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Medtronic plc (MDT)

Q4 2022 Earnings Call· Thu, May 26, 2022

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Transcript

Ryan Weispfenning

Management

Good morning. I'm Ryan Weispfenning, Vice President and Head of Medtronic Investor Relations. And I appreciate that you're joining us today for Medtronic’s Fiscal Year 2022 Fourth Quarter Earnings Video Webcast. Before we go inside to hear prepared remarks, I'll share a few details about today's webcast. Joining me are Geoff Martha, Medtronic Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Karen Parkhill, Medtronic Chief Financial Officer. Geoff and Karen will provide comments on the results of our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022, which ended on April 29, 2022, and our outlook for fiscal year ‘23. After our prepared remarks, our portfolio executive VPs will join us and we'll take questions from the sell side analysts that cover the company. Today's program should last about an hour. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release containing our financial statements, and divisional and geographic revenue summaries. We also posted an earnings presentation that provides additional details on our performance. The presentation can be accessed in our earnings press release or on our website at investorrelations.medtronic.com. During today's program, many of the statements we make may be considered forward-looking statements and actual results may differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ is contained in our periodic reports and other filings that we make with the SEC. And we do not undertake to update any forward-looking statements. Unless we say otherwise all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis. And revenue comparisons are made on an organic basis, which this quarter includes only adjustments for foreign currency as there were no acquisitions or divestitures made in the last four quarters that had a significant impact on total company or individual segment quarterly revenue growth. References to sequential revenue changes compared to the third quarter of fiscal ‘22 and are made on an as reported basis. And all references to share gains or losses refer to revenue share in the first calendar quarter of 2022 compared to the first calendar quarter of 2021, unless otherwise stated. Reconciliations of all non-GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings press release or on our website at investorrelations.medtronic.com. And finally, our EPS guidance does not include any charges or gains that would be reported as non-GAAP adjustments to earnings during the fiscal year. With that, let's head into this studio and get started.

Geoff Martha

Management

Hello, everyone. And thank you for joining us today. This morning we reported our Q4 results. Now there were parts of the quarter that played out as anticipated, and there were also some unexpected challenges more than I would have liked, which caused us to come up short of our expectations. As we anticipated procedure volumes in most of our markets reached pre-COVID levels by the end of the quarter. We also executed and delivered on recent product launches. However, we faced challenges related to supply chain in China that impacted some of our businesses, and were the largest contributors to our shortfall. Now, I’ll get into more detail on these challenges shortly, but you should take away that we understand the root causes, and we are well down the path to addressing them. And to be prudent however, we've assumed that these challenges will persist for the next quarter or two in the guidance that Karen is going to walk you through shortly. So let's focus on what happened this quarter. The shortfall to our revenue guidance was primarily due to two factors. China, where the extended COVID lockdowns affected our results in the quarter, particularly in April, and global supply chain challenges. Over the past few quarters global supply chain challenges have impacted many of our businesses. And as they arise, our teams have worked quickly to resolve them. And prior to this quarter, we had largely mitigated their financial impact. However, this quarter one of our largest businesses, Surgical Innovations, was adversely affected by certain raw material shortages. And this resulted in large back orders and caused our SI revenue to come in well below our expectations. Several of our other businesses also face supply challenges in the quarter, but to a lesser extent. Now we're down…

Karen Parkhill

Management

Thank you, Geoff. Our fourth quarter organic revenue increased 1.4%, below our guidance and consensus. Compared to consensus, about 15% of the difference can be attributed to China, given recent COVID shutdowns and slowing distributor purchases in spine ahead of a potential national volume based tender. About 10% of the difference is a result of changes in foreign exchange rates over the course of the quarter. And the remaining difference and the largest driver is due to supply chain issues that Geoff discussed. Despite revenue coming in roughly $350 million less than we expected, we reduced the impact that this would have had on our bottom line, resulting in EPS of $1.52, $0.04 below our guidance range. From a geographic perspective, our U.S. revenue declined 2%. Non-U.S. developed markets grew 4% and our emerging markets grew 7%. Within emerging markets, China declined 10%, given the impact of the COVID lockdowns. But we had very strong growth in many other emerging markets, including high-teens growth in Eastern Europe, low-20s growth in Latin America, low-30s growth in the Middle East and Africa, and mid-30s growth in South Asia. In fact, excluding China, emerging markets grew in the low-20s. Turning to our margins, our fourth quarter adjusted gross margin improved by 30 basis points year-over-year, driven by product mix with lower sales of ventilators and higher sales of products like Micra. While we were impacted by inflation with increased freight expense, it's worth noting that the full impact from inflation on raw material and direct labor costs will be realized over the next couple of quarters as our inventory rolls off our balance sheet, negatively affecting our gross margin. Moving down the P&L, we also drove additional and continued improvement in our adjusted operating margin, which increased by 40 basis points, excluding the…

Geoff Martha

Management

Thank you, Karen. While we spent a lot of time covering the fourth quarter, it's worth briefly reflecting on what we've accomplished in fiscal '22. It's certainly been a difficult environment, and our organization has enacted big changes in such a short period of time and under unique circumstances to better position the company. It was our first full year in the new operating model, and with our enhanced Medtronic mindset of acting boldly, competing to win, moving with speed and decisiveness, fostering, belonging and delivering results the right way. We've also made strides to becoming a more diverse and inclusive organization. And I was very proud that Medtronic was recognized earlier this month as number 10 on Diversity Inc.'s Top 50 U.S. Companies for Diversity. Even with that, we're committed to improving through innovative programs to attract, develop and retain top talent from all gender and ethnic backgrounds. Along those lines, we've made notable hires in fiscal '22, recruiting great talent from healthcare technology industry and beyond. While we've implemented a number of changes, this past year has been choppier than I would have liked with some of our growth drivers being pushed out and the impact from the pandemic, quality challenges and supply chain affecting our results. But we have a clear direction, a clear direction where we're headed as we transform the company. Let's start with the top-line. We remain laser-focused on accelerating the growth through robust capital allocation and portfolio management. You're seeing our efforts to enhance our future growth through greater investment in organic R&D, as well as portfolio moves. We've already spoken of the organic growth catalysts in front of us, many coming later this fiscal year. We're also executing a healthy cadence of tuck-in acquisitions in faster-growing markets, and we're focused on reducing…

A - Brad Lerman

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Today's Q&A session is being recorded. For today's session, Jeff, Karen and Ryan are joined by Sean Salmon, EVP and President of the Cardiovascular portfolio and former Head of the Diabetes operating unit; Bob White, EVP and President of the Medical Surgical portfolio; and Brett Wall, EVP and President of the neuroscience portfolio. [Operator Instructions] We'll take the first question from Vijay Kumar at Evercore ISI. Vijay, please go ahead.

Vijay Kumar

Analyst

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Geoff and Karen, maybe I had a two part question. I'll ask both right away. When I look at the 4 to 5 organic guide for fiscal '23, perhaps it came in slightly better than expected. Can you talk about some specific assumptions around even -- you noted supply chain, there were some back orders. Is there some contribution from supply chain back orders? Any further disruption from supply chain? What are you assuming for diabetes, robotics? I think China AVP is something that investors have asked. And Geoff, related to that, I think if I take a step back, the Medtronic pieces of mid-singles up high singles earnings. Consistency has been something that people have questioned. We've had some moving parts over the years. As you look at all the changes that have happened, -- maybe talk about what gives you the confidence that this consistency of mid-singles on the top and high singles on the EPS line should be something that investors should look forward to?

Geoff Martha

Management

Sure. Well, let me -- thanks for the question, Vijay. Maybe, I’ll take the second part of that question, and then Karen can take the first part of the details behind the 4% to 5% for FY '23. But on the second part in terms of the confidence of getting to that constant mid-single digit currency top-line and high-single digit EPS growth or double-digit total return to shareholders. I do think we're putting the right things in place. So first of all, just over the next -- Karen can detail this, but over the next year, you'll see the acute back order issues that we faced in Q4. Those abate over the next quarter or so, and we can get into the details of that. In addition, we're definitely anniversarying a lot of things that hurt us in FY '22, like exiting the LVAD business, the Navion recall, some tough comps on our ventilator business during the height of the pandemic. So these things abate over -- these things go away over the course of the fiscal year and you're starting now, actually. And then finally, we've got a lot of growth catalysts. We've talked a lot about the pipeline and I can go through that. There's a long list. I went through a lot of it in the commentary, but it's much broader than like the Hugo or our soft tissue robot, and already there's some big ones, but there's a whole lot of other ones as well. And then -- so that -- those things kick in, in the second half of this year and then get even bigger in FY '24. And then finally, we've got some portfolio moves that over the next year or so, I think we'll -- that will add to this. So that's…

Karen Parkhill

Management

Yeah. Thanks, Vijay, for the question, and I'd love to take this in pieces because I want to walk you through Q1 and then also talk about the full year because we expect improvement each quarter as we move through the year. So just starting with Q1, given our recent challenges, we've elected to take a conservative approach with our Q1 guide. We're assuming underlying fundamentals are pretty similar to last quarter to Q4, and we've built in some conservatism in the supply chain. If you look at the year-over-year view, it's influenced by COVID. And so to remove that noise, I think it's really good to look at it on a COVID comp-adjusted basis. And when you do that, our guide really just implies a slight deceleration from Q4 to Q1. That's not out of line with what we've seen historically. And again, I would just emphasize that we've included conservatism due to the supply chain. Some puts and takes that we've got in Q1, in addition to the supply chain impact that we factored in, we've also assumed some incremental pressure in spine in China ahead of a potential national volume-based purchasing tender. And Geoff already mentioned on the plus side, we anniversary some of our headwinds like the Navion recall and the LVAD shutdown. If I move beyond Q1 and then into the full year guide of the 4.5%, I mentioned we do expect improvement as we progress through the quarters with our back half much better than our first half. But I'd also talk about the puts and takes that we've got on the full year. We talked about the fact that we continue to actively work with the FDA on the diabetes warning letter. But for conservatism, we've elected not to assume the approval of the 780G in this guidance. And also, it's manageable, but we've got volume-based pricing in China that we believe will have a bigger impact in this fiscal year, primarily in Spine. And at the same time, Geoff talked about it, and we have a number of positives as we think about FY '23. First, we've got headwinds that are going to go away, the LVAD business, the Navion recall, the reduced ventilator sales that Geoff mentioned. And then we also had some volume-based pricing on drug-eluting stents in China that will anniversary. And combined, all of those headwinds had a 200 basis point impact in FY '22. Second, we expect these supply chain challenges to improve as starting in Q2 and obviously continuing to improve from there. And then thirdly, our year-over-year comps get easier, particularly in the back half. And then lastly, we've got a number of really important product launches throughout the year. And just to name a few of them, we've got Evolut FX, we've got ECAPs, we've got diabetic painful neuropathy. And again, I'm just naming a few. So I hope that's helpful and shows what our guidance implies as we move throughout the year.

Vijay Kumar

Analyst

That’s helpful color. Thanks, guys.

Geoff Martha

Management

Thanks, Vijay. Next question, Brad?

Brad Lerman

Analyst

The next question comes from Travis Steed at Bank of America. Travis, please go ahead.

Travis Steed

Analyst

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I'll ask a two part one as well. I guess, first on the elective procedure recovery. Curious how May is shaping up versus April kind of around the world, both in the U.S. and China as well. And then the second part was going back to kind of some of the supply chain issues. The impact this quarter is a little bit worse than some of your peers. I don't know if things got a lot worse in April, or there was something specific with surgical innovations. I just want to make sure we have the confidence that, that's going to start to improve here in the next quarter or two.

Geoff Martha

Management

Sure. I'll take the second one first. The supply chain issues, yeah, they did -- look, they did -- no one's more disappointed about our Q4 miss than I am. And we got -- we believe we understand the root cause of that miss. And it really started hitting us in the second half of Q4. And I'd say that 75% of the miss is due to -- of the $340 million, $350 million miss is due to supply chain. 15 -- and I'll get into that in a second, maybe about 15% is due to the China lockdown and then maybe another 10% is FX getting worse, and Karen can talk about that. But in the miss, the supply chain miss, it hit us across a number of businesses, but it was definitely the most pronounced in our Surgical Innovations business. And it was three things. It was semiconductors, which is affecting everybody that affected a number of businesses, but particularly in our SI business. It also was resins a particular resin that we use in our energy business and SI has been a major source of problem for us. And then packaging, our trade packaging there was a catastrophic explosion in our supply chain. And so those last two ones, the packaging and the resins were the biggest issues, the biggest supplier decommits. And I'd say the biggest surprise, and most of that was in SI. We see this getting better over the next -- the SI one is -- overall for the company, we see the supply chain issues getting abating over the next quarter or two. The SI issues probably it will take more than a quarter or so, put it on the first half of the year to get through those issues. We factored all…

Karen Parkhill

Management

Yeah. Travis, thank you. So just in terms of the month of May, it's still early. And we're obviously focused on managing through some supply issues that we've got in some of our businesses. So the numbers are a little cloudy, but when we look at our operating units that are not impacted by supply issues, just through the first three weeks of May, we're trending largely in-line with where we were first quarter last year. And I would note that elective procedures for the most part were back to pre-COVID levels for us last quarter.

Geoff Martha

Management

Okay. Thanks, Travis. Take the next question, Brad?

Brad Lerman

Analyst

The next question comes from Larry Biegelsen with Wells Fargo Securities. Larry, please go ahead.

Larry Biegelsen

Analyst

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Just Geoff, on The Kidney Company news today, should we expect more like this? Or could they be more significant? Just kind of remind us of what the overarching goals are. And Bob, maybe on Hugo, just help us understand what the expectations are for fiscal '23, the status of the supply constraints and the preop setup error, and when you expect to start the U.S. pivotal trial. Thanks so much, guys.

Geoff Martha

Management

Okay. Nice to hear from you, Larry. Thanks for the question. On the Renal Care Solutions joint venture with DaVita, this is what I'd characterize as a smaller initial step in terms of our portfolio management work. That work continues, and we do anticipate that there could be more portfolio moves over the course of FY '22. I'm not going to comment on the size of those. But I'd characterize this is a smaller initial step. It's been under consideration for a while. And like I said in the commentary, I am excited about this. This technology that we've been working on for years, I think DaVita, this joint venture will bring more focus to that finishing up the development. And then I think, obviously, DaVita as a leader in kidney care and will be a great partner as we commercialize and scale this innovative technology. They bring a lot to the table there. And I think we bring a lot to the table on the technology side and looking forward to it. But as we move forward, I don't know that I'm not -- the other portfolio moves would be JVs or anything like that. For this one, this one just made the most sense. And we think there's a lot of upside in this technology and the way we structured this deal. Both DaVita and Medtronic will share in that upside. So looking forward to that. In terms of the goals of the portfolio work, they remain unchanged. Our North Star is durable growth, durable growth without taking a step back on margins and free cash flow. We just want a higher level of growth. And so we want to remake the portfolio for a higher [Indiscernible] and more consistency and growth. So that's the goal. And I think the other -- the secondary goal would be just to simplify the company a bit. So that's -- those are the goals. That's where we're headed and more to come.

Bob White

Analyst

Thanks, Geoff. And Larry, good to hear from you. Thanks for the question. Let me provide you a good update on Hugo. So we're still in limited market release. We're making good progress on the supply chain issues. We're currently in eight countries. We've had a number of installs this past quarter in France and Italy and Denmark. We did receive regulatory approval in Brazil in Saudi Arabia, and you'll recall this followed Canada and Australia. We've begun general surgery cases in Panama, in Chile in India. And now we've done procedures across urology, gynecology and general surgery, including our first bariatric case, which was a nice milestone. The second part of your question was relating to the IDE. We expect to begin the IDE relatively soon. We're working closely to train the site personnel and gain IRB approval. So we'll certainly keep posted on that. But hopefully that helps done a good thorough take for where we stand on Hugo.

Geoff Martha

Management

Thanks, Larry. Next question, please, Brad.

Brad Lerman

Analyst

The next question comes from Shagun Singh at RBC Capital Markets. Shagun, please go ahead.

Shagun Singh

Analyst

Thank you so much for taking the question. I was just wondering if you can give us an update on your portfolio management initiatives. What are you assuming for Hugo sales in your FY '23 guidance? And can you elaborate on the magnitude of China VBP impacted FY '23? And lastly, if you can just comment on the capital environment. We've heard some puts and takes. Q1 has been a little soft. Just what your outlook is for the full year. Thank you for taking the questions.

Geoff Martha

Management

Okay, all right. We've got some good music there for a second. But I'll start, maybe there was a couple of -- there's on a list there, so maybe Karen can help me out. But I'll start on the Hugo one. We haven't quoted Hugo numbers for FY '23, but I'll just say we expect a strong ramp. We got the order book is really strong. You heard Bob just give an update about all the countries we've got approvals in and the different type of procedures that we're now doing, various type of procedures, including general surgery procedures. So we're moving up the food chain there. So we really gained a lot of confidence that we have something in Hugo, and we see a nice ramp in FY '23. But we haven't quoted exact numbers. In terms of the capital environment, capital for us in Q4 was a bright spot. And a lot of our capital that we sell are tied, directly tied to specific revenue-producing procedures, profitable procedures. I think that helps. And we had record numbers in the neuroscience space in our Spine business. We had a record number of sales of our StealthStation navigation, O-arm and Mazor. That capital equipment is at record highs for us. And we're really excited as we place those or we sell those -- that capital equipment, that's just further building out our ecosystem, which is our differentiating strength in the Spine business and portrays optimism for the future of that business. I'll turn it over to Karen for the other parts of the question.

Karen Parkhill

Management

Thanks, Geoff. The other two, you had a question on portfolio management, which I know Geoff shared when he answered Larry's question. So I'll cover China VBP. With VBP, we've been dealing with a variety of regional and national tenders already. And just from a national expectation we expect the government to continue to focus on the top 10 medical device products by public insurance spending. So we've been through stents already, and some of our other industry players have gone through large joints. And we see two more potential tenders on that list where we've got exposure, spine and surgical stapling. And I talked about the fact that we expect spine to impact us this fiscal year and to likely happen in the second quarter. But ahead of ahead of tenders, distributors do pull back on their purchases. So we built that into our first quarter guide as well. Just to remind you, though, our gross exposure for both spine and stapling in China somewhere between 1% to 1.5% of our total company revenue. So it is small. And based on what we experienced with the coronary tender, we do believe there could be offsets to the ultimate net impact number because we have pull-through of other product lines, and we'll be working on those.

Geoff Martha

Management

Thanks, Shagun. Let’s go to the next question please, Brad.

Brad Lerman

Analyst

Yep. The next question comes from Josh Jennings at Cowen & Company. Josh, please go ahead.

Josh Jennings

Analyst

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to ask on the diabetes U.S. pump business. I know there's a lot of moving parts. But just with the further deceleration in fiscal 4Q, I was hoping you could share some insights in terms of why you think that's occurring. Is the warning letter in place kind of painting endocrine prescription patterns work or patient sentiment? Are you seeing incremental renewal pressure? Just wanted to get a better sense and then how you see that U.S. pump business trending over the course of the year. And then any other incremental details you can share just on interactions with the FDA? And I know you pulled that out of your guidance for fiscal '23 and the 780G regarding for approvals. But what gives you hope that you could still see those approvals occur in this fiscal year? Thanks for taking the questions.

Geoff Martha

Management

Thanks, Josh for the questions. I'm going to turn it over to Sean here in a second, although he has officially moved on from that role to focus exclusively on our Cardiology portfolio. We have him on the call answering the diabetes questions this quarter. And I'll just say a few words about Que Dallara. She joined the company here a couple of weeks ago and has taken over our diabetes business unit, and we couldn't be really excited about having Que. She's already diving right in, she's already at ATTD, and she'll be in some other upcoming diabetes meetings that you'll get to see her. And she'll be on our next earnings call to fuel these questions, and she's getting settled in now and is moving her family out to our Northridge, California site and really excited you'll get a chance to hear from her shortly. In the meantime, I'm going to field this question to Sean. So Sean, can you answer the question that Josh post?

Sean Salmon

Analyst

Yeah, sure. Josh, thanks for the question. So the dynamics on the revenue side of things are really all about the competitiveness in the United States. We grew sequentially quarter-on-quarter in EMEA by 20%, high-20s. And that's really based on the strong demand for that combination of 780 and the Guardian 4 sensor, which is now in 40 different countries. So everywhere we go, it's really picked up a lot of steam this past quarter that was driven by favorable reimbursement. We had no reimbursement in either France or Germany. We picked up that reimbursement and that really helped us drive that continued growth. So within the U.S., the dynamic is obviously people waiting for the new technology to come before prescribing it for new patients or some patients not wanting to wait for it and moving on to competitive therapies. With regard to the warning letter progression, it's really -- as Karen said, we did conservatively lead that out of the guidance. I think that's prudent. But the most important thing we have to do is to improve and sustainably improve the quality system, which was outlined in those items that were in the 43 and the subsequent warning letter. And we've made excellent progress against those commitments. We're more than 80% the way through fulfilling all those commitments. And it's also important to note that the 780 and Guardian 4 Sensor are under active review with the FDA right now. And we don't want to get ahead of the FDA on timing or predictions, and that's really the reason for the conservatism, but suffice it to say, there's a huge interest from patients. The technology continues to prove itself in real-world applications. And you just see the numbers going up for both revenue, as well as the data we shared, the recent ATDD meeting, the coming up ADA. It's really a robust solution, a unique solution, where we're getting kids to time and range that has never been seen before. And that's during the day, overnight. And of course, it's worked for adults too at the highest time in range debt reported. So we're very confident that when we get the solution out, we'll turn the boat around. But I think for conservatism because we can't predict it. That's what's in the guidance.

Geoff Martha

Management

Thanks, Josh. Next question, please, Brad?

Brad Lerman

Analyst

The next question comes from Joanne Wuensch at Citi. Joanne, please go ahead.

Joanne Wuensch

Analyst

Hi, how are you this morning.

Geoff Martha

Management

Hey, Joanne. Good to hear from you.

Joanne Wuensch

Analyst

So when I take a look at your guidance, you've got what, in your words are or is a pretty conservative first quarter, and then it ramps pretty aggressively throughout the remainder of the year. I know you don't like to give quarterly guidance, but just to sort of level set us so that we're not resetting the quarters as we go along. Talk us through how you ramp and what improves. And if you can just sort of give a classic like X percent in the first quarter, Y in the second quarter, et cetera, that would be really helpful. Just to sort of build out from here.

Karen Parkhill

Management

Yeah. Thanks, Joanne, for the question. I'm going to not give specific guidance for the other quarters. But I will let you know that we've got these things that anniversary through the quarter. So ventilator sales was up and down in the quarter. And I know Ryan can take you in the after call about those changes that that happen in ventilator sales. And then obviously, we expect our biggest supply challenges this quarter and starting to improve in second quarter. So think about a ramp of revenue growth just getting better and better every quarter. And by the time you get to the back half, our year-over-year comps obviously get easier. And particularly in the fourth quarter, particularly in MedSurg, given the fourth quarter that we had. So think of strongest growth, obviously, in the fourth quarter as you ramp. And that is in line with how we think about our product launches too going through the year. We've got some product launches that are helping us earlier in the year, and then more that will ramp as we go through the year. So I know that Ryan can easily take you through some more of the detail, too.

Joanne Wuensch

Analyst

Appreciate that. And then for my second question, renal denervation you've completed the enrollment of the last piece of the puzzle. It sounds like data won't be presented in the fall, but we may get data in the spring. Are you thinking FDA approval mid next year, calendar year?

Geoff Martha

Management

Sean, you want to take that one?

Sean Salmon

Analyst

Yeah, Joanne, we will fill that last piece of the PMA, which is that last bit of data when we have it. And that would dictate the timing for the review clock starts. It's important to note that we've done a modular PMA. So every other part of this advice characterization, all the manufacturing modules has have already been reviewed and closed. So it's really this last piece of it that would go into the review.

Joanne Wuensch

Analyst

Excellent. Thank you and have a great day.

Geoff Martha

Management

Thanks, Joanne.

Sean Salmon

Analyst

Thank you, Joanne.

Ryan Weispfenning

Management

We have time for one more question, Brad.

Brad Lerman

Analyst

Sure. Our final question comes from Pito Chickering, Deutsche Bank. Pito, please go ahead. Pito, are you on mute?

Pito Chickering

Analyst

Yeah. There you go. Can you guys hear me now?

Geoff Martha

Management

Yes, we can.

Pito Chickering

Analyst

Great. Thank you for taking my questions here. This question is sort of pretty hard to answer, but I'll ask it anyway. We heard that the U.S. hospitals are beginning to defer procedures due to lack of contrast, dye supplies for interventional cardiology. Any chance you can let us know what you're seeing and hearing, what you're assuming is in your first quarter guidance? And what, if any, impact there is from outside the U.S. due to the shortages from GE?

Karen Parkhill

Management

Yeah, thanks, Pito, for that question. So contrast dye we believe it's a transient issue. It's mostly contained to the U.S. It is something that we're closely watching because it can impact our cardiovascular and neurosciences portfolios. But we do expect it to resolve within the quarter just based on what we're hearing. Many health systems in the United States have already instituted conservation measures. And we're working with them to see how we can help support them through thoughtful allocation. But at this stage, we've built our view of it into the guidance for the first quarter, and we do believe it's a transient issue getting better after the first quarter.

Pito Chickering

Analyst

A quick follow-up on the transaction with DaVita today. What was the organic growth rate of Renal Care Solutions, and kind of what is the strategic value you guys will DaVita set adding to their portfolio? Thanks so much.

Geoff Martha

Management

Well, I'll answer it. Thanks for the question, Pito. I'll answer the second part of it, the strategic value. I mean look, I think we both -- the transaction revolves around a big piece of the value creation will be us bringing some innovative home dialysis technologies to the market that the inherent in that technology is some something that we picked up from other businesses in Medtronic and the IP around it and the know-how. And we're building that into this home dialysis technologies. There will be a couple of different products. It drives up access, it lowers costs and there's a better patient experience. And we bring that to the table. But just even just in the United States context, the dialysis market is pretty unique. And the go-to-market channel is not something that we have any kind of synergies with. And so DaVita brings one, that channel that access to these customers, and they have a lot of -- obviously, they're a leader in kidney care, so they bring a lot of clinical expertise as well. So I think it really is regarding the home dialysis technology. It is 1 plus 1 definitely equals more than 2 here. And we're excited about it. We think it's going to have a big impact. And the way like I said before, the way we structured it we get to share in the upside with DaVita. In terms of the other question the organic --

Karen Parkhill

Management

It's about the growth in renal care, Pito, and it was low-single digits for us last fiscal year. It is a lower growth, lower margin business for us.

Ryan Weispfenning

Management

Thanks, Pito. Geoff, please go ahead with your closing remarks.

Geoff Martha

Management

Sure, thanks, Ryan. Okay. Well, thanks for the questions, everyone. And as usual, we appreciate your support and your continued interest in Medtronic. And look, I realize there's a lot to sort through here, including the macro issues of supply chain and China that surprises this quarter. But as we’ve talked about, we’ve conservatively factored these into our guidance going forward. But I think more importantly, I hope you see that there is a clear direction a clear direction travel for the company where we’re headed. It gets back to the some of the questions earlier like Vijay posed, in terms of us getting to that mid-single digit, 5% plus and the double-digit shareholder returns on a consistent basis. The things that we're doing, the new operating model that's driving the more innovation-driven growth the capital allocation and portfolio management to reposition our portfolio for higher growth. And finally, the global operations and supply chain changes that we’ve working on to provide that resiliency and provide that consistency that we need -- these are the right things to do. I'm confident -- I mean the macro environment has made it choppier to execute on these things, but we're heading in the right direction. We're making the right moves. And just again, this will benefit the company and get us where we need to go. So we're looking forward to update you on the progress in our Q1 earnings program, which we anticipate owning on August 23. And so with that, thanks again for tuning in today. And please stay healthy and safe. And have a great rest of your day.