Q1 2021 ICU Medical Inc Earnings Call
Thank you.
[music].
Good day and welcome to the ICU Medical Inc. Q1, 2021 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded at this time I will turn the conference over to Mr. John Mills. Please go ahead Sir.
Great. Thank you good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss ICU medical financial results for the first quarter of 2021 on the call today, representing ICU medical is Vivek Jain.
Chairman and Brian <unk>, Chief Financial Officer.
We want to let everyone know that we have a presentation to accompany today's prepared remarks.
The other presentation. Please go to the Investor page and click on events calendar and it will be under the first quarter 2021 events.
Let me start our prepared remarks, I want to touch upon any forward looking statements made during the call.
Including beliefs and expectations about the company's future results. Please be aware they are based on the best available information to management and assumptions that are reasonable such.
Such statements are not intended to be a full representation of future results and are subject to risks and uncertainties.
Future results may differ materially from management's current expectations.
Refer all of you to the company's SEC filings for more detailed information on the risks and uncertainties that have a direct bearing on operating results and financial position.
Please note that during today's call. We will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures, including results on adjusted basis. We believe these financial measures can facilitate a more complete analysis and greater transparency into ICU medical's ongoing results of operations, particularly when comparing underlying results from period to period.
We've also included a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures in today's release and provided as much detail as possible on any addendums that are added back and with that it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Vivek.
Thanks, John Good afternoon, everybody and we hope you and your families are well.
Hard to believe its may 2021, and we feel the approaching normalcy in our business and operations and are happy to see our hospital customers improving activity monthly as vaccinations have progressed.
Like everyone in our industry, we want to start first by thanking all of our customers and their frontline workers for trusting us to serve you. During these times and we look forward to seeing our own teams around the world face to face in the near future as local conditions permit it's been too long.
Today, we hope for a shorter call as a results were generally in line with our comments just a few weeks ago and not that much has changed but we did want to first comment on the broader trends in the customer market and the geographic flows of our business.
Second provide any updates on our normal housekeeping items.
Third highlight our improving cash flow metrics.
Fourth explain the drivers that will allow us to deliver improving sequential profitability and lastly, articulate how we feel about our positioning in this environment and comment on the specific criteria, which what which we are judging ourselves.
The short story on Q1 is as follows as we described on the last call. We did see sequential revenue growth in our consumables segment and slight sequential decreases in our IV systems in IV solutions segment.
On a year over year basis. This resulted in a reported sales decline of 4%, which we expected due to the pandemic surge ordering in Q1 of 2020.
We finished the quarter with $304 million and adjusted revenue adjusted EBITDA came in at $58 million and adjusted EPS was $1 62.
Profit was impacted by the weather challenges in February in Texas. Some of the carry in some of the carryover from the Austin maintenance in Q4, and Brian will add additional details.
We had our best Q1, our free cash flow generation, EVAR and added $31 million to our balance sheet as operational improvements have materialized and restructuring and integration costs have dramatically reduced.
When looking deeper at the results on a year over year basis instead of sequentially.
We're really specific international markets, which had year over year declines due to the surge pandemic ordering in Q1 2020.
At the current moment Asia in ANZ are back and open for business Europe, and Canada had been sequentially, improving but were large negative on a year over year basis, and Latam continues to be challenged.
We are most tilted to the U S market, where were dependent on admissions in electives and again there were some shortfalls in utilization to the pre COVID-19 baseline in at least acute care facilities.
We can't tell the exact level of shortfall, but it is likely somewhere around 5% below historical levels.
Even within the quarter was different with the COVID-19 patients, leaving hospitals in late January leading to lower census in February and weekly improvements since then.
But again, we did well in the U S market in the face of less utilization and I'll describe some of this in the segment discussion.
So let's go through the businesses quickly and then come back to discuss the current environment.
Starting as usual with infusion consumables, which is our largest business infusion consumables had revenues of $126 million in Q4, 2020, which was a 2% increase year over year on a reported basis and flat on a constant currency basis.
We had 5% growth in the U S market and that was offset by large year over year declines in Europe, and Canada due to the pandemic ordering last year.
The oncology market was back to double digit growth in the U S market, which is extremely important to us.
We felt positive about U S performance in the face of utilization shortfalls in our growth products and performance in the markets sets us up well for the balance of the year.
The rest of the world opening up could be additive to this but we are cautious as important geographies for us continued to be delayed in opening.
Just as a reminder, Q2 of 2020 was severely impacted in the U S market downward. So the growth. We will report in Q2 will be unnaturally high but we do believe we can again deliver some sequential improvement here.
Moving to infusion systems, which is primarily our LDP pumps and associated dedicated sets.
This segment did $84 million and adjusted revenues, which was a decline of 5% on a reported basis and 7% on a constant currency basis.
On a year over year basis, the downdraft was essentially completely due to the international market and pandemic ordering in Q1 of 2020. So in the U S. Just like consumables, we held our own EBIT with utilization declines that impacted the dedicated pump sets and with continued expected deterioration in the non <unk> products.
That math works, because we had more of our pumps pumping inactive in the U S marketplace and last year for.
For Q2, the year over year declines in the international markets are expected to be larger as late Q1, and Q2 of 2020 is when we had many of the international pandemic orders, but we expect the U S business to continue to improve.
Live customer conversations are increasing and the installation calendar is much better for Q2 than it was in Q1, we continue to not see capital is a constraint and we still believe relative to our size there are solid competitive opportunity and we're focused on commercial execution here.
Finishing the discussion with infusion solutions, we had $80 million in adjusted revenue or a decline of 12% on a year over year on both the reported and constant currency basis year over year demand was softer for February is a COVID-19 patients came out of the system and tick back up in March we continue to believe the quality of our customer book has improved.
<unk> with us holding the best list of sustainable relationships versus the day, we bought the business and the entire industry has move forward into renewals of longer term contracts.
The largest impact to our profitability in Q1 was due to operational aspects of the IV solutions segment as we highlighted on the last call because what's happening real time.
We knew we would have rollover impacts into Q1 of undertaking our maintenance shutdown later in 2020 than normal due to the pandemic, but the weather events were really expensive for us both in terms of unexpected operational shutdowns.
And the excess freight and service cost to serve the customer and to ensure no operational setbacks.
And we did not penalize our employees due to the unforeseen weather and so we spent a lot more than we expected here in Q1.
But these items will not repeat and therefore will make a material difference on Q2 gross margins as Brian will describe.
No change here in 2021 as we continue to believe this is the $80 million average quarterly business. Also reminder, here Q2 of 2020 was impacted in the U S market downward due to the pandemic. So the growth. We will report in Q2 will be unnaturally high and will not be reflective of underlying trends.
Moving on to some of the housekeeping updates commercially in all regions of the U S. Except the northeast slightly more than 50% of our customer calls are now in person with a sharp uptick in March versus a 30% or so we stated on the last call inner.
Internationally again Asia in ANZ opened for business with Canada, and Europe, mostly still being a remote business.
On quality Theres not very much new we had some successful smaller notified body audits that went fine.
Operationally the manufacturing network logistics and systems of the company are all running well we.
We had solid global fulfillment rates to our customers even with the weather challenges.
We also renewed our contract manufacturing arrangement with Pfizer for another three years with minimum volume and tiered pricing terms.
On the Pfizer discussion related to the calculation of an earn out payment. We have now entered into arbitration process pursuant to our agreement.
Pfizer has been a solid partner and we've worked with them to cooperate in all aspects of our relationship.
Pfizer was obviously an equity participant here and our board of directors and we've tried to treat them well at every step as we addressed a litany of issues that came with hospira.
We feel comfortable with our position, but we don't control the final decision and expect that it will be resolved by the end of Q3.
Okay onto other items.
We are pleased that we have gotten back to strong cash flow generation, we've had a solid focus on the high hanging fruits from our integration that we talked about in 2019.
Those have been about improving working capital inefficiencies in how we run.
But it has been hard to square that up with underlying profitability levels and in particular with cash generation was really good but profitability less so.
Q1 was unusual due to the Austin items I mentioned EBITDA margin should look different in Q2, even with utilization below historical levels as we get to our view of what normal profitability should look like.
It has also been hard to follow the growth and value creation within the segments as the hangover from the IV solutions changes move right into the COVID-19 environment and combined with some unique interest segment issues like the shift away from non LBP pumps. So we are also looking for a normal environment.
To be clean and how we can be clear on how we judge ourselves. We've said for a while we can grow our valuable items of consumables and dedicated sets on a year over year basis.
That's exactly the standard on criteria, where we are judging ourselves in the medium term, we believe our our consumables segment will be the largest ever in 2021, and we believe our U S and global install base of LDP infusion pumps and related disposals will be the largest under our ownership.
Our model is to essentially find normal profitability in Q2 and have the growth of those higher margin items, great value into the future.
And we think that is the case without talking a lot about improving utilization dynamics or new products, which could be additive to.
Score ultimately gets measured by us through the lens of.
Is each business actually bigger and more profitable in absolute dollar terms, we're finally getting close to jumping over some of the items that made this harder to measure.
While the pandemic introduced substantial volatility strategically we do think the weaknesses. It's exposed in the health care supply chain add to the argument for all participants to be healthy and stable, which has been our commentary since we became a full line supplier.
We make essential items that require significant clinical training capital expenditures and in general items that customers do not want to switch unless they have.
We are a U S manufacturer, that's deeply vertically integrated and has core redundancy and products that we do not produce domestically between ensenada in Costa Rica, we do believe that the market broadly defined does not want a winner take all setup in these essential items categories and Thats before each category is addressed on its own innovation.
Nicole outcomes et cetera in.
In the new normal post COVID-19 world, where supply chain resiliency and diversity matters. We believe are essential items logically benefit at our most differentiate items are still differentiate.
So we focus on what we can control in these moments, having the best list of supportive healthy customers, winning important new customers and waiting for volumes to normalize with.
We focus on keeping our employees safe, while delivering the best operational stability for our customers.
We ensure that we drive differentiation in quality and our most valuable categories.
We want to have the best liquidity, we can for a company our size and we want to use all of those items to be prepared for whatever realignments are opportunities may arise and to ultimately focus on our own execution.
Our company has emerged stronger from all the events of the last few years. Thank you to all the employees customers suppliers and frontline health care worker, our company appreciates the role each of US has had to play and with that I'll turn it over to Brian.
Thanks, Vivek and good afternoon, everyone to begin I'll first walk down the P&L and discuss our results for the first quarter, and then talk a little about cash flow and the balance sheet.
So starting with the revenue line, our first quarter 2021, GAAP revenue was $318 million compared to $329 million last year, which is down 3% or 5% on a constant currency basis.
For your reference the 2020 in 2021 adjusted revenue figures, which exclude contract manufacturing sales to Pfizer can be found on slide number three of the presentation.
Our adjusted revenue for the quarter was $304 million compared to $316 million last year, which is down 4% or 5% on a constant currency basis infusion.
Infusion consumables was up 2% or flat on a constant currency basis.
Infusion systems was down 5% or 7% on a constant currency basis, IV solutions, which we sell primarily in the U S was down 12% on both a reported and constant currency basis, and critical care was up 6% or 4% on a constant currency basis.
As you can see from slide number four of the presentation for the first quarter, our adjusted gross margin was 37%.
This was in line with our expectations compared to last year adjusted gross margin decreased by 250 basis points and this decrease primarily reflects the impact of two items that were unique to this year's first quarter.
And combined reduced adjusted gross margin by approximately 225 basis points.
<unk> and larger of the two items is the timing of the annual scheduled maintenance shutdown of our Austin manufacturing facility that was completed in October 2020, as compared to the summer months in prior years. These.
These costs are capitalized when incurred and recognized on the P&L in line with our inventory turns.
As a result first quarter 2021 gross margins were lower as the remaining shutdown costs were recognized in the quarter.
The second item was referenced on our last earnings call and relates to the additional manufacturing and distribution costs incurred during the first quarter of this year related to the February weather events in the south.
Neither of these items will have an impact in the second quarter.
During our last call. We said we expected adjusted gross margin for full year 2021 to be in the range of 38% to 39% and that remains the case, but it's worth noting that the specific adjusted gross margin rate for any given quarter for the remainder of the year could fluctuate based on the level and mix of.
<unk> systems hardware installations during the quarter.
Moving further down the P&L SG&A expense of $72 million in Q1 was flat year over year and was in line with our expectations as we continue to benefit from lower travel and entertainment spend.
R&D expense was $11 million for the quarter flat year over year and down $1 million compared to the fourth quarter of 2020.
The decrease compared to the fourth quarter is primarily driven by timing of project spend.
We expect the level of R&D spend to increase a bit in future quarters, as we get closer to regulatory submissions on a few larger projects later this year.
Restructuring integration and strategic transaction expenses were down to $3 million in the first quarter versus $12 million last year. The first quarter 2021 spending was spread across a number of smaller projects related to acquisition integration and one time regulatory initiatives, we continue to expect.
Full year spend to be in the range of $15 million to $20 million.
Adjusted diluted earnings per share for the first quarter of 2021 per $1 62, compared to $1 81 last year. This year's Q1 results were favorably impacted by a lower tax rate that contributed approximately 10 cents of benefit to adjusted EPS.
The lower tax rate was the result of excess tax benefits related to equity compensation.
Diluted shares outstanding for the quarter were 21 $7 million.
And finally, adjusted EBITDA for Q1 decreased 8% to $58 million compared to $63 million last year.
Now moving on to cash flow and the balance sheet.
For the quarter free cash flow was $37 million in Q1 was another strong quarter of cash flow generation driven by a combination of solid earnings declining restructuring and integration spending and further reductions in working capital.
The first quarter of each year tends to be our weakest quarter in terms of free cash flow due to the payout of annual bonuses and this quarter represents a record for a first quarter of the year.
The working capital improvements were driven mostly by inventory, which decreased $15 million compared to the fourth quarter of 2020.
Both AR and inventories are now at their lowest levels since we integrated the hospira business onto our platform two and a half years ago.
Going forward.
For <unk>, we expect DSO to generally remain around current levels, but we may see a slight ramp in inventory over the remainder of this year to ensure we can successfully onboard and support new business.
The strong Q1 cash flow allowed us to end the quarter with $455 million in cash and investments on the balance sheet.
In the first quarter, we spent $14 million on Capex for general maintenance and capacity expansion at our facilities as well as placement of revenue generating infusion pumps with customers outside of the U S.
Our capex spending in Q1 was a bit light due mostly to timing and we expect the level of capex to pick up over the remainder of the year as we still plan to spend around $80 million for the full year.
So to summarize except for some additional weather related costs. Our results for the first quarter were very much in line with the expectations. We had set for ourselves at the beginning of the year.
Within U S Hospital systems, the transition from the heavy mix of COVID-19 patients that we saw in early January followed by lower census in February and then gradually increasing volumes over the remainder of the quarter seemed to play out largely as expected.
We also saw sequential top line growth and our most valuable business unit of consumables.
Generated record free cash flow for our first quarter and recognize the remaining costs related to the Q4, Austin plant maintenance shutdown, which are now behind us.
Overall, we're pleased with business performance in Q1 and feel good about our opportunity to drive growth in our most differentiated businesses going forward.
And with that I'd like to turn the call over for any questions.
Yes.
Thank you.
To ask a question please cigna quite price star one on the telephone Keypad, Inc.
He was in your speaker phone. Please make sure your handset is music to their signals a chance to reach our equipment again press star one for a question, we'll now pause for just one moment.
We will now take our first question from Matt Michel <unk> from Keybanc. Please go ahead.
Hey, good afternoon, Vivek, Bryan I'll try and keep this short.
Paul.
On the Pfizer a contract manufacturing agreement that mean.
It will no longer be excluded from.
From sales and while there'll be a positive margin for that.
Okay.
Matt It's Brian.
At this point, we will still for reporting purposes.
Keep it excluded for our non-GAAP reporting consistent with the way that we always have.
Will there be a more positive margin.
The margin impact under the new agreement.
Pricing is positive relative to.
The agreement.
Agreement in place until now.
But I think what really has the most valuable value to us are the commitments around volumes.
If you look over the past several years, we've seen reductions in volumes for that piece of the business in and that's impacted our profitability and so we have.
We have more degrees of certainty around volumes going forward.
It doesn't preclude you from entering that market for yourself and then at one point that was a consideration.
Okay.
I think the reality, Matt is it's Vivek how are you.
Volumes went down on a number of those products and that hurt us and I think I just described to the second part of your first question is.
I would just say at least we've tried to structure. It so that we don't encounter more turbulent negative turbulence going forward. It's all part of <unk> solutions stable and predictable, but not only revenues from profitability.
On the second part I think we've been.
A bit reticent and exploring some of those areas because we just don't want to at least until the performance recently, we haven't wanted to enter a category that was <unk>.
Frankly declining in units what was given on or value, which has gone on in regular solutions anyway, we werent trying to compound that problem I don't want to say.
I'd never say never because we do have manufacturing assets.
And production scale that can be used here, but I think we would have to be very selective about it.
Care and win but the primary focus in February March was just make sure. The calendars full for Q2 installations I think the calendar is pretty good for Q2 installations right now.
Oh excellent look forward to normalization of law.
Yeah. Please thank.
Thank you ma'am.
We will now take our next question from Jason Bedford from Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Hi, Good afternoon, just maybe to pick up on the last question can you talk about the environment or appetite out there to swap out pumps is it better today than it was in fourth quarter.
It's better today than it was hey, Jason it's better today than it was in the.
Fourth quarter, obviously, there's been lots of twists and turns and changes.
Suppliers in the market.
Over the last number of weeks and months.
I think our lesson from having been in this industry.
For many years is just everything takes longer than you think.
Whether that's getting a new customer and getting an onboard it or getting a new product proved or solving issues to market that's seems to be.
Doomed to that and I think all participants probably recognize that now and we are in.
I'm pretty okay place at the moment and so we want to be active and make the best about opportunities. So I think certainly getting our hospital customers domestically getting the vaccinations behind them.
Allows us to have a better set of conversations and we were able to have in November December January.
You remember last year, we talked about this summer being pretty good and then slowing down in the fall.
And it's opening back up a little bit which is good different answer Internet I'm, sorry to go on to a different answer internationally. Some of those international markets ones I referenced in the script per really.
Still.
Challenging and some of the some of the ones the Asian markets et cetera, really open and you can see that in other People's results just a variety of performance.
Okay.
Entered the year I think with over 100 basis points of committed share gain how much of that were you able to get deployed and recognized in the first quarter.
Very small amount.
Bears.
Okay.
And then just curious as to what you're seeing in April can we assume that April was stronger than March and then I guess more specifically or trend starting to get better in both Canada and Europe.
Sure and Brian.
Yes, I think as it relates to April.
I mean, we said that.
In the first quarter towards the end we saw.
Gradual improvements in volumes and I'd say that had that gradual improvement has continued in April. So we feel okay about how the second quarter has started.
I think the strongest statement, we can make their Jason is by saying on the.
Consumables that we felt like there's some a reasonable chance some chance for sequential improvement again, which means volumes would be going up and at least feeling solid about our ability to grow the dedicated pumps sense over the balance of the year.
For the U S market I think we certainly.
We certainly see that improvement coming on to the second part of your question, Canada and Europe, both improved sequentially.
But Canada and I know you have a vested interest there Canada is.
A bit slow things are moving slow in Canada business is improving sequentially new business discussions are slow in Canada, new business discussions in some spots of northern Europe versatile slow right.
And just I don't want to get too granular, but the size of Canada and Europe in terms of percent of total sales.
Canada is our single largest country that we do business in outside of the U S matters.
Okay and then.
A whole company the whole company is.
The whole company is really only consumables and pumps internationally and that represents about 300 ish million dollars of business.
And most of that business is still heavier.
Europe, and Canada right.
Hey, Matt.
And just I guess the day messaging on gross margin.
I think I had it right in that it was 225 bps off of gross margin of 37 as we look at that going forward with is is gross margin largely dependent on new pumped deployment.
In terms of where it go yeah.
Yes that will be the largest single variable probably for the rest of the year on gross margins.
Okay.
That's why I think Brian was Brian script, Jason Brian script was saying, we feel okay about the 38% to 39 for the year, but.
That.
Volatility could move that up or down I think we had the clearest view to Q2 right because of the because.
Cause we're actually talking basis points of gross margin like very specifically.
Just to be clearing the 38 39 for the year.
Starts at 37 and <unk>.
Yes.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We will now take care next question from Laurie solo from CJ Security. Please go ahead.
Yes, Hi, it's Pete Lucas for Larry.
Just sticking with the gross margins you've covered a lot of it and given US a lot of nice detail in terms of the outlook for this year, maybe if you could just kind of talk broadly on the longer term drivers. There that you see in particular the shipped in systems towards more disposables as well as you mentioned the improvement you get now that Austin is behind you.
D C with more controlling your own destiny and manufacturing distribution side as you built that up in terms of internal capabilities as a driver going forward or what else do you see as some of the longer term drivers there.
Sure it'd be nice to nice to meet you.
<unk>.
I think we were trying to lay out our view of.
How earnings should increase over the long term against hard little bit hardcore corner right now, but if we get to a normal level of profitability in queue to which Q1 was not.
And we continue to either have consumables growth.
And incremental pump wins that improve our market share that drive disposable usage.
The.
Incremental costs and drop through the incremental cost is low from those piece of business in the drop through his high those are the things we have to do to create value above.
Normal level of profitability that normal level process profitability was kind of incorporated into our annual guidance. This year. So I think we're trying to give the formula that it's not going to be Ivy solution that drive profitability here, we got to have the differentiated items.
Really go what we'd need an Ivy solution is what we feel like we've delivered for the last seven quarters, which is.
Stability in the business.
And the last item on the contract manufacturer it making sure that was secure so it didn't go backwards was important to us and that's why we were trying to outline the criteria to say, we think we can actually create value. It improved margins. If we can make our consumables businesses biggest possible. If we can have as many dedicated sets flowing through the income statement as possible.
That's really that's really that's a formula for us right now.
Oh, great and just one last one from me in terms of being able to you know you mentioned the hospital starting to improve therefore you.
In terms of being able to get in and compete for new wins I think I heard you say 70 per cent of your calls are now in person how do you see that improving in the short term.
I think right now I think we send in the script, 50% with a little bit lower number in the north east, which is a bit.
Strange still to us.
I think we're seeing travel requests and.
Movement of our people around the country happening and so.
I think live calls are going up I think they're going up quickly and we will have more spend some back to the gross margin way, we will have more spend but it's good spend per out there.
Seeing customers.
And so not every one of those gross margin dollars will drop through necessarily but.
We'd rather be in investing it into.
The revenue generation side.
So I think that trend is moving up it's moving up fast and.
At least certainly if that's what you do for a living you want that and so our team to want to get out there and be active with the the people are trying to serve and support.
Very helpful. Thanks, guys.
Very much.
That concludes today's question and answer session Mister J I passed the call back over to you for any additional are closing remarks.
Thank you Ryan appreciate it thanks, everybody free interest in ICU medical.
We tried to have a shorter call today, and we look forward to updating everyone on queue to as we normally do thanks.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation now disconnect.
[music].