Ken Parks
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is open
Thanks, Rajiv, and good afternoon, everyone. I’ll take a few minutes to provide a quick overview of our financial results for the third quarter. Total revenues of $2.9 billion were 4% lower than the prior year or 2% lower, excluding the negative impact of foreign exchange. On a constant currency basis, Europe, which was up 2% and Rest of World, which was up 11% help to mitigate a 13% decline in North America. The decrease in North America net sales was primarily driven by lower volumes on existing products, including EpiPen, partially offset by new product sales, including the recent launch of Fulphila. The decline in volumes was primarily driven by the timing of purchases of our products by customers and actions associated with the restructuring and remediation program at our Morgantown manufacturing facility. In addition, North America net sales were negatively impacted by approximately $50 million related to the implementation of the new revenue recognition accounting standard at the beginning of 2018. North America net sales excluding the $50 million impact were down 9% versus the prior year. Adjusted net earnings increased 10% to $648 million and adjusted diluted EPS increased 14% to $1.25 during the quarter. That includes benefits from ongoing integration activities and the lower share count following the completion of our $1 billion share repurchase program in the beginning of the year. Moving to segment profitability, excluding approximately $98 million of expenses related to the Morgantown restructuring or remediation program, North America adjusted segment profitability declined 6%, which is less than the rate of the sales decline, and primarily due to the impact of new product launches and favorable product mix. Europe’s profitability grew 7% during the quarter, mostly driven by new product sales and favorable product mix also. Rest of World profitability expanded 45%, mostly driven by new product sales, including those in our ARV franchise, Australia and China. Both Europe and Rest of World continue to benefit from our ongoing Mylan integration activities, as we execute on our plans to further optimize our cost structure. Adjusted free cash flow for the nine months ended September 30, 2018 totaled $2 billion, an increase of 6% compared to the prior year, reflecting favorable working capital performance and lower capital expenditures. Year-to-date, adjusted free cash flow conversion was healthy at approximately 119% of adjusted net earnings, another measure of the strength and durability of the cash flow generating capabilities of our business. At the end of Q3 2018, we reduced our debt-to-adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio to 3.8 times. As anticipated, our capital deployment priority is focused on deleveraging in the second half of 2018 and we expect this to continue into 2019. We intend to repay at least $1.2 billion of debt, maturing through the end of 2019, including €500 million maturing later this year and the balance maturing next year. Our solid free cash flow generation could allow us to repay additional debt in 2019 and we will provide an update of our complete 2019 debt repayment and leverage targets when we provide our 2019 outlook. We remain fully committed to our investment grade credit rating and to further reducing leverage as we work towards our long-term average debt-to-adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio target of approximately 3.0 times. Finally, as you heard earlier, we are reaffirming our full year 2018 guidance. We expect total revenue to be in the range of $11.25 billion to $12.25 billion, which is roughly flat at the midpoint versus 2017. We also expect adjusted EPS to be in the range of $4.55 per share to $4.90 per share, which represents an increase of 4% at the midpoint when compared to the prior year. For cash flow, we continue to expect to generate between $2.1 billion to $2.5 billion of adjusted free cash flow, which is consistent with our initial guidance for 2018. As we discussed over the last few quarters, we are continuing to evaluate metrics other than EPS that better reflect how we manage and measure the performance of the business. We expect to utilize those metrics, as we provide guidance externally on the outlook for the business and we will provide more detail when we update you on the 2019 outlook call early next year. With that, we will now open up the call for questions. Carmen?