Great. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'm Andrew Cooper. I cover life science tools, diagnostics, a little bit of kind of med tech exposure as well here for Raymond James. Happy to be joined by the team from Haemonetics. I have CEO Chris Simon with me today up on the stage for a little bit of fireside chat, and then we'll go down to Amaranth One for the breakout afterwards. Maybe first, Chris, just kind of brief overview of Haemonetics, and then we'll dive into the plasma segment directly from there.
Yeah, I've been with Haemonetics for almost nine years now. I think one of the more important things to know about the company is we've really evolved as a company and a portfolio. What was 50/50 is now 85/15, where the 85% is our core growth-oriented products. And I'm sure we'll talk about all of those, but they're 85% of the revenue, they're more than 85% of the profits, and probably 110% of the growth going forward.
Perfect. And jumping into one of those core areas, let's start with plasma. There's been no shortage of things going on in that industry broadly. I think a more dynamic sort of five-year stretch than a typical five-year stretch over the last five years. Maybe just walk us through the market as you see it today, the key dynamics that are kind of pushing and pulling on that end market.
Yeah, plasma is always interesting, and now more so than ever. Plasma for us, with our leading share and its consistent high single-digit growth, is an absolute engine of both EBITDA and cash flow. There's a lot of consternation back and forth because the growth in the prior two years was net of over 40% and then high teens%, and folks were saying, "Well, was there a pullback?" We remain absolutely bullish on plasma, near term, intermediate term, longer term. It's natural that there's a pullback occasionally, but our guidance for the year ex the CSL transition is 4%-7%. Obviously, we wouldn't have put that out there a month ago with less than three months left in the year if we didn't feel quite confident that the baseline growth is there.
Perfect. And maybe on that 4%-7%, I think there's a lot going on in terms of some innovations you've rolled out, adoption of Persona, of Express Plus. Maybe give the updates there and how we think about price sort of fitting into the equation in the 4%-7%.
Yeah, I'd call out that team for their excellent execution. Three years ago, we made some very bold commitments as to what was going to happen in plasma. Sitting here today, three years into a four-year plan, they have met or exceeded each dimension, whether it was the share gains or the new technology innovation or just the ability to respond to the ebbs and flows in the market. They've done a truly excellent job. This year, our primary driver of growth is the technological improvements, the new technology we've rolled out, and the pricing against that is our single biggest contributor to growth. Share gains is second, and then the return to base volume collections is third.
Perfect. And maybe before I dive deeper into the nitty-gritty of Haemonetics directly, thinking about the market, we get questions and it's picked up a little bit of late on some of the recombinant therapies, the non-plasma therapies that are coming forward and progressing. Just lay the framework of the competitive landscape around IVIG and whether you felt impact from a share perspective from Vyvgart or anybody else kind of trying to come into that space.
Yeah, I appreciate the question, Andrew. I think there's a bit of a misnomer that we're somehow on the other side of the Argenx trade. Argenx can do quite well. They are. It's a well-organized company executing nicely, but all of our leading customers are growing double digits and executing quite nicely as well. When we listen to what they have to say, when we talk to key opinion leaders, it's very clearly a case of concomitant therapy or adjunctive therapy and the new entrant actually raising demand across the entire class. It is important to keep in mind the class we're talking about is autoimmune. There's still another 50%+ that's primary and secondary immune deficiency where a product like anti-FcRn doesn't have a role. But at the end of the day, it's not an either/or. In this case, it's been both, and there's good reason for it.
We're not the experts there. We tend to just look at some of the basic demand fundamentals, and we feel quite optimistic about where things are going.
Great. And I'm going to have to touch on CSL at least briefly. I don't think we could have this conversation without anything there. Where are you today on that conversion or that roll-off? It sounded like they were pretty clear, done by sort of June of this calendar year on their earnings call last month, which was after your call. We took all the revenue out for fiscal 2026 in our model. I don't know that everybody necessarily did that, but should we expect contribution in fiscal 2026, or should it be zero?
I think you're right to take it out. We're going to be conservative with our guidance. Sitting here today, I don't anticipate that we're going to include any CSL in FY26. This year, we reaffirmed approximately $100 million. It was heavily skewed to the first half of the year, 70/30, if you will, and kind of winding down as we speak.
In the past, when you've talked about the kind of margin dynamics around CSL, there were some cost outs and some repurposing and things like that to help kind of ease the loss of that revenue. Are you in a place where you've captured most of that? Are you still confident with the kind of ranges you've provided before in terms of the decrementals?
Yeah, we're very confident. We've sized our capacity and our infrastructure to deliver against the demand we see going forward with share gains, with a return to growth. It's interesting. If I go back to June of 2022, when we issued the LRP, we had just finished a year where the company earned $2.59 a share. Of that, CSL was over $1, I think $1.05, $1.10. Sitting here today with this year's kind of guidance, we're on target for a $4.60 Earnings Per Share with very little difference in share count. CSL is less than $0.45 of that, and the plans we've put in place, the lead time we had to respond, the gains we've had elsewhere have served to really mitigate any unexpected impact.
Okay. And then maybe to kind of sum up the conversation on the segment, as we think about fiscal 2026, a lot of puts and takes, whether it's CSL, it's Vyvgart, it's the overall kind of volume trajectory, Persona, pricing, share gains. How do we think about blending all of that together in the coming fiscal year, knowing that you're wrapping up your fiscal fourth quarter here?
Yeah, I'd answer it kind of in two parts. For the intermediate and longer-term demand, there's a lot of noise in the system. There's a bunch of data kind of jumping around. A number that's been highly predictive over extended period of times is the rate of growth of capacity expansion of our customers' fractionation facilities. That seven-year projection from where we sit today, based on what's been publicly announced, is roughly a 7% compound annual growth rate. We think that accords quite nicely with our high single-digit growth forecast, and that's where we see this going over time. For FY26, we are very bullish. Probably our single biggest contributor will be share gains. That'll be followed by the annualizing of the price increases associated with the new technology. We've now converted all of the existing base to NexSys with Persona and Express Plus. So that's very bullish for us.
What remains to be seen, and we'll hold for our May guidance, is just what's the collection volume that our customers are committing to. This year, they booked the 10% or 11% productivity we gave them and ran with it. That's going to annualize, and we'll see what they do on top of that for next year.
Maybe just on that last piece quickly. Appreciate that. Yeah, they're waking up and they have 10% more plasma without needing to do 10% more collections. I think you also have questions around sort of their inventory levels, where they were rebuilding safety stock out of the pandemic as well. Can you size sort of how you, or at least your perception from your seat, of how big each of those is in terms of the volume trends we're seeing today?
Yeah, it does vary from one company to the next. Closely guarded trade secrets, and there's a lot of moving parts to do that quantification. When we sit back, we listen to their guidance, their near-term play. They're all projecting double-digit growth. So we feel quite good they're going to need to continue to collect plasma near and intermediate term.
Okay, helpful. Quickly on blood center, I know we're probably not going to spend the most time on that one, but you did sell the whole blood business, I think first week of January, second week of January of this year. Why did that piece make sense to kind of pull out and not be a part of the portfolio? And what should we take away about what keeping the remaining apheresis business sort of says about that?
Yeah, everything we do has to track back to our core corporate strategy. We want to be in high-growth, high-margin segments where we can be number one or number two and get the associated returns. Whole blood didn't check any of those boxes for us. So we found a more natural owner in GVS. It was a smooth transition of those customers. They will be better served by a filter company that has more of an industrial origin, and it allows us to really put the focus.
And I think you see some of that in our results currently as that remaining blood center apheresis business becomes increasingly plasma apheresis, and the lines between a blood center customer and a source plasma customer begin to blur in places like Egypt, where we've had tremendous growth in partnership with one of our leading fractionators to help the Egyptians meaningfully step up and become self-sufficient. I think that's the norm. I think the growth outside the U.S. in that regard is going to be faster. And we see here and our ability to play as the standard of care in that operation is serving us really well.
And last earnings call, I think you announced the Japanese Red Cross in terms of another nice win there. To me, it feels like a nice validation to get that win, particularly in that region for competitive purposes. But any thoughts on that?
Yeah, we called it out because Japan is our second largest market worldwide to the U.S. And the Japanese Red Cross, we have a multi-decade history. They're a very discerning customer, and they put the entire book of business out to bid. All of the major competitors showed up. We did not compete on price. There were those who attempted to, and that didn't serve them well. So they had a chance to look at this. And for the plasma apheresis piece, we want it in its entirety. And there'll be a multi-year transition, but we thought it was a really good ability for an independent third party to validate the system in an OUS setting. And yeah, the team takes a lot of pride in what they've delivered there.
Perfect. And shifting to hospital now, a lot to talk about there, but maybe just first, lay the groundwork for me. I think the vascular closure portfolio, I wish the naming conventions were a little bit different, but give a sense for kind of the moving parts there, what you've experienced when we think about the most recent quarter and kind of where each of those products plays in that portfolio.
Yeah, first and foremost, we've helped expand and develop the vascular closure category. And I think more than anything over the last several quarters, the realization that we are vascular closure, we need to win. It is our first, second, and third priority. We have three products: base VASCADE, which is small and mid-bore, primarily in an interventional cardiology setting for PCIs. We also have MVP, which is the real workhorse of the portfolio, and we are six months into our MVP XL launch, which is our answer for PFA and larger appendages. So together, they're working. If you take the MVP and the XL, it grew 25% again last quarter. We're enthusiastic about that. We've got to stay focused, and we have to deliver, and we've had some growing pains that we are addressing.
Just on those, maybe to dive in a little bit more, describe maybe what the learnings are from these growing pains that you saw last quarter and kind of what changes are going in place to address them?
Yeah, broad statement of the obvious, but I think we and everybody else underestimated the disruptive influence of PFA. PFA is unequivocally a tailwind for us. It will help our vascular closure portfolio grow at a faster clip. But in the near term, it's just been a major disruption to the market as everybody gears up to adopt this new technology. Bringing XL allowed us to play front and center. XL is the shiny new thing. It's an outstanding product. There's tremendous physician demand. And as we ran to that demand, we probably took our eye off the ball a bit with the base VASCADE product, which was the entirety of the challenge we had in the third quarter.
And just in terms of kind of resolving those, is it adding heads? Is it adjusting where those heads are focused and kind of the comp structures? Just give us a sense for what's happening on the field now.
It's the latter, and it's just kind of understanding the place. But to put it in context, at this point, we're tracking towards $150-$160 million a year products, roughly $40 million in the quarter, of which 15, 1.5% is the base VASCADE. I'm not alibiing it, but a $6 million quarter is a great quarter. A $5 million quarter, we're struggling, and that is the difference. And so we need to correct for that. I believe we have, but that was the challenge in the quarter. A lot's been made of it. I get the importance of it. It's a primary growth vehicle for us, but I do think it's entirely of our own making and entirely of our own solving.
Great. And you mentioned MVP and XL doing well. I think, frankly, that's the piece that I would be more worried if that was struggling. But maybe just give us a better sense now that you are six months into the XL launch. How has adoption compared to what you were hoping for? And has the thinking around PFA changed? I know Boston certainly has gone faster than we would have thought, but any other thoughts there would be great.
Yeah, so I think PFA is the dominant influence. And as I said, it's a tailwind for us. The math on that will evolve, but what we've estimated is there used to be three or four holes to close. Now there are two or three holes to close. And so what we estimated was 3.2 per procedure is on its way to 2.7. It's probably still above three right now, but so there's a loss there. However, because of so much of what they have done right, both Boston and Medtronic and probably Biosense when they come, that combination has taken a low double-digit growth rate into the mid-teens or beyond. So if we go to simple math from 12%-16%, percentage-wise, it more than offsets the loss in terms of holes per procedure. And it drives both XL and MVP in that usage.
And that's why we say it's clearly a net tailwind for us and something we can play on. There are other ablation procedures that we play in. One of the neat things about XL is it's also indicated for left atrial appendage. That's one to two holes per procedure. So it doesn't have quite the same growth clip, but it's an outstanding base, and it's part of what we're going to do to make this a $300 million product over time.
Maybe just remind folks. I mean, I think one thing that we get questions on, and you had a nice slide prior that laid it out of where penetration is in these markets, because I think that's one thing that, again, people ask about. There's not a lot of visibility from some of the competition or kind of where that standard of care is otherwise.
Yeah, we called out competition, and certainly the performance we've put up does attract the attention of others. That's quite real. But the biggest opportunity is if you look at all ablation today, fully half of all procedures are done using either compression or figure-of-eight suturing, which is really suboptimal to the four out of five that use our product or the one out of five that use somebody else's product. So our biggest opportunity is Vascade MVP, and it's driving into the half of procedures that aren't being done.
So, a lot of greenfield still. Vascade, for all the reasons we kind of talked about, great deal, I think, over the couple of years you've had it. Two more recent deals have been a little bit more challenging early on. What surprised you in each, maybe? And how do you weigh those surprises in terms of short-term need to sort it out versus is there any change on the longer-term deal model and longer-term kind of industrial logic of the deals?
Yeah, so we're very committed to the enabling technology in high-growth sectors, EP, structural heart. So we're not backing away from any of that. We're very much committed there. I think this story with the guidewire business, SavvyWire and OptoWire is meaningfully different than ensoETM. So I'll start with the guidewires. Outstanding product, well-suited for the market opportunity, particularly in structural heart TAVR placement. But that's a very different clinical interaction between our reps and our clinical support and the actual physician teams. And so we've come up a learning curve. It is a different profile. We've hired a completely different group of clinicals to come in and support the guidewire products in that setting. And I think there's just been a learning curve that we've now largely cleared.
I think we see really interesting green shoots there, and I'm confident that over time we'll deliver very much consistent with what we had modeled. EnsoETM is a bit different, right? It's esophageal cooling for use with RF ablation. The very simple assumptions that we put forth when we did that acquisition is that if a third of the market, 30%-35%, remains RF, and we can get half of that market to use our product where there is no other competition, we'd be wildly successful. If we are wrong, it's because PF takes more than 60%-70% of the market, and like anything else we do, we'll reassess at that point in time. I don't believe we're there yet, but that's something we'll watch for, and we have limited resource. We want to make sure they're directed against things that have the highest possible return.
Great. And I want to make sure we hit on blood management because it's an area I think we probably don't spend enough time on. TEG has grown really, really well. You've had good success on capital sales there in terms of placing new instruments. Can you share the latest on kind of that landscape and how that continues to grow so well after several years of ownership and being on market?
Yeah, again, I'll call out that leadership team. They just go from strength to strength. And we were fortunate enough to get the approval for the global heparinase neutralization cartridge, which we knew would fill a void in the market. But more than fill the void, it's actually catalyzed the conversion from the precursor predicate product, which was the TEG 5000. It's a lab-based product to TEG 6s, which is a site of care product. And with that transition, our team has just run hard. We joked that it's now the not-so-little engine that could. And for them to consistently put up double-digit growth in these last four or five years now, that's exciting.
And I think the challenge for us is with 80% share of the market, a market that's still only 25% penetrated on this $800 million TAM. Where do we take it next and how do we keep the growth trajectory going? Because again, our biggest challenge is not necessarily the head-to-head competition with other viscoelastic testing. It's the absence of viscoelastic testing.
I think I'd be irresponsible today if I didn't ask you about tariffs. So if you want to opine on politics, have at it. If not, just would love a little bit on where your exposures are. We know Mexico and Canada, and then what efforts are underway to try to mitigate as you think about whether these things stick around or not?
Yeah, look, we, like everybody else, are learning with each successive tweet or news release. I have seen some things in print that I think mischaracterize our exposure. I guess I'd say this. So as it pertains to China, we don't manufacture in China. We have no sourcing relationships from China. The China business, which we care a lot about, is struggling for different reasons. It's less than 5% of our revenue, and it's not a primary source of growth or profit. So I think the China exposure is quite minimal. In terms of Mexico and of Canada, it's a different story. The good news is three years ago, we opened our flagship plant that we had invested $30 million in in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It produces plasma bowls and TEG cartridges, two of our top runners. We feel great about that.
Where we have exposure is primarily in interventional technologies, which come guidewires from Canada and the rest of the vascular closure portfolio from down in Guaymas, Mexico. We're going to start getting into important questions around, is it country of origin, country of source? Until we know those things, it's really hard to dimensionalize. I would say that's one area of the portfolio where the elasticity of demand is such that we probably have more degrees of freedom to respond if we get to that point.
Okay. Capital allocation priorities, maybe just give us a sense for how you think about M&A at this point, what we should expect near term? I know Vivasure is something we're all kind of waiting to see the press release on at some point. But what else is maybe attractive as you look out over the landscape? Is it another leg to the stool outside of interventional? Is there more inside interventional? How do we think about that?
Yeah, I think FY 2026, I mean, so our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. Organic growth is the best return on money that we have. The inorganic growth would be a close second, and then we'll find ways to give back to shareholders where that's our best alternative. When we look at this for FY 2026, the year to come, we would say task one is deliver against what we have. For the conversation you and I just had, we know we have an obligation to drive that return on invested capital. We think the opportunity to do so is fantastic, and we just want to live into it. That said, there are other enabling technologies in the EP or IC space, Vivasure being one of them. And when ready, we'd like to action those. But in many ways, to your earlier point, I feel like we have to earn it.
Fair enough. And margin goals in the long-term plan, you guys laid out high 20% in fiscal 2026 back in summer of 2022, I think it was. You've stuck to your guns when the street for a lot of years hasn't necessarily believed that. You posted almost 26% last quarter. You're still sticking to your guns. And what takes you from that most recent level to the kind of next however many basis points to get to high 20%?
Yeah, that'd be we'll guide for 2026 in May, including the margin profile. But our strategy is working exactly as we laid it out. Things never happen quite the way you want them to. We had a bunch more growth, and some of that came at a cost. But yeah, 24.2% in the second quarter, 25.7%, that's not an accident. That is predominantly gross margin accretion driven by mix, driven by price, driven by productivity and volume. That's going to continue. That will carry over into FY26 quite nicely. The additional factor for 2026 will be the operating leverage because we've largely made the investments in sales and marketing that we need to be where we are going forward. So that's our strategy at work.
Olga will shoot me for saying it, but sometime later this year, we will have a new LRP, and we'll take it out the next three years, plus or minus. We think we've got a foundation that we can build very solidly on.
Great. And we've covered a lot. I think there's a lot of kind of moving parts. I think when stories are complicated, people like to look to free cash flow.
Yep.
You guys lowered that guidance for this year last quarter, which I think made finding the floor for the equity a little bit trickier, to be frank.
Yeah.
What drove that, and how should we think about that fiscal 2026 free cash improvement? I think inventory is a big piece of it. I'm sure you'll get into, but we'd love some color there.
One of the things, I mean, if you think about Haemonetics as an investment thesis, our balance sheet has always been a big part of the strength of the story. The EBITDA growth, the free cash flow, and the cash flow conversion should all be important sources for investment. From our vantage point, dial back, we were aggressive. We were aggressive on the core demand for plasma collection volumes, something we don't control. And we were aggressive on our hospital business. If I just go back to the numbers, we guide it to mid-teens, organic, and 30+ inorganic report it. If we had just said 14 and 28, we'd be heroes sitting here today. So we got it wrong. And that was a forecasting issue largely associated with things that were beyond our control that we should have been more conservative about going forward. And we will.
From our vantage point, the difference in cash flow is almost entirely working capital at this point, and we had a need to build new devices for the share conversion to meet what we expect to be the uptick in demand going forward on disposables and to make some investments that we've made internally. We have a pretty sizable digital platform optimization work that's now winding down. The vast majority of that is behind us, and we look at our fourth quarter, and FY26 is an opportunity to have a much cleaner story about the free cash flow conversion coming off of our EBITDA. Stay tuned. I think it'll be impressive.
Great. And maybe actually two before we wrap up. First, a couple of management changes or leadership announcements this week. Maybe just any comment there? Would love some sense for how you think about those. And then I'll wrap it up with one more.
Yeah. We've consolidated slightly on the senior team. I had two separate executive vice presidents, super talented folks who decided to retire. I've combined those into one position as an EVP and chief operating officer. Fortunate to hire Frank Chan coming in from Medtronic and Covidien before that. Really good seasoned leader. By creating that role, I was able to attract someone of Frank's caliber to the team. And I think that'll be instrumental in helping us take our operating performance to the next level. On the commercial side, we've moved off of the two business units being separate entities and instead now focusing on the three franchises: Plasma Blood Center, Interventional Technologies, Blood Management Technologies, with one global chief commercial officer, Roy Galvin.
Roy is the guy who delivered all the stuff I was banging on about earlier in terms of plasma and blood center being exactly where we need him to be. He's probably our best commercial thinker, and I'm delighted to have him leaning in and helping us with some of the challenges in IVT and elsewhere.
Perfect. And maybe just to wrap it up, don't look at Olga because she might give you the axe on this. But you're wrapping up fiscal 4Q in a few weeks. Any context you can share on how we should think about fiscal '26 would be great. Street's at $1.34-$1.35 billion of top line, just about $5 of earnings. Are you grinning at those? Are you scared of those? Just give us a sense for how you think about them.
Once bitten, twice shy. We'll guide in May, right? But from where we are, we think the fundamentals are incredibly sound, and we like our direction of travel. But this is a tough market, and I would much rather be conservative with the guidance on some of the things we called out in this conversation and have an opportunity to revise upward as the picture gets clearer and we follow through on the delivery. So conservatism is going to be the rule of the day. If we get criticized for that, so be it. But I think we were on a position when James first joined where I think we went nine or 10 quarters in a row where we beat and raised. That felt better than where we've been in the last quarter. So maybe we should get back to that.
Perfect. We will wrap it up there. Thank you so much. And like I said, we'll head down to Amaranth One for the breakout session.
Thanks.