Welcome back. Good morning. I'm Larry Biegelsen, the medtech analyst at Wells Fargo, and it's my pleasure to host this session with the management team from Becton Dickinson. With us we have Tom Polen, Chairman, President, and CEO, and Adam Reiffe? Adam, I-
Reiffe.
Reffe! Sorry, should know that. Senior Director of Investor Relations. It's a fireside chat. If anybody has a question they want to ask, just raise your hand and we'll come around with the mic. Tom, thanks so much for being here.
Good morning. Thanks.
Tom, you know, before we get to the Critical Care close, which you announced yesterday, I wanted to ask a couple of high-level questions. So first, you know, Alaris returned to the market about a year ago, which was your top priority for a number of years while that was on ship hold. So talk about now your top priorities over the next, you know, couple of years, as you think about creating shareholder value.
Sure. First off, we're obviously really excited that we relaunched Alaris, and that couldn't be going better, and we can talk about that in just a moment. The framework that we set out in BD 2025 is going to continue to be our focus, certainly as we look at finishing the last year of 2025 this coming year, and even as we go forward. So the framework of growth, continuing to have a hyper focus on moving BD into faster growing markets. You've seen us do that systematically. We now have, with the addition of Critical Care, a $5 billion healthcare automation and informatics business across our portfolio. We see the opportunity for that to go to $7 billion by 2030. We can talk about that in a bit.
Continuing to drive our shift in technologies to enable new care settings, as well as improving outcomes for patients with chronic diseases, so our innovation agenda that we've been driving, continuing to drive a strong organic portfolio, as well as complementing that with inorganic tuck-ins that we've been very active in, will continue to be a focus over the next couple of years. As we're, again, moving into higher growth spaces, with BD really phenomenally positioned to a number of really major trends that I just described for us to capitalize on. Second is our simplification agenda. You've seen us develop really strong momentum on the margin side over the last several quarters. That's not something that we've just developed over the last several quarters.
You're seeing the output of it, but it's something that really is a result of the work that we started at the beginning of BD 2025. Of course, we started by exiting 20% of our SKUs. That was the first step. Next, we started working on simplifying our network architecture, and we're on track to reduce 20% of our manufacturing plants. Those, of course, take several years from planning through execution, and so you're just starting to see a number of announcements and news of those consolidations actually happening now. And that's going to continue to drive our gross margin expansion over the next several years. On top of that, then, last year, we launched a very transformational program for the company called BD Excellence, and it's really our methodology for Kaizen across the company. It's our business system.
And we've been hyper-focused in driving that within our operations organization. And this past year, we'll do nearly seven hundred Kaizens across the company. That's up many, many fold versus last year, and it isn't even something that existed, prior to last year, BD Excellence. We've now trained over 10,000 associates in the company, and we've been able, just in the last year, we've reduced waste by 30%. That's continuing to enable our plant consolidations further, BD Excellence and just ongoing Kaizens. We'll double Kaizens again next year. And the work that we started in the back half of this year and will scale up next year, is beginning to expand BD Excellence outside of operations into the commercial space, into the R&D space, utilizing Kaizen and our BD Excellence programs to do things like accelerating, collapsing R&D timelines, driving new product launches faster.
That focus on driving excellence in everything we do with specific tools, technologies and mindsets, so that those will continue to be our focuses as we go forward over the next two years.
That's helpful. Tom, you successfully divested the diabetes business a couple of years ago, and some investors look at your Life Sciences business and say, you know, BD's, you know, share price isn't reflecting the value of that business, given the peer group trades at a higher multiple than BD, BDX does. What's your view on this?
We always evaluate our portfolio, and we're certainly, you know, constantly looking at what creates the most shareholder value. And so, you know, you've seen us be very active in portfolio management, as you mentioned, not only the spin of our Diabetes Care business, but also the sale of our V. Mueller business, and of course, a number of tuck-ins that we've brought in transforming that space. And so that's something we're always continually analyzing, if there's an opportunity to further maximize shareholder value.
What would trigger, you know, doing something like that?
You know, we always look and say, is this business best fit within? Are we the best owner for this business? I mean, that's the key question, right? From a strategy perspective, from a growth profile perspective, from a valuation perspective, and so it's, it's that analysis. And again, does it better fit somewhere else, and does it maximize shareholder value differentially somewhere else? So.
That's helpful. And you just announced the close of Critical Care last night. I think it's.
We did that just for this conference.
Thank you. We appreciate news at the conference. You know, it's one of those deals where I don't hear anybody saying: This doesn't make sense. You know, everyone, I don't think everyone's wrong, I was just going to say. But, you know, it's just one of those deals where everybody, and we agree, you know, that it's a great fit for you. What are your aspirations for that business?
... It's a phenomenal team. We're really happy that Katie Szyman is going to continue to run it. I was actually out in San Diego with our team, MMS, last week, doing some innovation reviews, and we already have. It was really exciting to see our prototypes, already working prototypes for closed loop between the Alaris pump and the Edwards hemodynamic monitoring system. I was actually, earlier in the week, I was down in Florida visiting with a number of our large customers and healthcare systems. I had the opportunity to walk the Critical Care floors, the neuro ICU, the PICU, the cardiac surgical ICU, and every single one of those hospitals I visited that day, they all had the Alaris pump, and they all had the Edwards C ritical Care monitors.
Talking to the nurses, you know, you hear the stories of... I heard from one nurse; she had just spent four hours the last day just sitting in the ICU, staring at the Critical Care monitor for four hours, and her only job was to keep looking at the monitor and then adjust, reprogram the Alaris pump to try to keep the patient's blood pressure in range. She was basically just spending four hours just keeping the patient alive by typing into the Alaris pump based on what's here. When you describe that, like the prototype I saw that we have, just a completely closed loop system, right? It sees; it actually makes a recommendation on Alaris. We recommend you change the infusion rate to this. You press the button and it auto does it.
And eventually, the vision is you don't even need to press a button, right? From a regulatory perspective, that will be the easiest first step, and eventually, it just autonomously does that. And the cool thing is, of course, Edwards has AI already approved that says the patient is about to have a change sometime in the future, right? They can predict that it's about to happen. And so, again, looking at where this technology can go, literally being able to see this patient is about to have something happen in 10 minutes, adjust the flow rate from Alaris, and then suddenly the AI say it's no longer going to happen. I mean, it's a tremendous opportunity, and every customer we speak to is really excited by it.
That really, as you saw, we called that advanced patient monitoring for a very specific reason. It creates a new platform for us to continue to drive growth in a space that we think will see continued technology evolution in and create new opportunities. Certainly, the application of AI is really exciting, and we're seeing that as a big growth driver for that business.
That sounds very powerful.
Yeah.
Can you set expectations of how long you think it would take to start closing that?
We'll come out, we'll share more of that at our Analyst Day next year. It'll be... It's not going to come out at launch, obviously. We can't start development in full earnest till we come together. But we have that program funded as we go into next year, and we'll share more about it at Analyst Day.
That sounds good. So, let's, you know, transition to, you know, fiscal 2024, which is almost over, and 2025, and Alaris. Just maybe two questions on Q4. First, I think the guidance, you know, implies a growth acceleration from Q3 to Q4. It seems like most of that acceleration is from Alaris. Aside from Alaris, what are the other pieces that will contribute to sales growth acceleration from Q3 to Q4?
It's a continued strong performance across a number of our businesses. You're seeing continued strong procedure volumes flow through in our procedure-based businesses, consumable spaces like MDS, Vacutainer, et cetera. Continue to see strong growth in a number of the PI businesses, our Surgery businesses, for example, driven by our Tepha tuck-in that we did several years ago and the shift to resorbable mesh. That business has been doing phenomenally well for the last couple of years. We expect that to continue. PureWick continues. That was actually one of the customers I was visiting last week. We were talking about the new female PureWick and the male PureWick, both doing extremely well, and we have new launches coming next year there, but we expect Urology to continue to be strong growth.
We've got assumptions. Biosciences stays relatively flat, right? Just given macro market dynamics, and as you mentioned, Alaris continuing. It has a relatively easy comp in Q4, given that we stopped shipping Alaris in September, essentially August, September, as we got clearance at the end of July. Stopped shipping then for medical necessity until we started having the orders come in for the new. And as we've talked about with Alaris, we're at a $100 million quarter run rate now, so we got there 12-18 months sooner than we expected, when we started the year. We couldn't, again, be more pleased with the momentum. We're back to the historical run rate on Alaris of $400+ million a year. Yeah, we can talk about that further.
Great. Yeah, before asking a specific Alaris question, just the margins for from Q3 to Q4, it's about a hundred and fifty basis point sequential increase. Talk about the driver and your confidence in that, please.
Yeah. We've got strong confidence in our margin. As we look at a couple of things, one is our costs are basically set, right, on GP, they're done, because we know our standards are already set and all the products are in inventory, sold, and we know their cost basis. We actually have some modest growth in OpEx in the quarter, so that's well known. And you saw a very strong margin performance in Q3. And as we've been signaling for a while, as you look at, I think BD was one of the first two. You've got the first two companies back to back. It was Boston and BD were the first two companies post-pandemic to get back to FY 2019 operating margin.
The first phase of that journey came about 70% from OpEx expansion, or OpEx reduction, efficiencies that we were driving, about 30% from gross margin. We've been signaling for a while that you can expect to see that flip as we head into FY, the back of 2024 and into 2025 plus. As the impacts of BD Excellence and the work we've been doing on plant consolidation starts to kick in. You started to see that happen last quarter. You'll continue to see that happen in Q4, and you'll continue to see that happen as we go into FY 2025. We do expect the majority of our operating margin expansion, at which we also feel very confident in our 25% op margin, which of course we were at in Q3, will be over 25% op margin in Q4.
That's obviously our commitment to be there on a full year basis next year as well, and we're clearly on track for that. But most of that margin expansion, again, will come from a gross margin expansion as we look at 2025 and the several years after that.
That's helpful, so transitioning to Alaris, you know, you talked about being, you know, at that $400 million run rate, which is where you were before the ship hold. The Q4 number implies a higher run rate, right? For fiscal Q4. I guess people are trying to figure out how high fiscal 2025 could be. I think I threw out $600 million on the call, and I can't remember, but I don't think you blessed that number.
We did not bless it.
Could Alaris be, call it $500 million next year? I'll try again.
Yeah. Good that you changed the number. But, look, we're not going to give guidance on a specific product line at this point. We'll give some more color on that as we get into our November earnings call. I think at an overall level, though, we couldn't be more pleased with the momentum in Alaris. Clearly, customers waited for Alaris to come back. It's an entirely new platform. It's new electronics, new software, it's new cybersecurity, it's new wireless standards. We're seeing really good momentum with sister-system standardization. That's one of the trends that we see as systems are looking at making decisions on their pumps. They want to standardize across the network. That's been the typical mechanism by which we gain share. We still continue to see that as the mechanism by which we gain share.
Obviously, as the market leader, we're a logical place for them to consolidate to, and our teams are executing well. There's been a lot of pent up excitement from our customers and a lot of pent up excitement from our sales team to get their hands on Alaris. And the other thing I would say is we've shared that we've got the next submission going in by the end of the calendar year. That remains on track. Again, I was with that business last week, and that will include a number of new things like over-the-air software updates, new cybersecurity features, and a number of other things that will be beneficial to the customer.
So Tom, let me ask you another way. We believe, and I think you agree, there's a backlog, right? From the time during the ship halt. Is there anything, like supply or staffing, that prevents you from being over that $400 million run rate.
No.
For a period of time?
No. And just kudos to our operations team. They have done a phenomenal job. I did a Gemba walk with the team last week there. And I mean, they're producing, as we said. Q2 was a record production quarter in the history of Alaris. Just remember, we're not only selling Alaris, but we're also replacing Alaris.
Right.
As part of the remediation. And so whatever we're selling, even though we're at historical rates, there's many, many more pumps being remediated at the same time. And the same thing happened in Q3. We set another record, right? In Q4, it's basically going to be another production record. And so when you're going from cutting your production all the way down to the levels that we've been in the last several years, to swinging it dramatically and maintaining excellent quality at that point, the coordination from your supplier base to your manufacturing, you know, team has been phenomenal. We moved manufacturing in the middle of that. Actually, we moved manufacturing as part of our BD Excellence strategy to a new center of excellence for instrument manufacturing in Mexico.
All the more just kudos to our team on how they're really executing that with excellence.
So you're not blessing a number for fiscal 2025, but there's nothing holding you back from, like, $400 million isn't the deal.
I feel confident in our team in executing.
Okay.
Our manufacturing team. It's not going to be a challenge.
All right, so turning to some of the other areas of the business, I think I want to just start with China before we talk about the growth drivers.
Just a point. We know how to do high-volume manufacturing pretty really well.
We know you do.
Yeah.
But there's also staffing, right? I mean, it's not easy besides manufacturing, right?
The location that we're at is actually. We have no issue with that either.
Good.
Yeah.
Okay. So China, about 6% of BD revenue. I think sales have been down each of the last four quarters. We estimate, you know, year to date, China's down about 5% constant currency. What are the factors pressuring your sales, and what's the outlook for China?
Sure. You know, what we see in China is very similar to what you're seeing, you know, across the industry, from a number of peers. So there's really two factors. One, are actions that the government is taking to control costs, and what fits into that bucket is value-based procurement, which is an approach they use, of course, directly on manufacturers, and price bidding. And then the second is anti-corruption, which is a tactic that's used more with providers, which is, of course, value-based procurement, is we want everyone to bid out, and we're gonna disproportionately award tenders to those low prices. And the other one is going to physicians, and they say: "We think that you're doing too many procedures in these categories, and we're going to evaluate why you're doing those.
Is it for your personal income, or is it because of patient need?" So you can see procedure volumes decline when they start pointing to specific areas in anti-corruption. But there are overall two tactics that are used to manage, right, costs. And so we've seen, obviously, value-based procurement in our MDS business. Primarily, it's been the focus. We do expect that that impact within MDS has peaked, but there can be value-based procurement, right, in any sectors of med tech, and that's something we monitor very closely. The other factors beyond price controls or cost containment actions from the government is just overall in life sciences. You've seen pretty much every life science company, just biotech spending down because of the economic challenges overall in China, which we still see to be real and relatively stable.
I would say, meeting with our China team very recently, not necessarily. We're not, you're not seeing a macroeconomic upswing in China, quite yet. We're looking forward to the stimulus as we go into 2025. The timing of that still, I wouldn't say able to nail down the exact timing of when the stimulus is going to be. Of course, past stimulus was led at a central government perspective. This stimulus is going to be managed more by the specific provinces, and so may spread out over a longer period of time. But we do expect some stimulus, in 2025, and that can have a benefit in the category, the extent and timing of which, particularly to be determined still.
Any prediction on when China turns positive for you?
Yeah, I don't think that we'll wait to give some more guidance than that in November. In those markets that you don't have a control and that you're seeing macro factors, the best friend of proper predictions is time. And so we'll give it a little more time.
Any concern that China's not kind of accretive to your growth going forward on a more mid-term basis?
I think over the long term, I think over the mid to long term, it's a huge market opportunity. We have a strong team there. We've got a great portfolio there. And even as you look at those spaces where there's value-based procurement, we're seeing very strong volume growth in those categories. So we're seeing double-digit volume growth across most of our businesses in China. It's just, you've got those pricing resets that are happening. And so as that works its way through the system, the fundamentals in China from that volume perspective are still very positive. It's still accretive from a margin perspective as well right now. So, we're still bullish overall long term in China, but, you know, there's certainly market dynamics that China and local companies are going through. We're seeing a number of local companies going out of business.
Of course, easier for a multinational with a broad portfolio to navigate some of these environments than it is if you have one product, and your one product category is going through VBP. That's very challenging.
Got it. So let's talk about some of the other growth drivers aside from Alaris. Pharm Systems has been a great business for you. Some challenges this year. I think we have low single-digit growth in fiscal 2024 for Pharm Systems. When can that business return to kind of normalized growth, you know, which was called high single digits?
High singles, doubles there for a while. Yep, absolutely. And you put it in perspective, since we really FY 2019, we've grown Pharm Systems business over $800 million. It's been a phenomenal growth driver for us. We've talked, let me focus on some of the things that have not stopped growing the entire time, and that's our biologics business, right? So we've today, 40% of our Pharm Systems business, now biologics. We shared actually on the last earnings call, that we expect GLP-1s to be a $1 billion opportunity for us, and we're certainly well on the trajectory towards that. We now have not only a number of the major blockbuster GLP-1s utilizing our devices. We've had a focused initiative over the last several years.
You saw us right in the middle of the pandemic, add over $1 billion of capacity in Pharm Systems as we looked ahead and saw this as an opportunity. At that same time, we had a very focused initiative within our commercial team with the mantra that anyone coming in with a GLP-1, we want to be in our device, right? So we had a very focused thing, not only the commercial drugs that are there today on the market, but looking at who has new GLP-1s coming down the pipeline and making sure that we're appropriately positioning us to win those molecules.
And then, as we looked forward to biosimilars, we also again wanted to make sure that they were coming into our devices, and for biosimilars, not just coming into our Hypak device, but coming into our auto injector and into our pen, depending on the format. But as we shared on the last earnings call, we now have over 40 GLP-1 biosimilar contracts signed with companies from around the world as those begin actually going into production runs as early as next year and then scaling over the back half of the decade. We have a number of the major next generation GLPs that are working through the pipeline, already signed in our product, and that's been driving double-digit growth in biologics. And every quarter, essentially, we've been right at that double-digit growth in biologics this year as well.
Underlying that, you do see destocking in the vaccine and the anticoagulant category, and you've seen that across the sector. I think even though we've been relatively flat year to date, every one of our peers, and we constantly are looking at the markets, right? Peers are down mid-single digits, and so we're doing better than the industry overall. Same thing in Biosciences, right, where we're flat, industry down mid-single digits as you look at almost every peer. That's something that we pay attention to very closely, right? Are we winning in every one of the segments that we're competing in? The answers in those categories is absolutely, yes. So we're, we're very bullish in the future of Pharm Systems. We'll need to watch the timing of when the anticoagulant and vaccine destocking works its way through. Again, more when we give guidance in November.
Same for Biosciences. You touched it a bit, on it a bit. It's been, you know, impacted by issues such as China. It's been flattish, I think, you know, in 2024. Can that... I'll push my luck here. Can that business return to more normalized growth next year, or when?
Yeah, again, I think you're going to see that with recovery in biopharma spending. And that's something, think about a number of the large life science companies. They're very focused on predicting. We've seen pretty much every one of the large life science companies down mid-single digits this year. Again, our business has been flat. Pure players in the space, down mid-single digits, our business flat. So we're competing really well in that segment, driven by our FACS Discover platform, as well as new dyes that we've been launching in our single-cell platform. We have new launches continuing to move forward next year, and so we expect we'll continue to outperform the market growth, pegging where the market's going to be from a recovery perspective. There's certainly good things from a, you know, interest rate changes, what can be beneficial in that space.
I know we're seeing hiring start to pick up in some of the biotech sector, as I talk to you know, recruiters, et cetera, like, who's where's the funding starting to get trickled into? But more to come. We're not quite seeing certainly, like, a hockey stick at all. But over the last couple of quarters, if we look at our instrument placements within that sector, it's been moving up, but it's not a hockey stick, right? It's, we're seeing it in numbers that I can you know, count relatively, but it's certainly not heading downwards, it's heading in the right direction. At some point, there should be more of an inflection.
That's helpful. Tom, let's talk about 2025 a little bit more. You gave some helpful color on the Q3 call. One area you didn't give much color on was kind of organic growth. You have a target, you had a target in the past, I think, of 5.5% plus, you know, organic growth. Where, you know, this year you're coming out by our math, I think, comes between 5% and 5.5%.
Yes.
Should we be thinking about maybe more like, you know, call it on the lower end, call it 5% as a starting point for next year? Is that a better place to start?
Yeah, again, we'll give specific numbers on that in the in November. I would just say we certainly expect to be mid-single digits, and the key factors is, as we look at that, is looking at the recovery timing, specifically in the life sciences and pharma segment. Those are the two areas that we're watching closely and the timing of how we think those, again, times on one side, but watch those market dynamics. In any of those scenarios, we expect to, you know, outperform the market growth, which we have been doing all year, and we expect to continue to do. It's really what the market growth is going to be in those.
That makes sense. And you also gave, you know, Chris, your CFO, gave good color on the fiscal Q3 call about 2025 margins. I think you said the gross and operating margins should be similar next year to the 54.3% and the 25.2% that you posted in Q3. You know, but that still would imply, you know, year-over-year growth in your margins, right?
Sure.
Your talk about your confidence in these figures, please.
Yep. Of course, everything we're making now is going into our cost structure for FY 2025. It's about a six-month lag between the two, and so we have good visibility into our gross margin as we not only start the year, but as we go through. We feel very confident. We've been communicating that for quite some time, our confidence in our 25% operating margin, and again, BD Excellence, the momentum and the systems that we have there are really what's driving our gross margin expansion, which is what's driving our op margin expansion, so we're at 25, Q3, we're going to be at 25. Our expectation again, in Q4, right? That bodes well for our continued momentum as we look into to FY 2025.
The other comment, of course, that we made on the Q3 call is that we also shared, right, our outlook of 10% EPS growth as a good starting point for FY 2025. We made that change.
You preempted my next question, but just to kind of put a bow on that, you know, I think that implies about $14.40 in EPS next year at 10%. Is that, are people thinking about it the right way?
Yes, we think that's a good starting point.
That's helpful, and maybe, Tom, beyond fiscal 2025, you know, you have had a goal of double-digit EPS growth going forward. I know you're going to have an analyst meeting yesterday, next year. What's your commitment to that going forward?
We'll, you got to want to save something for Analyst Day. But, we'll give an update on that at that point. We expect to continue to drive strong revenue performance, strong mid-single digit revenue performance, driven by our innovation agenda and deployment of capital. Gross margin expansion, BD Excellence, is still in early days, right? As you think about the deployment of these types of systems and capabilities in a company. We're just a year and a half in the end of this year. You typically see maturity starting to hit at seven, you know, years or so. So we're in early innings, and the opportunity for that to positively impact gross margins, we'll share more on where we see gross margins going at Analyst Day, and that continued to drive strong leverage at EPS.
First of all, look at how much do we reinvest from an R&D perspective, et cetera. We expect to continue to drive strong leverage, strong mid-single digit growth, and we'll share more at Analyst Day.
Price, Tom, you know, BD is one of the few med tech companies that has positive pricing.
Yeah.
I think year to date, in fiscal 2024, pricing has been about + 1% ballpark.
Yeah.
How are you thinking about pricing going forward for BD as a company?
Yeah. We've shared that we expect. So pre-pandemic, we were flat to slightly down each year. We certainly built systems and capabilities through the pandemic. We deployed, we have a pricing function just like we have a regulatory or legal function. We have a pricing function at the company level, pricing experts in each of our business units. We have a software that we invested in that's standardized across the company, Vendavo, that those professionals use to manage price. And so each one of our businesses has a positive price goal. And so we expect price to still be positive as we go forward into, FY 2025 and beyond.
We've shared before, you know, we expect it to be maybe similar to that range that you see this year, 1%-2%, maybe closer to the 1%, especially as we look at China also offsetting with VBP in some way, but still net positive as we look at that. We're keeping those systems, we're keeping those capabilities. That's something that we see as a long-term positive for the company.
Tom, circling back to a couple of growth drivers you touched upon earlier that I didn't have a chance to hit, PureWick. You talked about it a lot. You've talked about it being a potential $1 billion franchise by 2030, but I don't think you've given us the kinds of base, how big it is now, so we can't judge, you know, how significant that is, a billion in 2030.
It's meaningful. I mean, it's. I think I said on some calls, think about like good small-cap companies, you know, that are presenting here. It's as big or bigger than those revenues, right? And growing very nicely. You know, we're still in, let's say, we're heading towards mid innings, mid innings, towards that billion-dollar goal on PureWick. It's a phenomenal franchise for us. And I think what's exciting is, right, these are a number of things we've built out through BD 2025. We talked about the billion-dollar opportunity that we see, and our strong trajectory on GLP-1, because of what we've done with capacity and our commercial focus. That didn't exist at the start of BD 2025. It's now one of our biggest opportunities.
Pharmacy automation didn't exist at the start of BD 2025 . It's now one of our biggest growth drivers. PureWick was very small at the start of BD 2025 . It's now very clearly in our sights as a billion-dollar opportunity. A couple of things that we're doing to drive PureWick as we go forward. We launched male last year, which is the first application of PureWick in the male space. Again, clinicians I met with last week couldn't say enough amazing things about PureWick. If you ever want to, just as something funny, maybe don't do it on your work phone, just Google PureWick stickers. It's unbelievable.
We have nothing to do with these stickers, but it just shows. I do not think that you will find another product in med tech that nurses and clinicians literally love to the point that they dress up as PureWick for Halloween, and if you see the stickers that they buy, because you'll see there's tons of different versions of it, clinicians just love this product, so the male is doing extremely well. We literally got to the point where it took off so fast we had to pause selling to add another tranche of capacity. That capacity is now online. In July, we just opened up because our capacity expanded, we were able to open up male into the home setting, so that just went online, where you can order a male PureWick online. We just launched our new female PureWick last month.
Starting to do trials there, but that's been very positively received, and then next year, we launched the first mobile PureWick. So PureWick's always been, you either need to be in your bed at home or in a bed in a hospital. We have the first mobile version, which snaps on the back of a wheelchair so people can be ambulatory, moving around with PureWick in public. We then have, for the future years after, one that you could wear as a sling, and walk around, in communities or wherever you want to go, and so we really see an entire roadmap there. We also shared that we started our pivotal trial to be able to get reimbursement for PureWick. PureWick at the home setting, while it sells very, very well, that's all out of pocket.
There's no reimbursement unless we just recently had gotten. There is reimbursement within the VA for those veterans can get reimbursed for PureWick at home. The rest of the communities do not, so we do have a clinical study underway to be able to seek reimbursement. That'll be another catalyst over the next couple of years for that platform, a lot of innovation and a lot of future opportunities.
That's helpful. Last one I wanted to ask about was the next generation Pyxis. That's a pretty big product for you guys. Is that a second half calendar 2025 launch? And how impactful could that be for you?
I'm excited by the next gen Pyxis. So something else that we, I dove into last week, San Diego. So I think about it as this. First off, it's our first new hardware platform for Pyxis ever, since we've bought CareFusion back in 2015. And so refreshed look, number of new features on the hardware. Perhaps more exciting than the hardware is. We've talked about it being cloud-connected. It's our first big scaled AI platform as well, too. And so as we think about the new platform, which we'll share more about at Analyst Day, it leverages pretty advanced AI capabilities that will not only be used for Pyxis. We talk about our interconnected end-to-end medication management platform. This will be the first platform that will utilize the new AI platform and start connecting across a number of our systems.
We'll share more about that at Analyst Day, but I'm really excited about the next gen.
Is this a big hardware upgrade cycle?
There's a hardware upgrade cycle, but then there's the software upgrade component as well. There's technology innovation happening, and so I'm excited. The hardware is exciting. The opportunity for AI and software application and analytics is something more fascinating.
So just thinking out loud, it sounds like one of the bigger kind of near-term planned opportunities for you over the next couple of years is out there.
There's gonna be. Overall, there's a, we do see it as a significant opportunity and also the start of just another generation of technologies that we'll be launching, to get utilizing next-generation AI applications.
It's right in line with that theme of talking about applying robotics and AI in the lab to transform the fundamental care process.
Something that we are extremely unique in a position that all people are applying robotics and AI into. Obviously, Intuitive does a phenomenal job in the surgery suite. There's only no one that is at the scale of BD, of applying it to the underlying care processes, right? Delivering medications, doing lab testing, et cetera. And that's what we've been focused on. You've seen us do things like buy pharmacy automation, build the leading franchise there. This will be the first component in a new suite where you're gonna see us start upgrading all of our historical products, utilizing AI and some more advanced technologies on the hardware side, to be able to make the next stepwise change for patients.
All right, perfect. We're out of time, Tom. We covered a lot of ground.
Good.
Thanks so much.
Okay.
We went a little bit over, but thank you.