Earnings Labs

IDEXX Laboratories, Inc. (IDXX)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Fri, Apr 29, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the IDEXX Laboratories First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. Participating in the call this morning are Jon Ayers, Chief Executive Officer; Brian McKeon, Chief Financial Officer; and Ed Garber, Director, Investor Relations. IDEXX would like to preface the discussion with a caution regarding forward-looking statements. Listeners are reminded that statements that members of IDEXX management may make on this call regarding IDEXX's future expectations, plans and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as expects, may, anticipates, intends, would, will, plan, believes, estimates, should and similar words and expressions. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding management's expectations for financial results for future periods. Investors should be aware that any forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed here today. These risk factors are explained in detail in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Please refer to these filings for a more detailed discussion of forward-looking statements and the risks and uncertainties of such statements. All forward-looking statements are made as of today. And except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Also, during this call, we will be discussing certain financial measures not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is provided in our earnings release, which can be found in our website, idexx.com. In reviewing our first quarter 2016…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We'll go to the line of Ryan Daniels with William Blair. Your line is open. Ryan S. Daniels - William Blair & Co. LLC: Yeah. Thanks for taking my questions and good morning. Jon, maybe I'll start with one for you. Just in regards to the data you provided on the significant increase in the visit rate on a year-over-year basis, can you give us a little bit more color on what the vet participants that you're talking to are most interested in? Is it some of the new technologies? Is it kind of going back and learning about the entire IDEXX portfolio? Is it – just anything in particular that you're noticing in the numbers that might be sparked by those increased visits. Jonathan W. Ayers - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, first of all, I think they're most interested in the fact that we keep showing up, and we're there. The consistency of our presence is being noted by veterinarians. We're not like showing up and then not showing up for a long period of time. We keep coming back. And this is true with our customers that are using all of our diagnostic modalities. We're supporting them with – helping them to grow their practice, but it's also true with customers that may be using very little of IDEXX, but we keep showing up with ideas. They are very interested in our point-of-care solutions, real-time care, our reference lab modalities, our advances. I mean, SDMA is a big topic. Obviously, SediVue is a big topic. But generally what we're finding is, well, initially, as we get through to a decision maker, it may be something new that captures their initial attention. But then, it really opens up the door for how IDEXX is…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Next, we'll go to the line of Erin Wilson with Credit Suisse. Your line is open. Erin Wilson - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Great. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is sort of a follow-up to the first part of Ryan's question. I guess, can you speak to the one-lab approach and the competitive advantages of that offer and then what you can offer now from a bundling standpoint or promotional standpoint? Has that promotional activity changed in response to this one-lab effort and the direct approach? Are you really starting to take advantage of what you can do there with the direct strategy as it matures? Jonathan W. Ayers - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. Thank you. Obviously, first of all, the one-lab approach starts with one diagnostic consultant that's showing up regularly at the practice and can support a customer by growing their practice through adopting – what's interesting is that we have advanced menu on both our in-house analyzers and in the reference labs that isn't fully utilized by our customers. So we go in there and we have a discussion about how they can advance their diagnostics regardless of modality. So let's just start with the relationship is one which is agnostic to whether they want to run it in house or reference lab, and that really – customers appreciate that and they take their guard down because they know we're not coming with a point of view. And of course, what I didn't mention in my opening comments is we've continued to see the growth in VetConnect PLUS utilization, not only for results, by the way, and not only for results, but results with images. And now, of course, with SediVue, we're going to have in-house urinalysis…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We'll go to the line of Jon Block with Stifel. Your line is open. Jon Block - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Great. Thanks and good morning, guys. Maybe two from me. First one, Jon, back to what you mentioned on the sales and marketing, is that in business per year – is that the right number? Does it need to go higher as the company's innovation increases, meaning the need for more reps? Or now that you're almost 18 months into the go-direct experience, just your conviction level that you have the right number of reps and OpEx leverage may start to ramp a bit going forward? Jonathan W. Ayers - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. Thank you for that question. I would have approached that from a couple of dimensions. Fundamentally, from a financial model, we do see operating expense leverage in the North American commercial market. Now, with kind of growths that we're seeing, we can have operating expense leverage and we can add a few more feet on the street along the way. So those two are not inconsistent with each other because of the strong growth rates that we're seeing, and certainly that would be our intent. But it's really kind of backing and filling little places that we haven't quite gotten to the optimal level. We believe that the roughly 180-plus veterinary diagnostic consultants within a couple percent is the right set to fully cover the market. But the other thing that I want to mention is, I mentioned the 23% year-over-year growth in visits on a same-rep basis for the veterinary diagnostic consultants. While we've seen tremendous productivity advances already that we've booked and those will have a cumulative effect, as I said, quarter after quarter. We're not anywhere…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Mark Massaro with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open.

Mark Massaro - Canaccord Genuity, Inc.

Management

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Jon, can you provide us an update on when you initially started putting the SediVue in the hands of the initial users? And I think your guidance assumes 1,000 units. Can you just give us some context as to how you think that will track as we look out for the balance of the year? Jonathan W. Ayers - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: So we had really – I talked about two things. We had a couple of dozen units in the field that were non-revenue units in the first quarter that is part of our beta trial. It's part of our normal, refined instrument development and bringing it to market. We've gotten really good at bringing instruments to market, and one of those is to make sure we put the analyzer in the customer's hands in a beta to fully integrate all the learnings when the customers start using it because they do things we would never imagine they would do when we're looking at it in our test labs. What customers do with instruments in a veterinary environment, or maybe it's not just customers, but their pets, do to instruments surprises us. By the time we started shipping revenue units in April, we already had very good experience of how the unit would perform in the field from those beta trials. And so then, simultaneous to that, of course, we generated a revenue order backlog, as I said in Q1, and we started shipping revenue units against that, and we have a couple dozen in as part of a controlled launch process. We're always checking with customer feedback along the way to make sure we captured those learnings before we ramp the volume. The initial customer feedback has been extraordinarily positive. We're very pleased with where we were on the instrument launch. We are very excited – SediVue is going to be a major new modality. The value of a SediVue placement is closer to a value of a competitive catalyst than it is to a competitive hematology. And so, we're very – we feel very good about our outlook for the year, and that is incorporated in all the puts and takes in our revised organic growth guidance.

Mark Massaro - Canaccord Genuity, Inc.

Management

Okay. Great. And so you raised 2016 revenue guidance by $40 million; $27 million is FX related. So as we're looking at our model, how would you suggest we allocate the incremental $13 million beat? Is it broad-based or is there a particular bucket we should be focusing on? Brian P. McKeon - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: Q1 was clearly a key part of that, right? We had signaled in the 8% to 9% growth rate and we achieved 11% So, that's flowing through the Q1 benefit. And the balance is really kind of through the year. I think we gave you some specific numbers, Mark, for Q2. And I think we're feeling good about the SediVue trends. So, over time, we think that can flow through, but I think a meaningful part of that is the Q1 beat.

Mark Massaro - Canaccord Genuity, Inc.

Management

Okay. Jonathan W. Ayers - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Look, there are a lot of – I just want to remind you there are a lot of moving parts at IDEXX. Obviously, we had a lot of focus on parts of our business and not as much focus on other parts. We're an international company. We're in a lot of markets. Let's just take – the Water business had a phenomenal, knocking out of the park in the first quarter of 11%. That is not likely a sustainable number. We believe that's a high-single-digit growth business, and so all that's corporated [sic] in the annual guidance.

Mark Massaro - Canaccord Genuity, Inc.

Management

Great. Thanks. And maybe just one last one. You commented that the rapid test declined 1% organically in the quarter. How should we handicap the possibility that you return to a low to mid-single-digit growth outlook in 2016, and what are some of the challenges you're seeing in the field as you go out and compete against other providers? Jonathan W. Ayers - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. I would say I think that's – by the way, our rapid assay performance is as we expected, and I think we indicated that we felt it would be flat in the first quarter. And that's because the compares are toughest in the first quarter versus the balance of the year. We don't give guidance by modality by region, but we don't really see any change in the fundamental trends that we've seen over the back half of the last year terms of the strength of the 4Dx franchise and the trends in our first generation SNAP products. All those trends are continuing as we expected.

Mark Massaro - Canaccord Genuity, Inc.

Management

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We'll go to the line of David Westenberg with C.L. King. Your line is open. David Westenberg - C.L. King & Associates, Inc.: Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question and great quarter. You're seeing good traction abroad. Can you talk about the expected utilization internationally compared to the U.S.? Brian P. McKeon - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: Thank you for the question. I think you're probably referring to the instrument and consumable utilization there. David Westenberg - C.L. King & Associates, Inc.: Exactly, the catalyst utilization. I mean the catalyst placement numbers abroad have been really good for the last few quarters. Brian P. McKeon - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: And we're really seeing really nice consumable growth that's coming out of that augmented rate of placements. And so, the accounts outside the U.S. are smaller than the U.S. generally speaking. So the utilization per account is lower and we were – there's still a very significant installed base of tests that we're upgrading, although we continue to – none of those numbers included VetTest placements. We continue to place VetTest in some markets too, expanding our overall chemistry base, which is now over 40,000 active customers globally. But the rate of placements is really quite good in what are, generally speaking, have and always been smaller accounts. I think Catalyst One is just a phenomenal instrument because of all the things that brings complete menu, unique menu with things like T4 integrated, ease of use using whole blood with no issues, the footprint, the integration, the VetConnect PLUS, these are all unique aspects of Catalyst One that make it very attractive for these smaller practices outside the U.S. Let alone practices in the U.S. where, if they need the capacity,…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our final question will come from the line of Nicholas Jansen with Raymond James. Your line is open. Nicholas M. Jansen - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Hey, guys. Nice quarter. Just wanted to get a better sense of constant currency gross margins. Obviously, hedging gains and FX is playing a role there but gross margins were a little bit below our estimate. I'm just trying to get a better sense of how underlying trends are performing. I know you had a strong instrument quarter, so that might play a role. But just wanted to get more thoughts on constant currency gross margins. Brian P. McKeon - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: Yeah. I mentioned that the constant currency change year-on-year was 70 basis points down. So, taking out the currency hedge gain impacts, and it was really two dynamics. It was the – part of this was the – compared to – we had some favorable capitalized variances last year in terms of particularly in our LPD business that just had a high volume rate that flowed into lower product costs but you can see that in our reporting last year that we highlighted and that was a key part of it. The other piece of this is the instrument revenues and the instrument mix. Let's say that our comparable margins in our business are quite good. We're improving gross margins and labs. Our margins in our core instrument businesses and things like that are doing quite well. So, net-net, we think we're right on track relative to where our gross margin goals. We knew we had some of the compare issues on to FX heading into the year, but we're reinforcing the operating margin outlook, which was – effectively where (50:15) sustained gross margins…