But, we just don’t have the same incentive to be able to work through it, and potentially sometimes even the budget to be able to work through it. But generally speaking, I’m getting very good feedback on the desire to work through the summer, work through this backlog and take care of patients.

Operator

Operator

We’ll take our next question from Matt Taylor with UBS.

Matt Taylor

Analyst · UBS.

So, it’s really interesting to hear the color on ROSA system placements and utilization there. And around the focus on utilization perspective, and I’m going to much about that. You saw pretty strong use despite the pandemic conditions. And I guess, I was hoping, you could provide some outlook for that and maybe benchmark it versus other systems that are out there. Where do you think utilization could go in the coming quarters for these ROSA systems in that maturity?

Bryan Hanson

Analyst · UBS.

My sense is, we could see continued increases of utilization per system. And again, remember, go back to the tenants that we had in place as we design the system. One of the primary things we focused on was to make sure that it did not disrupt the surgical flow and it did not change the time to do a procedure. And that’s what we’re finding actually happening. So, the good news on that is it -- the surgeon can digest it more easily, because it doesn’t change what they do as much. It just makes it better. But, what it also allows is more surgical volume, right, using robotics, because we don’t slow the procedure down. So, I would expect, as people get more comfortable with it, and they see the difference in outcome for patients that use robotics versus not use robotics, I would expect it to continue to go up per unit. And then, obviously, as we place more units, I see those procedural lines increasing pretty quickly.

Matt Taylor

Analyst · UBS.

And another follow-up, people have alluded to the deposits prior to it and being able to push that forward in a tough environment. Do you think that hospitals are benefiting from stimulus or how have they been able to continue to make the kind of capital investments or other arrangements despite the disruption and pressure on the budget?

Bryan Hanson

Analyst · UBS.

Yes. I really do. We were very concerned out of the gate that we wouldn’t be getting paid by hospitals, let alone, seeing this kind of traction. And I think the stimulus did help. I think it took the pressure off and it made hospitals feel more confident and comfortable to be able to continue to move their strategy forward. And so, our receivables, for instance, never really got significantly damaged during all this, because I think they felt comfortable with that liquidity. And we really haven’t seen much of a change in demand, I mean, initially, for sure. I mean, people didn’t know what was going on and they didn’t know for sure what was going to happen. So, there was a month, period of time where there was a little bit of chaos. But as you worked through that and people felt more confident and comfortable in liquidity, things got back to normal pretty quick.

Matt Taylor

Analyst · UBS.

Thanks a lot.

Bryan Hanson

Analyst · UBS.

I said normal. Clearly that’s a new normal, not actual normal.

Keri Mattox

Analyst · UBS.

Thanks. Katie, I think we have time for one last question.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We’ll go next to Richard Newitter with SVB Leerink.

Richard Newitter

Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just on ROSA. I think, one of your competitors, the leader in the markets, and they saw high proportion of placements, better than expected placement into ASC setting. I’m just curious if you could comment at all on whether you might have been seeing ROSA is getting placement with ASC? And within the context of that question, how Zimmer maybe has positioned to benefit from -- or to feel an impact from accelerated trend through the ASC setting more broadly? Thank you.

Bryan Hanson

Analyst

Yes. I mean, clearly, you would see a natural desire from patients, I would think to be in a non-hospital setting, just given the issues around virus fear. So, it’s not surprising to me that we’re seeing some additional pace moving to the ASC from a procedure volume standpoint. And we are absolutely ensuring that commercially we’re going to be ready for that. We’ve already focused on it obviously, but we’re going to put that on steroids now. And I would say from a robotics standpoint, it plays quite well for us. Remember that you do not have to have a CT scan to be able to use a robotic system for ROSA and that helps us quite a bit in the ASC setting. And also, we’ll go back to this idea of throughput, these are business people in ASC setting. Volume is very important to them. They have to get the throughput of patients to be able to get the same reimbursement and to be able to get the business dynamics that they want. And that ability to use our system without a change in time really matters to them. And so, again, I think it bodes well for us, quite frankly. And I’m very happy to hear that our competitor also saw surge in robotic placements. It tells you that the demand for robotics is real and the penetration of robotics is still very-low. And that to me is an opportunity for everyone who has a real robotics solution.

Richard Newitter

Analyst

Got it. And then, Bryan, just for my follow-up. I’m curious, on the M&A front, I appreciate you are doing the start-up, smaller or tuck-in. I’m just curious, in the wake of COVID, has that in any way changed maybe where you might be initially focused on the types of acquisitions or anything that now just on a go-forward basis might fit more strategically into the business, as you look forward? Thanks.

Bryan Hanson

Analyst

Yes. Let me -- I’ll answer that very specifically. But, let me pull up this for a second, because I think it’s helpful context, because we are in a phase now where I feel much more confident and comfortable moving into active portfolio management, and we will absolutely move in that direction. But, it was important to get there, because I kind of think about this positioning, this Company transforming this company for success in three phases. The first phase was kind of obvious to everybody. We had to triage patients, right? We had real problems around culture, mission, connection just wasn’t there, we didn’t have the top level talent that we needed to be able to move the business forward, we had supply issues, quality issues, we had a DoJ monitor in the house. And so, we had all these things that we had to fix. And I’m not saying that we’re not going to continue to focus in those areas, because it’s going to evolve. But that was kind of Phase 1. We had to fix those things. Phase 2 is more around shifting to innovation, had to get new products out in the market, we had to be able to crystallize our strategy, and our focus in our strategic pillars, and then make sure we had the right organizational structure to drive that. So, all those things kind of happen in Phase 2, and we’ve got to have the operating mechanisms to make sure that we deliver on those things. Phase 3 really comes around portfolio transformation. And that’s exactly what we’re going to be focused on. And yes, I would say that the insights that we’re getting from COVID, because we’re learning every day, and we are applying those insights into the way that we’re going to manage our strategy, didn’t fundamentally change the strategy, but it’s augmenting the strategy. And I would say that we will have a focus as we look for diversification, and being able to get better penetration in the ASC to be able to continue to focus in those subcategories and set that we know are going to be attractive, and to be able to think about acquisitions now, to get us away from our dependence on elective procedures. So, there’s a lot of different sectors that we’re considering now in the way that we’re going to look at potential opportunities for acquisition. I would still say, as I said before, there are going to be smaller tuck-ins for now, because our access to liquidity isn’t quite the same, just given what’s going on right now. And we want to make sure that we stay investment grade, but we are clearly focused right now on active portfolio management.

Operator

Operator

That will conclude our question-and-answer session. I’d like to turn the call back over to Keri Mattox for any additional closing remarks.

Keri Mattox

Analyst

Thanks, Katie. And thank you all again for joining us this morning. If you have questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to the IR team. You can also find a replay of the call on our website, zimmerbiomet.com. Thanks so much and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you again for participating in today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.