All right, guys, thanks. And I guess everyone will grab their seats. I'm pleased to have Henry Schein with us this morning. And joining us, we've got the full team on stage: Stanley Bergman, Chairman and CEO; Ron South, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer; also, Andrea Albertini, Chief Executive Officer, International Distribution Group; and Brad Connett, CEO of North America Distribution Group. And hopefully, we'll have questions across all teams and organizations, and we'll get a deep dive. Before going into that deep dive, I sort of have a high-level question, Stanley, that I've been asking some of the CEOs and CFOs at the Conference. Sort of maybe a good way of framing it, dental stocks have underperformed since emerging from COVID. To be clear, Henry Schein's held up better than others, but I think it's safe to say the group has struggled.
I think as an analyst, you get, like, a lot of incoming questions across different topics. So investors are asking about value implants, private label, pricing power that's more subdued relative to other industries. We had animal health companies here yesterday taking 4% or 5% in price. That's less common, certainly in dental, and they're questioning the structure of the market from an investment perspective. I'd love you to maybe just talk about some of those industry concerns, and then more specifically for Henry Schein and your diverse portfolio, how and why are you best positioned to deal with those challenges? A lot there-
I have three hours.
And welcome.
Right. So, Jon, that's, of course, what you're asking absolutely is the right question. I think from an overall point of view, take a look at where the market was in 2019 and look where it is now, and we've seen steady growth. Having said that, there were ups and downs. In our case, there were significant ups because of PPE and tests. We gave that data each quarter. You got to back that out. Then, there was a shortage of product in 2019, and in 2020, of course, we had the situation in the second quarter of 2019, where there were no procedures done, and we had to catch that up, get those backlog procedures through the system. And then there was a shortage of materials specifically for equipment, big backlogs.
Then we moved into 2023, which was sort of much more of a stable year. But I think the market, in many respects, built on the 2022 numbers. So I think if I were an analyst, what I would do is take a look at where the market was in 2019-
Mm-hmm.
Look forward, and I think you will see that it's a pretty stable market. Yeah, there were ins and outs, ups and downs. I think on the equipment side, in particular, there were some manufacturers that took up their pricing quite high during that super inflation period on manufacturing equipment, and some have brought them down, some have not brought them down. So there's been shifts of market share. They've been on the implant side, some procedures that are not doing as well as maybe in 2019, but in general, the implant market is doing okay. The endo market is doing okay. We're not big players in orthodontics-
Yep.
But I think you know what's going on there. It's not a terrible market, and generally, it's a stable market, but you have to X out those variables.
If we X out those variables and we bring it to, you know, today's world, and we sort of focus on the dental trends, I think on the first quarter call, you mentioned the U.S. dental trends improved in March and into April, and we saw that, or you experienced that both in the U.S. and international markets, sort of that better exit rate. How has that improvement sort of continued as we think about it currently? Has the level of improvement that we saw March into April continued into the month of May?
Yeah. Well, we can't talk about exactly what's happening in May. At the moment, obviously, we're in a relatively quiet period, but we have indicated in our previous calls that the market generally is stable. There are some pockets around the world where there's a challenge, but I think the markets in general, we've said, are stable. And, we've given some indication on the various categories. We gave indications on equipment sales, demand. I think we gave some thoughts on implants and, again, I think you have to bear in mind where we were and where we are, 2019 versus where we are today, and relatively stable market throughout the world.
Okay. I'm gonna push a little bit into the distribution businesses. Brad, maybe I'll start with you. If you could just talk to us about the North American distribution business, the efforts to recapture cybersecurity business in North America. I think the company's called out those episodic customers, the more challenging ones. Maybe talk to us how the recapture is progressing and your ability to win back those customers.
Yeah, Jon, thanks for the question. Appreciate being here this morning. You know, the question is a good one, obviously. You know, it was a pretty remarkable recovery, given what we went through. I wouldn't wish a cyberattack on our worst enemy, so, but everybody better be prepared. It's nobody's immune from it. I can tell you that right now. So, you know, we went through a really trying moment there in the fourth quarter. I mean, our web was down for extensive period of time, and the vast majority of orders come through our web. So we went into emergency mode with our omni-channel sales approach. Our reps went back to analog type of business rather than digital.
We have an omni-channel approach, so we had our field reps very focused on our customer base to make sure we were getting orders to them. We had our telesales channel, we have our digital revenue channel, we have a telemarketing channel, and of course, our old, old tried-and-true merchandising channel. So, everybody went into a mode of recovery and making sure we won back our customers. What we found, the data is very clear... Our large customers stayed with us, and that's both in dental and in medical. Our large DSOs, our large health systems in the medical side, the upmarket, they stayed with us. They were loyal. We did an enormous amount of work on workarounds to make sure they could continue to do EDI and punch out with us. In that mid-market section, the emerging DSOs actually grew for us.
We were winning customers during the time when we were really, again, in a mode of just transactional, and same thing in the medical space. Where the erosion is, and you pointed out, is what we call our Episodic Customers. And these customers, quite frankly, were shopping us before cyber, right? They're episodic by their very nature. We don't pretend we have 100% market share, so we get shopped, and these customers were looking for—had to look for alternatives. Keep in mind, our sales force, I just mentioned, was very, very focused on our loyal, loyal and high-spend customers. That was the critical part to get back, and we got those back, and they're growing. The episodics, we know who they are.
We've had really strong campaigns, and in the fourth quarter, we, I know we referenced in our reports that we did some discounting to get those customers back. We won't win them all back. I'll just be very candid. We are sequentially getting better in every month in this year winning those customers back. But in the nature of distribution, you're always gonna have churn. So as we lose some of the customers, what we always have going for us is we're always selling. We're always filling that funnel. You know, our sales force and our sales organization was not in an aggressive selling mode in the fourth quarter, and even into January. So our team is back selling. Our team is back aggressively going after those customers.
We have a unique position to offer them at a time where dentists are very particular. I'll just speak to dentists; they are very busy. Our dentists are very busy right now, and you know, they're going through that classic squeeze in a consolidating provider market. We've seen this movie in medical. We saw the physicians get acquired 20-15 years. We addressed that. We changed our go-to-market strategy. Dentists today need our help. You know, we're not just a distributor. A very important distinction. You know, we're a distributor, we're a specialty manufacturer, we're a technology company, we're an education company, we're a sourcing company. The list goes on, and we can go in and talk about revenue generation opportunities for our dentists, efficiency opportunities.
I could go on and on with the specific products, but I think I'll defer to that.
And on the episodics, is there a way to think about, you know, what percent of the revenue they go ahead and account for?
Yeah, we have a really distinct segmentation, so it's. I don't know if I should say percentage, Ron. Do you want to defer to that, or do you wanna-
Well, I think, you know, one way of looking at it, Jon, it's actually kind of a difficult segment to quantify because of the volatility of their purchasing patterns, right? What we did disclose as part of our Q1 earnings was that we estimated about 300-400 basis points of kind of denigration to sales growth as a result of still kinda coming out of that residual impact as we look to recover these particular customers, right? That doesn't necessarily mean they are 3%-4% of the business.
Yep.
It could be from a number of customer perspective, they could, it could be larger than that, but they buy less than the average customer, right? So it, on top-line basis, it was about a 300-400 basis point type.
I know I'm gonna get this question, if I probably haven't already, in my email, but, you know, when Brad sort of says, "Hey, look, we're not gonna get them all back", which seems pretty real world, Ron, is that what you had dialed in walking back to what started at 8%-12% for the year and now 8%-10%? Is that reflected in sort of that, that band of, call it, the recapture rate of those episodics?
Yeah, I mean, we've contemplated that in our guidance. Yes. When we affirmed our guidance, we kind of modeled out where we saw some of the recovery rates were, and we were able to kind of hold to our EPS guidance as communicated, and we adjusted the revenue guidance accordingly.
Okay, and then maybe we can move on to the international side of things, and similar types of questions, you know, the recapture, how is it progressing? And then what I'd love to hear about is, is one more difficult than the other? I think Stanley's heard us ask about the recapture on dental versus medical, but how about the recapture of U.S. versus international, if there's any different behaviors there?
Thank you, Jon. So first of all, not all the international market was impacted by cyber. It was our European business. We didn't have any impact on Australia or Asia or South America. For the European business, the dynamics are very similar to what Brad described for U.S. So we were out of our e-commerce, we didn't have technology, so our team had to step in and serve our customer in an analog mode. We did a great job, I believe, in serving the customers, and we secured all the loyal customer, the customer we have a strong relationship with, and we struggle on the episodic customer. That takes longer to recover. If you ask, are there differences between market?
I would reply, depends on how long the system took to go back online and how much percentage of online business we used to have in the specific market. So Germany was slightly less impacted than U.K., for example. But overall, we are in a similar situation. We are back in normal business with the majority, the large majority of our customer, and we struggle a little bit on the episodic customer that take longer. We are using the omni-channel approach that we have. So we have people on the field, getting back customers, we have people on the phone, and we are doing digital marketing. That is an important component of this recovery.
Okay, and maybe one or two last questions down this road. You know, is that window somewhat closing on the opportunity to win back those episodics? And then I might just get murky, you know, because you've got a business, and people dip in and dip out, especially the episodics. But I would think that, you know, once you've gone to a different platform, and you've been there for six or nine months, which we're coming up on, do you think it's sort of later we're in the later stages as the possibilities of getting some of those customers back?
... Yeah, yeah, as Brad said it correctly, we will not win all the customers back, but we are going back at business as usual. You lose some customers, and you need to get new customers, and our job is to gain new customer, and we are very determined to -
Okay
... acquire new customer consistently.
Jon, that's why we won't be, we don't, we don't anticipate quantifying this effect going forward.
Mm
... because it's so, to your point-
It's gonna merge.
... it's very difficult. I mean, what assumptions do you make there? Ordinary course of business is we go out, we try to increase our market share, we try to increase our share of wallet with customers, and that's what we're doing.
And that might be sort of a, you know, a good segue into the next question I wanted to ask. Not often I get the CEOs of the international business-
Mm
... and the U.S. business up here. So, you know, in terms of the market, right, Henry Schein's got its competitors in the U.S., and then much more fragmented in the international markets. Maybe talk to, and for the investors, how your teams work together to leverage Schein's global footprint, that reach, in order to drive and win business.
You want me to start?
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, first, it's just my relationship with my colleague here. You know, we're joined at the hip in our distribution business worldwide, so our teams are merged together. We're, you know, obviously in very different countries, et cetera, but we're... Some of the specifics, just to give you an example, we're the only dental company in the world that can share data and it has data. And data is a currency, and it's king, as we've heard in many other industries. So we have data to share. We are also the only global, again, distributor that has partnerships with key supplier partners, and that's an advantage for us, and it's an advantage to the suppliers.
We are a global company, so, we do a lot of sharing, and I don't like the word best practices because it's a little loosey-goosey, but where teams get together, DSOs are starting to cross borders. You know, they're growing. So as they grow, as they expand and look for opportunities to go across borders, we had one last year expand up into the north, into Canada. We had that customer here in the States and picked up a very large DSO in Canada as a result. So we see a lot of opportunities there, and, again, I would go back to our supplier relationships. We have a team, one on my team and one on Andrea's team, that are really together jointly on our supplier relations. You may have some other comments.
I think you covered it. We are the only distributor that can cover the globe, and we take advantage of it for the benefit of our customers. We do it in the relationship with our suppliers, but also in serving the customer that are starting to go in multiple geographies. And of course, we share whatever we can internally, in terms of tools, in terms of developing new solution for our customers.
At the end of the day, this global supplier relationship is very important. There are certain suppliers we work with globally and work with very well. Data, we define what our mutual goals are, and we work together with those suppliers, and particularly with certain customers. That's a huge advantage. No one else has that. And the data we have, no one else has that. And so, of course, there are these best practices, but the ability to work closely with certain suppliers and certain customers has been a driver in the profitability growth of our certain suppliers and of Henry Schein.
Interesting comment on the DSO side. I mean, to your point, up until now, it's really been these massive organizations that are either here or there and not, you know, across the border, if you would. I guess as that occurs more and more frequently, you guys are ideally suited to take advantage of that, that situation.
Correct.
I'm gonna shift and, you know, a lot of different topics to try to hit on. Dental equipment, and we had a panel up here earlier on the high tech side of things. You know, Stanley, it seems like IOS pricing is stabilized. Tell me if that's accurate. 3D printing is ramping, but it's a relatively low ASP. Just when we look a little bit further down the line, specific to high tech equipment, your thoughts and opinions on the market, and do we need another breakthrough technology to really help drive the overall high tech equipment and accelerate the growth rates there?
Yeah, I don't think, Jon, we need a breakthrough in technology. We need the iPad of dentistry, where everything's in one place.
That's a similar comment that we had earlier today, but please elaborate.
I believe we have it. We have more components than anyone else. Our strategy has been one, call it, three-click dentistry. We didn't come up with that term. One of our big customers, if not our biggest, said, "We want everything in one place." It doesn't have to be the very bleeding-edge technology, but our dentists wanna turn around and see the clinical workstation in the practice where everything is connected, where not only is the chart there, where you can document the procedures that were undertaken, but you can sit with the patient and show the patient what the procedure is gonna result in. By the way, this is how much insurance you have, this is how much you can get right away, and if you need...
If there's a gap and you need financing, it's available right there and then. This is our goal. I don't think we need any major breakthroughs. The technology is there. Of course, what is critical, the suppliers who we represent, they have to invest in innovation, and unfortunately, some have not invested in innovation, and new players have come along, and we've had to work with them.
Yep.
We have to work with manufacturers where the technology is, and the innovation is good. It doesn't have to be hugely good. I mean, the AI world, we represent products. We have enough products to sell in AI right now.
So, to your point, and it's funny, again, we heard similar commentary earlier today on a panel, but it might not be hardware-related, it might be software-related to help the integration, make things more seamless, increase patient conversion rates, help out on financing. That might be really the driver rather than the next big splashy toy.
You summarized it. I don't think the iPad is the best technology that's potentially available, but it's convenient. And that's... In fact, Andrea's major one of his major roles, of course, in addition to running our international business, is to take the various components of digital technology that are available around the company, starting out with our practice management system and working with manufacturers that have all these devices, and ultimately choosing between where the procedure, the prosthetic is gonna be manufactured. In the lab, and make sure the lab is digitally updating, and/or 3D printing or the traditional machine, the traditional
Yeah, milling
... prosthetic machines. But Andrea, maybe you want to go through that, but I think this is where we're investing.
Okay. You said it very correctly, and it's not about the big innovation, it's more about making the innovation that are already on the market available to the customers in a seamless way, in a convenient way. And if we want to move from the early adopter to the mass use of this technology, we need to make it simple. And we are very well positioned at working with our partner suppliers, to bring this technology to the point of use, to the practice, and connect it in a way that is simple to use.
So I think about, like, rough penetration rates. I mean, iOS, I don't know, 30%-50%, 3D printing is 15%, cone beam, 20%. There's still a really long way to run-
Mm-hmm.
in these penetration rates across the board. The question is, how do we step function those higher, and step function those higher, where higher seem to be software-related, to get it all in one place and the connectivity? Fair.
Okay.
Okay, great.
If we can get a manufacturer to connect to our electronic medical record, that's gonna create the sale, not whether it has an additional feature on the particular scanner, and this is what we're working on. So it's not about manufacturers that have the greatest technology. It has to be reasonable amount of innovation, but the willingness to connect to our digital workflow and to put money into investing in that connectivity, that is going to drive this whole business.
Something else that you're certainly working on, I'll pivot to the specialty businesses, implants and your franchise there. So it seems like you've been in a sweet spot. Stanley, you've talked about being under indexed to full arch, where maybe some of the market weakness resides. You've got your new value offering that you recently launched in North America, and I think innovation expected in the back part of the year, which you've talked about, can open up an additional market, increase your overall TAM. So maybe talk to us about those moving parts, strengthening the portfolio, and your comfort that some of those recent share gains that you've experienced, that can continue.
Yeah, at the end of the day, it's like more consumers. Consumers want a reasonable valuation, value proposition, a reliable product at a good price, and that's what we've been advancing throughout the world. We're now number three in implants and number two in endo. Based on that proposition, do we have great innovation? Yeah, I think our implant people will tell you our products are better than most, but it's about having a portfolio that is easy to use with a value proposition.
Okay.
Our investment recently in the Brazilian company gives us that opportunity.
Okay. Ron, I wanna make sure I pivot, and we've got maybe five or so minutes left. Just to start on margins, first quarter, Q1 2024 gross margins were strong, and, and, you know, they outperformed our, our estimate. You feel comfortable that's representative of 2024? Maybe the one caveat would be if the lower margin distribution were to come back, that business come back stronger than expected, that could pressure gross margins, but arguably it would be gross profit dollar accretive. Is that the right way to think about it?
No, that's absolutely the right way to think of it, Jon. I think I do think the first quarter gross margin is relatively representative of where, you know, what we can achieve going forward. It did show, you know, the growth we've had in some of the higher growth, higher margin businesses, and this is really executing against our strategic plan from 2022, 2023, and 2024. The acquisitions we did last year are tend to be, you know, higher margin businesses, and that that is contributing to that, to that higher gross margin. They're taking on a greater mix of that revenue, correct? There's also, as you said, as we continue to see, you know, marginal increases in the, in the distribution business in terms of the recovery, that that could, you know, it enter that mix a little bit.
I do think that based on what we're seeing in terms of growth and some of our value-added services, that that gross margin can be, you know, that we had in the first quarter, can be fairly representative of what that will be for the balance of the year.
Okay, I'll touch on some other areas as well. Just so you know, in terms of the guidance you as I mentioned earlier, 8%-12% went down to 8%-10%, but you kept the bottom line intact. You kept some of the EBITDA commentary and the growth rates intact. What'd you make up in the cost structure? Maybe just walk us through how you were able to preserve bottom line EBITDA growth, even though you know the midpoint of the top line came down a bit.
Well, I'd say as opposed to in the cost structure, I'd say it was more in the mix of the top line, right? You know, so some of the higher margin businesses, you know, performed a little better than we expected in the first quarter, and we're confident in the run rate that, you know, of those businesses. So as you look at the performance of those businesses and the contribution they make to the bottom line, while they don't contribute as much to top-line growth, they do contribute well to the bottom line, and that mix was taken into consideration.
Okay, and then just, you know, maybe this pulls back in some commentaries from on the distribution side, but you have a lot of data, right? You talked to that earlier. When we look at your growth rates for March, April, May, and we'll keep the specifics out, but do you still feel like you're growing north of market to some extent? Because that might be just the easiest way to think about the rate of recapture, right? If there's still some net recapture going on, arguably, you'd be growing at a premium to market. That rate might be diminishing as we go further out, but any statistics or your comfort that that is taking place?
I think over time, the cyber incident will wear off. We'll be back in the market looking for new customers. We've been in the market looking for new customers since March. The first quarter, a large part of the first quarter was really going back and reminding our customers that we're here, sorry for what happened. We'll fix this. We'll maybe give you a bit of a deal. But I think we'll go back into growing market share. We have done that in all of our businesses that were not impacted by cyber incidents. They've all grown in market share.
Net share gain. Okay. One or two more for me, and, and Ron, I gotta bother you a little bit on the EPS cadence, and Andrea and Stanley earlier just said, "Hey, look, the market's okay. It's been very noisy," but start with 2019 and look towards today. So on the EPS cadence and some numbers that I ran, pre-COVID, let me know if I'm laying this out effectively, Q1 EPS was roughly 22%-23% of the full year earnings. Relatively consistent. This year, you did the $1.10, that would represent 21% at the midpoint, and I get that the EPS contribution should probably ramp throughout the year because of the recapture.
But you do have a big step up Q- over- Q, the 1Q versus the 2Q, and it's well above where it was sort of pre-COVID. So just any thoughts when we think about where the street is for 2Q? Again, that sequential seems very high versus where you were during pre-COVID times.
No, you know, one of the things we talked about earlier, Jon, was that we do expect the revenue growth to be more pronounced in the second half of the year than in the first half of the year. Some of that is representative of some recovery and distribution, some of it is also assumes some success of the launch of some new products we have on the specialty side, specifically in some implant launches we're doing in the U.S. Some of it's also some new technology products that we've come out with. And that's gonna contribute, we believe, right now in our projections, to greater growth in the second half of the year than in the than what we have achieved in the first half of the year. So the earnings will kind of follow that trend, right?
The earnings will follow that, that pattern as well. You know, distribution with the recovery and distribution, it, you know, we're looking at marginal increases as the year goes on. So that still, you know, might create some... Going back to your pattern, maybe the pattern doesn't match up exactly to what you've seen historically in terms of the cadence, first quarter, second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter, for those reasons. That, I would expect the earnings to be at, have greater growth in the back half of the year, more consistent with that revenue growth in the back half of the year as well.
Okay, and try to push on that before I'll ask my final question. Like, this year is treated $1.25 up 13%-14% Q over Q, 1Q to 2Q. Pre-COVID, it was much more modest, 6%. So again, it should be north of the 6% because of some of the recapture. Are we overstepping on that mid-teen sequential? That just, does it just seem like the pattern or the cadence is a little off?
Yeah, you know, we haven't provided quarterly guidance per se, but, you know, your observation is a fair one. Yes.
Okay. Then, Stanley, just last one. The thing that I'm most excited about, and, you know, we upgraded the stock back when you were having the cybersecurity issues and knew you were gonna come out of it, and you have very effectively, but also is the momentum into 2025, and so maybe you can speak to that. This is now behind you. You're back to winning customers. You've made the acquisitions and the investments in the higher margin specialty business. You've talked about some opportunities in TVAS, higher margin. Maybe in the last one or two minutes, if you can just position the opportunity that you see for Schein entering next year.
So, Jon, we outlined our strategy in our Investor Day. We are delivering on the strategy. Our B is to build these specialty products and services businesses. We're doing very well, particularly with the services businesses, I would say very well with the specialty product businesses, too. The whole idea of the BOLD, the optimizing, the operationalizing of our distribution businesses, we're doing very well in, we've done very well, I think, in capturing our, most of our good customers. We now have to go after these episodic. We do have, by the way, some websites, et cetera, that don't operate under the Henry Schein name, that are also going after these customers and doing quite well. The big opportunity is the leveraging. Going to customers that are doing business with one part of Schein and having them do business with other parts of Schein.
That is going very well, specifically with the larger customers, and now we wanna take it through to the rest. And the whole digitalization, I think, we brought digitalization to dentistry. We were the ones that went to dentists and said, "Put a computer in the office. Add a clinical chart to your practice." And now we're going and talking about the clinical workflow, and we have all the pieces. We're going to put them together. And I think, we're well on the way with our strategic plan. We did a midyear review with our board, and the numbers were all pretty good, and I'm very optimistic about the future of dentistry.
Yes, there's been some issues in dentistry, particularly certain companies, specific items, and yes, if you didn't take 2019 and you smoothened it out to get to 2024, you would see ups and downs. But generally, dentistry is a stable business, and we need to provide dentists with more tools to run an efficient practice so they can focus on the clinical side.
I guess during that period of time, you guys have leaned on your strong balance sheet, strengthened your portfolio, and been opportunistic where you could be.
Yes, our balance sheet remains good. We're generating good cash flow. Of course, we had some receivable bubble in, you would have expected it in the, at the end of the year-
Yep
... come down. A couple of our customers, not a couple, there's a lot of customers are still impacted by the Change issue, but these are not customers that are not gonna pay, pay us. They're just-
Delayed
... being delayed, and we had an alternative to Change Healthcare electronic claims processing system up within 48 hours, and I think a lot of our software competitors are still challenging the processing claims.
Any last-minute questions for the Schein team? Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time.
Thank you.