Earnings Labs

Smith & Nephew plc (SNN)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 4, 2016

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Transcript

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Full Year Result Presentation. We'll start by covering the highlight of full year and give you an update on the delivery of our strategy. Then I will give you details on our Q4 revenue before handing over to Julie to take you through the numbers, and I will conclude with a summary. As you know, we'll take the questions at the end. I also would like to welcome our Chairman, Roberto Quarta today in the audience. Roberto, good morning. As we said in our guidance for 2015, we have accelerated our sales growth, improved the trading margin and delivered an uplift in adjusted earnings. The underlying revenue growth of 4% for full year is twice the rate which is in 2014. Behind these underlying number is a better performance for many of our global franchise and geographies. We have successfully turned around Advanced Wound Care, particularly in the U.S. and delivered 8% growth for the year. Our Knees franchise has driven strong Recon growth, and Sports Medicine Joint Repair goes from strength to strength. Geographically, the emerging market have grown double digit despite the slowdown in China. In addition, in 2015, we announced five bolt-on acquisitions. Most recently, we acquired Blue Bell Technologies, giving us a presence in the fast-growing area of robotic assisted surgery. Trade profit was $1.1 billion, giving a trading margin of 23.7%, an improvement of 80 basis points over last year. And Julie will highlight our expense and tax optimization programs, leverage our revenue growth to deliver EPS growth of 2% which will have been 9% at constant currency. Today, we also announced a final dividend of $0.19 giving a full-year dividend of $0.308 representing a 4% growth. For our UK shareholders, at current exchange rates, this translates…

Julie Brown

Management

Thank you, Olivier, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And we'll start with the financial highlights for the full year. Revenues were just over $4.6 billion with growth at constant exchange rates at 8%, and underlying growth of 4%. Trading profit grew ahead of this with 10% at constant exchange rates, and 5% underlying growth. This resulted in a trading margin of 23.7%, an 80-basis-point improvement over last year. EPSA was $0.851, reported growth of 2%, and 9% at constant exchange rates. And completing the picture, trading cash flow was $936 million, a conversion rate of 85%, and improvement on a 74% in the prior year. Free cash generation was $672 million. Net debt reduced by around $250 million as the acquisition payments in the year to just under $1.4 billion. This was a closing net-debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 1. I will now look at each of these areas in turns starting with revenue. This slide shows the adjustments between underlying and reported revenue performance in quarter four. The business delivered a strong underlying revenue growth of 5%. There was one additional sales day in Q4 compared with the same period last year, and this will have boosted underlying growth by around 1%. In Established Markets, growth for the quarter was 6%, and this is our strongest Established Market performance since we started reporting the region in 2012 driven by the U.S. with 9% growth. In Emerging Markets, growth was 2% for the quarter, and as Olivier mentioned, in China, we continue to see a significant slowdown in sales. The group overall excluding China grew 7% on an underlying basis in Q4. Next, acquisitions added 2 percentage points to the reported growth rate. This includes the impact of the ZUK knee which we acquired midyear, as well as the impact of…

A - Olivier Bohuon

Management

Thank you, Julie. So, in conclusion, I think we can say we had a good year and we finished strongly. We delivered higher underlying revenue growth, trading profit and adjusted earning year-on-year. At the heart of these are our innovative products and solution delivered through a more focused organization and continuing improvement in execution. We have continued our disciplined M&A strategy, which in 2015 has further reinforced our portfolio and market position. So, looking ahead, we expect to deliver continued good revenue growth in 2016, as we benefit from our investments in existing businesses, and pioneering technologies. Our medium-term ambition to increasingly outgrow the market in which we operate remains unchanged as we continue our journey to transform Smith & Nephew. So, thank you, and that ends the formal presentation, and we will be happy now to take questions. Thank you.

A - Olivier Bohuon

Management

Yes?

Lisa Clive

Management

Hi. Lisa Clive from Bernstein. Julie, you talked about the cost savings program, which sounds like it's well on track. I believe in the press release that it was at $100 million. Was that the exit rate for the year? And if so, could you give us what the actual underlying full year savings was in 2015. And of the remaining balance to get to that $120 million, how much we should expect in 2016 versus 2017? And also, you seem to imply that it's a minimum of $120 million. So maybe what could be our positive expectations around something greater than that? And likewise, also, on the ArthroCare synergies, it's $85 million in total synergies. I'm a little bit confused about how that's supposed to be split between revenues and cost.

Julie Brown

Management

$65 million in costs and $25 million in revenue. It's $20 million, actually, $20 million and $65 million when we did the deal.

Lisa Clive

Management

Okay. And so just to clarify, if you've actually gotten the full amount of the cost savings at this point. And then lastly, you mentioned the medical device tax reprieve. And clearly, the general consensus from the med tech companies seems to be reinvestment. But the reinvestments that you're specifically doing, how should we think about how that potentially accelerates top-line growth or what are the real benefits from that other than just the reinvestment?

Julie Brown

Management

Okay.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

So, let me just take the last one quickly on medical device then I hand it to Julie . The medical portfolio is one year, two years. We don't exactly know how long it takes - it will last. We have between $20 million and $25 million of medical device tax. The reinvestment that we plan to do is not something which is supposed to be really in the business. What we need to do and what we want to do is we enhance our quality systems in manufacturing. Why? Because we have more and more requirements and regulations [indiscernible] in the U.S. with the FDA. And so, we want to be at the top. So, we want to take this opportunity to put the money here as well as in IT systems. So, that will not go in the business.

Lisa Clive

Management

Okay.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

To support business.

Julie Brown

Management

So, I'll take the group optimization one and the ArthroCare synergies one. So, in terms of group optimization, we've achieved annualized benefit to-date of now $100 million. And the approximate impact in terms of trading in 2017 was $70 million. In terms of the future program, we do expect to achieve more than $120 million, and we would expect it to be more or less phased mostly in 2016 with an element in 2017. So, I mean the bottom line is we've done a huge amount of work in the business. The whole business is being engaged with this, from procurement to single managing directors to functional optimization and also improving much better quality, financial and HR information to the business. So we're really, really pleased as to how it's gone, and like I say, it's ahead of plan, in fact, it's where we expect it to be. In terms of ArthroCare, the revenue synergy is just pretty much the revenues synergies in ArthroCare with $50 million and the drop-through on that was $20 million and the cost synergy is $65 million. We're actually really pleased. We closed the ArthroCare integration office early, so it was going so well. We've had great results in the U.S., and we've seen from the sales result how good that's been. In terms of the cost savings, we do - we've now delivered most of it, so a large part of this is already now being delivered.

Lisa Clive

Management

Okay. And then one last final question for Olivier. On your Trauma business, the zero percent growth and this has been a sort of perpetual challenge...

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Yes.

Lisa Clive

Management

It's the one business that just doesn't seem to be turning around. Clearly, China didn't help. But excluding China, what would that business have grown, and where should we really expect it to grow longer term?

Olivier Bohuon

Management

We don't disclose the terms per geography. But China has been the real slowdown of Trauma. Trauma was not doing badly, actually. It was the - it was okay. But you are right. It has been up and down and sometimes we face some valleys. But that was not a valley this time. It was okay. China was the main issue, and we think this [indiscernible].

Lisa Clive

Management

Okay. Thanks very much.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Yes? Then, Veronica.

Alex Kleban

Management

Hi, Alex Kleban from Barclays. For my three questions. One, I was going to ask about the portfolio. And if you look across your portfolio and you think about maybe potential product apps? What do you think about upper extremity in terms of shoulder, elbow, wrist replacements and total ankle replacements in lower extremity and potentially investing in that? It seems like - at least upper extremity has good overlap with the Sports Med business, so just wondering your thoughts on that? Secondly, a bit more color on price volume for Healthpoint in Q4, just wondering if you've done some price cuts to generate volume or vice versa. And I guess longer-term question on tax rates. So, we have the 26.5% for this year, but can you give us a sense or trajectory for maybe the next three years in terms of that continuing to decline?

Olivier Bohuon

Management

In what? Sorry?

Alex Kleban

Management

Tax rate.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

For tax rate, okay.

Alex Kleban

Management

That's right. And maybe long or very long term, can we ever think about a sub-20% tax rate like what we see at some of the peers in the med tech division?

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Julie will take your two questions here. On price volume in Healthpoint, which is now not anymore Healthpoint, actually. It's Smith & Nephew Biology. We have mainly volume. We are fine-tuning some prices here and there, but there's no global price increase. So that was mainly volume.

Julie Brown

Management

I'll take the tax rate, and then we'll come back to the extremities question. So, yeah, for the tax rate, again, I think we've done a really good job. We got it down to 26.5% next year, slightly below that. In terms of the onwards projection, we've decided to guide on tax only one year, but we normally would do any one year. And the reason for that is tax is changing so much as I think everybody knows with BEPS, with Base Erosion Profit Shifting and also with country-by-country reporting. We don't want - because the tax legislation is changing so much, we don't want to guide out more than one year. It's interesting you mentioned some of the peers, the U.S. companies in particular and pharma, of course, as well with some low tax rates around 20% or below. I think the difference is with the U.S. peer in particular, they don't record the tax or the deferred tax on their offshore cash. And if you actually adjust for that, if you do a like-for-like comparison between our tax rate now at 26.5%, and theirs, it's actually very similar. If you normalize the U.S. GAAP and IFRS, it's actually very similar. So we're, actually, really pleased with where we've got the company to. It's exactly what we committed to do. And, actually, we've delivered exactly what we committed on. I think those are the main points, I think.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Yeah. On the upper extremities, Phil, wants absolutely to answer the question there. So, go ahead, Phil.

Phil Cowdy

Management

So, upper extremities, yes, we're interested in that space. Most of our product launches recently had been around hand and wrist, and we showed some at AAOS last year. In terms of the shoulder itself, we have one small product but we're not big in that particular prospect. But, yes, we like extremities.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

We do like extremities. I confirm. Veronica?

Veronika Dubajova

Management

Thank you, Olivier. Thank you very much. Veronica Dubajova from Goldman Sachs. I have questions, three, I'll make them three.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Three is the maximum.

Veronika Dubajova

Management

Three is the max?

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Yes, three.

Veronika Dubajova

Management

Understood. So, my first question is just conceptually around the operating leverage in your business. Just because if I look at what you reported this year, stripping out currency, you delivered 4% top line and 5% trading profit growth while you were doing quite a lot of work on restructuring. So, I'm trying to understand, once we get through the $120 million and the $85 million from ArthroCare, how are you thinking about underlying leverage in the business? And if you are delivering, let's call it, mid-single-digit growth, what do you think are the opportunities for you to get some operational leverage on top of that? And related to that, I know we - you haven't yet hit the $120 million. But as you look at the cost base now, Julie, that you're mostly through the program. Do you see opportunities for anything beyond that? My second question is just a quick one on price and volume or pricing mix in hips and knees. I don't know if you just called it out in the slide as a regular trend or if there was anything that you saw on the quarter? And my last question is just on Syncera, when we might get an update from you on how that is progressing from a revenue perspective.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Okay. Let me take the three last questions, and we will go with the operating leverage I think with Julie.

Julie Brown

Management

Okay.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

And Julie, feel free to add also. Can I start?

Julie Brown

Management

You start.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Ladies first. Go ahead.

Julie Brown

Management

Okay. I'll go ahead. So, in terms of operating leverage, I think if we look at what we've achieved just in the business in terms of underlying cost savings program, we've now delivered in the order of $250 million of savings in structural cost base. What we find out with the business is there is still so many opportunities to invest to drive the growth. As you're seeing, we've taken the sales growth rate from very low-single digit of 2% now to more or less 4% - around 4% mark. So, we still feel there's opportunity for growth, and we have got a mix of margins in our business as well and in particular emerging markets tend to run as a lower margin than the group operates and certainly established markets, we've got lower margin in an established market. So there, what we wanted to do is still invest for growth because we still see significant opportunity in those regions. So, I think, you're right, Veronica, we wouldn't expect the operating leverage. We tend to only get it when you get to the mid-single digit sale growth rate - excuse me, sales growth rate. In terms of further cost base opportunities, when we set about doing re-optimization, we really wanted to tackle when we saw the four major levers of change. So, that was really in the functions. It was procurement. It was also the size, and it was single MD. So, we went from two or three managing directors in a country to one. The new opportunities that we're working on now, I guess, which was part of the program but we're now progressing is what Olivier mentioned, which we're now doing single MD in the U.S. market for the first time. So, we've not done that before. That's a new change this year. And I think we will still have opportunities as we create global business services, and we rationalize some of the activities in the functions. So, we're using outsourcing now a lot in terms of off shoring.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Yeah.

Julie Brown

Management

Over to you for price.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Yes. Well, let me come back on the opportunities because I think that it's a good question. And, again, when we started the global automation plan, you remember, I see we focus on four item. It was the functions. The second one was the spend control and the layers. The third one was on the commercial footprint, and the last one very important was procurement. So, we have done a lot on these. For example, you take the commercial footprint. This has not generated yet all the benefits because we have, obviously, a cost linked to the people leaving or not moving and so. So, I think there is still some opportunities there. And we are going to continue to work on this item. I believe Julie mentioned the U.S. single MD, which obviously means also potential saving opportunity here, and mixing two businesses in one business with common functions. There is definitely an opportunity here. We also think about opportunities in refocusing the R&D, putting the R&D as a global entity. We'll certainly also find some benefits here. It's early stage, but we believe there is a certain opportunity. So, all these makes me confident that, yes, we are in the middle of the journey. There is a lot to do. Procurement is not done. We still have a lot of things to do. So, I'm pretty happy to see what we can do in the future. In terms of price, very stable. I mean, we have not seen any changes in the prices in the U.S. and in Europe. I mean, very stable as usual. It's not the - and you see that market growth actually also pretty stable. I remember I was thinking this morning about this when I first came here talking about the recon market in the U.S., I answer your question about would that go back up. It doesn't actually. You've seen the market this year is 2% in recon, so we don't see that. We see us leading this market and winning, so that's for sure. And Sports Medicine, no price erosion. In Wound Management, as usual. In Emerging Markets, some opportunities of price increase. I think that's all.

Julie Brown

Management

Just going back to the price point, and then I think Olivier will want to take Syncera.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Yes, I would take Syncera.

Julie Brown

Management

In terms of - although it seems that price erosion has not changed, we have got also cost of goods efficiency programs. So, when you're looking at the gross margin full with 30 basis points that I mentioned, largely that's the transactional exchange coming through that's not been offset by hedging this year. So, actually the cost of goods efficiency programs are working, procurements working on direct materials, and lean through the operating facilities, et cetera, is driving cost of goods efficiency.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Yeah. On Syncera, well, look, I'm not going to tell you many things on Syncera because we plan to do it at Q2 as announced in Q3 last year. Things are doing well, actually. Things are fairly strong in terms of understanding of the value of the proposition, extremely good feedback from customers. The only downside I would say is maybe it's slower than what we are expecting in terms of capturing customers. Why? Because we realized the complexity of changing a model to another one. So, I think this is the only thing which - I can tell. A bit slower than what I expected, but even better in terms of feedback from our customers that we have now in the portfolio. So, I will know more in Q2 and Q3 - sorry, yeah, in Q2 and we'll get back to you more details on this one. In terms of procedures, we are doing well, so we are on track. But again, it takes some more time. Okay. Maybe we can take questions on the phone, two questions by phone.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We will take our first question now from Michael Jüngling from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Michael Jüngling: Great. Thank you and good morning. I have three questions. Firstly on CJR, going into the event in April, can you sort of comment on what the customers are saying to you? Are they asking for a greater price discounts? Are they asking for better technology? Some commentary around that would be useful. Secondly on China, could you give me please the other constant currency sales gross rates for Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4? And then the final question I have is on the transactional EBIT margin headwind of 120 basis points, can you please provide the major currencies which are driving it? So, for instance, maybe by ranking dollar-ruble, dollar-renminbi, dollar-real. Some guidance on that would be helpful. Thank you.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Okay, Michael. Thank you for your questions. So, I will take the two first questions on CGR and on China. CGR starts in April as you said, but we have not seen any type of questions regarding price discounts or different technology. We are pretty proactive with these hospitals. And again, I think that our message is the following: We can help you in decreasing your cost. We can help you in having less people coming back to the hospital if we treat well the wound with the portfolio of Smith & Nephew. We can offer a solution which is Syncera also, which is definitely a good way to minimize the cost and have great outcomes. So, that's the message. So, we are proactive. We have not received so far any type of push in terms of, you have to get your prices or you have to do something different. So, that's not yet in the air. Regarding China, while the growth of China, again, we have been affected by Chinese drop slowdown since July roughly and Q4 was, as expected, was pretty slow. We see two things in China - three things. The first one is that it doesn't affect all the products because it mainly affect the stock at the distributor level, inventory. And what is happening is in business like Trauma - the most affected in Trauma, Sports Medicine, and Wound for three different reasons. In Sports Medicine, we have seen a drop of the acquisitions of the capital and that started in July. I mean, the start of this. In Wound Management, we're pretty new in wound management. So, we have a high stock in Wound Management, possibly a negative pressure business. And so, obviously, having a bigger stock means that you have the stock going…

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Yeah. It is a negative number. Again, I mean, the comparison of last year was very high also, and it's truly it's a negative number. But it's - let's see what 2016 will be.

Julie Brown

Management

Okay. I'll take the question on exchange, transactional exchange rate. So, the reason we've got the exposure, Michael, to give you a bit more background to 120 basis points, as we thought, revenues in U.S. dollars about half of our business but the cost of goods, the U.S. dollar is dominant about three quarters of our cost of goods because of where we got the manufacturing facilities, particularly in ASD, which is largely in the U.S. In terms of the sales, therefore, obviously, when the dollar strengthens, the sales effectively weaken relative to the cost of goods. And in terms of - I won't give you a perfect split of the currency, but roughly, we've got emerging market currencies which is about 15% of our sales, as you know, and then clearly, the next biggest currency is the euro. And then the rest of the exposure is really sliced across the pound, the Australian dollar, the Japanese yen, and those are the main other currencies that are in play. So, I hope I gave you enough of the flavor as to why we've got the transactional headwind. As I mentioned as well, before we've got a very comprehensive hedging policy and that really helped us during 2015, so we've been able to caution what happened in exchange rates during the course of 2015. We've been able to caution that with the hedging. Of course, in 2016, most of those hedges are rolling off; and hence, you get the steep drop. Michael Jüngling: Okay. Olivier, just on China. When you're sort of growing at minus 20%, minus 30% or so in the fourth quarter, how do you know this is market development versus perhaps Smith & Nephew's own underperformance because those growth rates are extraordinarily in the context of the economy that is still showing positive healthcare growth?

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Michael, because we have done some homework on this, believe me, and we know that the end market demand is really dropping. And that's the reason why this is happening. And we know that we are not underperforming in China. Michael Jüngling: Great. Thank you.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Another question by phone and then we go back to room.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We now have a question from Julien Dormois from Exane. Please go ahead.

Julien Dormois

Analyst

Hi. Good morning, Olivier and good morning, Julie.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Good morning, Julien.

Julien Dormois

Analyst

I have mainly three questions. The first one regards to bioactives. I was just wondering if you could be - give a bit more details about how you see growth in bioactive in 2016? You had guided for high-single digits in 2015, so should we replicate that for 2016? And what would be the driver behind this renewed good growth you would have in bioactive? The second one relates to wound care. I think you've highlighted that you've seen a sustainable improvement in advanced wound care. Should we consider that the run rate you had in H2 for a mid-single-digit is sustainable into 2016, or it would be more likely the low-singles because the comps will be tougher? And the last question is on BHR, just wondering if you think that 2016 could be the final year where BHR stops dragging, because I think you said there was 1 percentage point of impact in Q4. When will that end?

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Thank you, Julien. Yes. Good question. So, on the bioactive growth, we have a guidance, which is roughly the same than what we said last year, actually. It would be a high-single digit growth for the bioactive driven by SANTYL. We know this will face some [indiscernible] issues into the reimbursement, but it's a guidance which is roughly the same than what we did in 2015 for 2016. So, here no change. In the Advanced Wound Care, yes, you're right. I mean, it was very strong. The growth in the U.S. in Q4 was 27%. So, that shows you how important is the dynamic of the wound care. And an important is what I told you last year, the change of management, the actions we have taken in wound care, refocusing our people on the right products. The changes in the incentive system and so on and forth, so that works. So, yes, we have received a tougher [indiscernible] for the growth. But we expect the growth to hit the market in the 2016 in Advanced Wound Care. That's what I can tell you. Regarding the last question on BHR, who knows? mean, BHR, I've always been in the position to tell you that it was the end. It's never the end. So, it's lower and lower actually. I mean, for us, it's right now 6%, Julie, for this business. Less than 6%...

Julie Brown

Management

5%.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

...5% of the hip business, which is minimal in the company, but still, it's 5%. It has a negative impact of 1 point in the growth of the hip business. So, it will be less and less that's what I can tell you. Now, is it the end? I don't know.

Julien Dormois

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. And maybe just one follow-up if I may on Emerging Markets. I think you indicated 15% underlying growth excluding China. I just want to make sure that's good for Q4 and not for the full year.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

It was for the full year. Yeah. Both - they're the same actually. Both for Q4 and full year, the same.

Julien Dormois

Analyst

And full year?

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Yes.

Julien Dormois

Analyst

Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

It's very worthwhile because I was asking the same question this morning talking to Julie and Phil. So, that's exactly 15-15.

Julien Dormois

Analyst

Thank you very much.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Thank you, Julien. Okay. Back to room. Yes, Tom?

Tom Jones

Analyst

Thanks for taking my questions. I had two, actually. One is just on what's going on in orthopedics in the U.S. at the moment. To what extent do you think, your hip and knee franchise has benefited from the disruption around this environment measured last year? And now, at J&J, assumingly turning itself and [indiscernible] do you expect there to be some disruption that you could benefit from this year? I was just wondering kind of what you're seeing on the ground in that context. And then the second question is just on FX. And obviously you've protected yourself last year, all those hedges are now rolling off. To what extent have you locked in the 120 basis point headwind this year, or are you kind of now naked as far as FX goes and could potentially benefit should things start to move in your favor?

Olivier Bohuon

Management

You want to take the FX, Julie?

Julie Brown

Management

Yeah. I could take the FX. Yeah. So, most of the 120 would be locked in. I mean, what basically happened is that Q3, I guided to 100 basis points on the gross margin as you know, Tom. And in Q4 there's a further strengthening of the dollar. And so that caused a difference of about 20 basis points. So, you'd expect, because that's essentially the fourth quarter impact where we have not fully hedge out that far, so you've got the fourth quarter coming through in the 2016 results, coming in from 100 to 120. So, most of the 120 will be locked in, but not completely because that final part of 2016 will still be volatile depending on where exchange rates move.

Tom Jones

Analyst

So, basically, if currencies improved, we're not going to see any benefit until 2017 really?

Julie Brown

Management

You would see some benefit. So, say it moves 45%, you'd expect to see about 20, 20 to 30 basis points through the latter part of 2016. But the early part of 2016 no because of the hedging.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Regarding your question on Arthro U.S., yes, we're doing very well. But again, it's a mix of things. It's, first of all, the dynamic of the knee which is doing extremely well. And we expect as I said in my presentation to have this continuing for a number of quarters. We extend the range of JOURNEY II, I think will showcase at the [indiscernible] U.S., a new JOURNEY also. I think there is certainly an impact of the interruption of the Zimmer Biomet. There's no doubt, we know that. And we see that every day in the firm. There is also something which seems a [indiscernible] but what is important is the acquisition of ZUK. But again, when you do a uni knee, you have your uni knee, but in case it doesn't work well, in case the patient needs a full knee, you always have a full knee. So, in the past it was the Zimmer uni knee and a Zimmer full knee. When we now start to see all these customers, new customers they have the uni knee, but they do take our LEGION, for example. So, that mean that it has changed also the dynamic of the business in many, many of the customers that we discover now with this opportunity. J&J, your question, yes, obviously when we announced such a plan, there is no doubt that this could disrupt their sales force. And this, again, an opportunity for us to rebound on this opportunity. So, I tell you, I'm extremely confident for 2016 and for - in the recon business in the U.S. But it's not only the product. It's also what Mike has done in the U.S. which is really reorganizing, reshaping, developing the commercial excellence and what we are going to do this year in terms of additional work on sales force excellence and that will certainly be impactful.

Tom Jones

Analyst

Thanks.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Yes, Ines?

Ines Silva

Analyst

Hi. Ines from Bank of America. I have two questions, please. First of all, on PICO, I appreciate it continues to do well in the U.S. Could you give us some color on what's happening in the rest of the world and mainly Europe, about the adaption? And secondly, on China, you have - so you have lower inventory on Recon and that's why you're being less effective on Recons than on Wound in Sports Medicine, if I understood that correctly. How confident are you that the underlying deceleration of the market will not impact you on that business as well during 2016?

Olivier Bohuon

Management

The recon?

Ines Silva

Analyst

Yes.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Because people are bigger and bigger and older and older. And so, they need more and more hips and knees, and that's true. So, we see that the volume growth in China is extremely strong in the recon. We believe we have a great portfolio. Because as you know, we have our IT plus the retail product that we manufacture in our factory in Beijing. And again, it's scheduled surgery. So, the reason why you didn't see a big inventory at the distributor level because they know what they need, roughly. But I think that will continue like this. I don't see any reason to see the market in recon going down in China for the moment. And there's no indicator it should. Regarding your other question on PICO, so PICO is doing very well in the U.S. Again, we didn't start well in the U.S. When we launched PICO in 2012, I think when we started to launch PICO, it was slow. And it's really last year actually in 2014 that we have started twisting the strategy of PICO that we have realized that it was important to try to go from a patient bed instrument to a disposable instrument. And so, the strategy has changed. And we have seen the growth accelerating very big time in this. And I think we have the best device, frankly. So, that helps. And you know there's life cycle management of PICO, so we improve PICO basically every year. In Europe, we started pretty strongly, when we launched the product, mainly the Nordics which was a super launch. And now, we see that all the rest of Europe is following what we see in the U.S. So, a big acceleration of PICO. You can see that in France. You can see that in Spain. You see that also in Germany. So, we are very [indiscernible] the dynamic of PICO in Europe as a whole. We have launched PICO in Latin America, in Brazil and in Mexico. I don't think with Colombia yet. But it's doing very well, also. So, good dynamic there. Japan is the driver of the growth of Advanced Wound devices in the country. We are increasing our market share in Japan. We launched PICO. When was it, a year ago, a year-and-a-half ago? Yeah. And it's - we're very pleased with that. So globally, great results. I mean, U.S. starts from a lower base but, I mean, it's doing like this and the rest of the world is doing super well.

Ines Silva

Analyst

Thank you.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Thank you. Okay. Done?

Ines Silva

Analyst

Yeah.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

There's a last one there. Last question. Christoph, you were saved by the gong.

Christoph Gretler

Analyst

Thanks. I have two questions. The first is just a confirmation of this OASIS charge that is worth about $50 million.

Julie Brown

Management

$40 million.

Christoph Gretler

Analyst

$40 million?

Julie Brown

Management

Yeah.

Christoph Gretler

Analyst

And then the second question relates to your trading margin and, I think, you saw now a good uptake over the last two years on an underlying basis. And also, if you look now into 2016, absent these FX effects, is there a need for another restructuring program to come? So, basically, the FX, basically run off going into 2017? Do you think the structure needs to be adjusted at some stage again or...?

Olivier Bohuon

Management

No.

Christoph Gretler

Analyst

...or you're basically happy and...

Olivier Bohuon

Management

No. no. we're not going to make any restructuring. I think the last restructuring, actually, finalizing the JOURNEY is the single MD in the U.S. Centralization of the R&D. We do some changes, obviously, in manufacturing. We're also - we think that the manufacturing footprint on a long-term basis but that's different. So there's nothing necessary actually. I think we have now a very strong structure, very efficient, very agile, and with Mike Frazzette as Chief Commercial Officer, it allows to do a lot of things that we could not do when it was in the division because it's too complex to really fit here and there what we wanted to do. So, I think that is for me the right structure that we have corresponding to what we want to do.

Julie Brown

Management

Just to add to that, I mean, given we've now delivered about $0.25 billion in cost savings through the two restructuring programs, I think it's now just going to be about continuous improvement because we've used the major levers that were there available to within the business, but it's all about continuous improvement, continuous procurement savings, continuous functional optimization programs. Global business services, that's really what we're going to do and together with I think the leverage that we talked about with Veronika at the beginning. As we get the natural momentum of the business and the top line moving, that's when you'd expect to see a change through that rather than a formal restructuring program.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

Where is the growth going to come from actually? And Julie has mentioned the margin, which is I know in your heads big time despite the fact that we do what we plan to do every year, we accelerate the margin, underlying group margin is improving big time this year, again big time next year. Forex, who knows? Forex is forex. So, we will see what it is. Again, what we are going to do also and don't forget that is not to be in the chair saying, okay, it is but no, we work. So, we work and trying to improve. So, if we have 120 basis points of bad guy margin, I tell you we're going to work to try to find ways of mitigating a part of this issue. We have done it with Blue Belt actually in the underlying growth as Julie was mentioning which is at or above would like to be a bit confusing, at or above 24%. We by the way, over the targets we all add here. In this target, we absorbed the Blue Belt. So, the only thing which remains a bad guy is really the Forex. And believe me, we're going to work to make this better. We have ways of finding it. Now, on the long-term basis, there is three things that you have to keep in mind. So, A, we worked also on the mix. I think that we tried to work on product bringing us with better gross margin which obviously is important coming from the innovation because we can get price premiums on many products because of the value of what we generate. We also worked a lot in the SG&As, not only in G&As. We have mentioned the G&As on the sales and marketing efficiencies which definitely will change also the way we work and the way we deliver. We work also in the cost of good to improve our gross margin, whether it is what we buy or what we do in terms of manufacturing. So, net-net, we know where we go. And I tell you, we know that we are going to grow in terms of a margin year-after-year on a regular basis, and it was said years ago. And we have been able to do it. And there's no reason why not to think about this for the future.

Julie Brown

Management

And we're also looking at obviously where we can pass on the FX hit especially emerging markets. Europe lesser because of the environment, but in emerging markets, we will look to do so. And we have done in some countries already. But it just takes time to regain that level of transactional exposure. It just takes time. I think in addition we're looking at natural hedging through manufacturing facilities. They were also looking about doing things for a minute, but we're comfortable with this and happy with this because we we're not because we're trying to address it. And our commitment to margin improvement for Smith & Nephew remains.

Olivier Bohuon

Management

And pricing, Mike isn't sure of pricing now. Believe me, it has big pressure. Anyway, so thanks a lot.

Christoph Gretler

Analyst

Thank you.