Good afternoon, John Block with Stifel. I'm pleased to have Henry Schein. Joining us on stage is Ron South, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as Andrea Albertini, CEO, Global Distribution and Technology, and Tom Popeck, Chief Executive Officer of Henry Schein Product Group. A lot to go over. I'll jump into it. Ron, I'll just ask the questions, and you guys can decide on how to slice it up. I want to start with momentum, because you guys talked about a slow January on the one Q call, which seemingly was weather-oriented. However, things picked up in February and March. Maybe if you can talk to what that pickup was attributable to. Was it just less adverse weather or anything more that was driving it?
Thank you, John. Yeah, like I said, January was pretty soft for us. I think some of the market data we picked up on, we saw that the market was pretty soft as well. We were assuming it was weather-driven. We did see some recovery in February, and then we saw even better recovery in March. You do get some timing of holidays when you're looking at March and April. I think it's important that when we, as we looked at April results, I like to look at that 60-day period as opposed to just a 30-day period, March over March, April over April, so you can kind of neutralize out the effect of the Easter holidays. We were encouraged by what we saw. We were encouraged by the trends there.
This is in the backdrop of, in April, we began to introduce some uncertainty in the market, whether it be around tariffs, other regulatory changes that are happening in the markets, that I think our customers are still trying to navigate a little bit. We're trying to navigate. Our suppliers are trying to navigate. All those are things that are part of what we're experiencing thus far this quarter. We're in the same boat as everybody else. We're all just trying to figure out what does this mean to the end market. In the meantime, we're seeing dental stay relatively stable. I think that what we're seeing on the medical side, similarly, they had a slow start in January that we attributed to weather.
We did see some nice uptick in medical, likely due to the, well, we know it was due to the late flu season, because we did see good revenues with diagnostic kits. That meaning that people were going to the physician to be tested for COVID or for flu or for strep, et cetera. That really came out as part of kind of the February-March period.
Okay. Maybe just to run some of that back, because there was a good amount of moving parts there, Ron. It sounds like you saw the pickup February, March, but there's a lot of dynamics with the calendar and holidays. When you actually look March and April together, maybe that March was moderated a bit, but you're still saying.
That's right.
You're still saying when you put it together, you feel okay about the trajectory.
Yeah, it's an encouraging trend. Yes.
Okay. I want to move to initiatives, because I thought on the earnings call, you talked a lot about some new initiatives, really, for the first time. A couple of those, I think, will pull in everyone on the panel. Specialty products are now being sold by the distribution sales force. Can you elaborate? Respectfully, I have to ask, why was not this initiative rolled out earlier?
I think that's specific to our endodontic business with our Edge product portfolio. To answer your second question, we did do it earlier. We did it outside the U.S. business. In the U.S. business, it was a little different, because we had strong market share of that product line. We had a partner in our business. It was not until we bought out that business that we really were able to shift some of those margins into our distribution business and start to capitalize on that. It's been going very well.
Okay. When we say specialty being sold by the distribution sales force, do we think about it across the board? I mean, obviously, implants is the biggest piece of that, but are they going to be involved in implants and endo? How does that work? Are they going to prioritize one versus the other?
You know, it's very similar. A good example would be with implants, right? There's a premium, high service, high touch, clinical specialty feet on the street, go in, sit with the doctor, product portfolio. Then there's your challenger or value brands that's kind of lower service, lower clinical support. That's how we see leveraging and optimizing our sales channels. We have a sales channel that's high touch, specialty. Then we have our distribution sales channels where it's more of the value challenger brands across all of our specialties.
I think you mentioned earlier, hey, look, John, it has been rolled out maybe in the international markets and now bringing this more to the U.S. Any early learnings that you can share with us in terms of what you have experienced to date, upside, more challenges, speed bumps along the way?
You know, I do not think that there is anything in particular to call out. We were probably a little surprised on how well it took off and the momentum we gained and the opportunity and just really supporting our thesis of premium, high service, lower service, challenger, lower price, and really just justifying our thesis on how that could work.
Okay. Maybe I've got a couple more on specialty. As always, guys, if you have questions, throw up your hand and we'll get it in front of the management team. I think throughout the past couple of days, there's been a lot of talk up here and chatter about implants and the implant market. Is there a way to view the long-term growth rate specific to implants and for your Pro Taper Conical? Talk to us about where that is. I think initially it was going into your current users, and then you were hoping to bring on new users. Where are you in that evolution process?
Yeah. In particular to TPC, that launch is still in process. It's going very well. Clinically, success for sure. Customers really like the product portfolio. The thing about implants is you sell the implant, and then there's additional sales down the road for the abutment and the prosthetics. Typically, that's a six to nine-month process before you start to see that. The nice thing about TPC is that the connection between the implant and the prosthetics is proprietary. That locks in those sales down the road for us, which with our older versions, generics were possible. Therefore, we didn't recognize all that. The real thing we're looking for, and we're starting to see it, is more of those prosthetic sales going with the implants. We've done a very nice job.
A meaningful part of our current customer base has converted to our new product, to the new technology. We are starting to see some new customers switch over as well. This is a multi-year process. It's not a six-month process. It's going to take some time, but we are very encouraged. We also haven't launched it outside the U.S. yet.
Okay. One more down this road, and Ron, this might pull you back in, because I'm going to take some wording that I think was reflective of first quarter earnings commentary. I think you mentioned at the time U.S. was softer, EMEA was stronger, specific to one Q. Has that remained intact or reversed in any way? Are you seeing any green shoots more specific to the implant market here in North America?
I do not want to kind of get into too much in what we are seeing in the second quarter at this point, but I would say that markets have remained relatively steady. We have seen, like I said, in the first quarter, we had good growth in implants in Europe, especially in the DACH region, in the Germany, Austria, Switzerland region, where we were getting kind of mid to high single-digit growth, which led us to believe that we were definitely taking market share. We do not think the markets are growing that high there. In the U.S., it was a relatively flat market. I think you have heard that from us, and you have heard it from others in the industry. Those trends can kind of run into Q2.
Keep in mind with implants, the end market is much more responsible for the patient itself, is much more responsible for the cost of an implant in the U.S. In the U.S., you are a little more vulnerable to macroeconomic conditions as opposed to in Europe, where national health plans do give a slightly more generous coverage of that. There is less vulnerability in Europe. I think we're going to continue to see some growth in Europe. Perhaps some, I won't call it challenges in the U.S., because we're encouraged by some of the things that Tom talked about. It is a challenging market right now. I think that some of it goes back to how many people in the end market are willing to go out and get an implant procedure or defer it.
Understood. Just going to look at the audience. I'm going to shift now to the other initiative that I think was talked about on the first quarter earnings call, the global e-commerce platform. Let's just level set. Please talk to that. And then what is it? Is it a share recapture effort? Is that how we should think about it? Or is it more of sort of a cost and margin opportunity? Or maybe a little bit of both?
Maybe both. Yeah, we announced that we launched a major initiative on what we call the global e-commerce platform that is the new Henry Schein.com. We launched it at the end of last year in the U.K. and Ireland. We picked these markets because, first of all, because of the size. They are not huge markets, so more manageable for a new product launch, but also because they are very e-commerce oriented. We wanted to have feedback from a market that was quite sophisticated on e-commerce. We are very happy with the results. We're very encouraged. We learned some small topics that we had to improve. We did it before the launch that will happen in the second part of this year in the US and Canada.
This is a sophisticated e-commerce platform, so more with feature like B2C more than B2B, but also with the typical requirement that our market, both in dental and medical, have multi-practice management, budget, or formularies. We have all the equipment, information, and let's say lead generation capabilities. We have education capabilities. We try to combine the state of the art of the e-commerce platforms with what is needed in our market. The second part of your question, is it share regain? Definitely can help on this, because especially on the, let's say, episodic customers that are more inclined to shop online, we are more sophisticated. We have more tools to target these kinds of customers with dedicated promotion and initiatives. Sorry. There is a loyalty component, a customer experience component that should drive loyalty.
There is, of course, an efficiency component, because the more customers we onboard to buy electronically, the more efficient is our sales process, and the more our team on the field can focus on helping the customer, developing the customers, and finding new customers.
I think you alluded to it. Maybe you said the back part of this year, but how do we think about that initiative fully rolled out? I mean, do we start to see that take hold in the back half of this year? Is this more a 2026 U.S. timeline when we think about it getting up and running and having some momentum to it?
I would say more a 2026 impact, because 2025 and the second part of this year will be more the rollout. We will do it in stages, because we want to make sure we are close to our customers during the transition.
Okay. That's a good segue, Ron, to throw it back to you. For both of those initiatives, are there upfront costs or dilutive costs associated with either of those? Or is it like, no, we're taking the team we already got on the field, and we're better utilizing them? Do not think about it dilutive. Think about it as actually can be somewhat accretive and be accretive pretty quickly.
One of the things we talked about when we provided guidance for 2025 was we were expecting higher depreciation expense this year, because we did have to begin, even though when we launched the product, it was restricted to the U.K. and Ireland. At the end of last year, you do have to begin depreciating all the capital that you've put on the balance sheet associated with it at that point in time, even though it's restricted to that one geographic area. We did indicate that our guidance did reflect this higher depreciation expense. That's part of that. Sure, there are increased operating expenses associated with a system of this nature, but we do think that we expect slightly better distribution margins, because there's kind of less face-to-face negotiation or price.
When you have a system like this, the whole idea is we want to get as many of our customers as possible to use the system to order their product and allow our field sales reps to spend more time with them focusing on how to drive efficiencies in their practice and how to increase profitabilities in their practice. Those margins, we could get a little bit of extra margin there. Over time, I think we can get some efficiencies on just how we go to market. Will this result in an ability to really kind of leverage the system to have a more efficient operating base around the revenues that support and the system that supports those revenues?
Okay. I'm going to shift gears. I'm going to go to the LRP. Maybe we can talk about the things needed for the LRP EPS goal, which I believe is high single digits to low double digits to take hold. I feel like when you guided for 2025, you sort of said our expectation is those LRP goals come back into play in 2026. Maybe we can just give that a quick blessing. Is that correct?
Yeah. So clearly, we haven't provided guidance on 2026 yet. I think our point there is, and this is kind of looking back on our investor day about two and a half years ago, when we said our long-term goals, and you mentioned it, John, would be kind of this 8%-11% range in EPS growth. To get that 8%-11% EPS growth, we need top-line growth of about 6%-8%. That 6%-8% assumed that we would get a certain amount of market growth. We kind of broke out four different segments, right? Core dental, which we said would be we would need market growth in that 2%-4% range. Core medical, which we said would be in that 4%-7% growth range. Dental specialties, which was in the 5%-8% market growth range.
Finally, on technology and value-added services, we said 8%-12%. A lot of it starts with that market growth. What we are seeing this year, arguably in both core dental and core medical, are market growth rates that are probably a little below those ranges, right? We will closely monitor what we think those market growth rates are as we get into the back half of 2025, leading into 2026. To the extent that we are within or not within those assumed market growth ranges, it will impact that assumed 6%-8% overall revenue growth, which in turn influences the 8%-11% EPS growth, right? That is the cascade that we are looking at. To the extent markets are not quite there, chances are EPS will not quite be there either, right? There are some other things that can influence this.
Some of the new products we have, the success of the restructuring programs, what are some of the value creation ideas that we're working on, for example, with KKR at this point in time, and to what extent do those begin to monetize at some point, right? These are all things that we'll also have to take into consideration when contemplating 2026 guidance.
That come back the other way, or I should say the favorable way. Just to maybe rehash that a little bit, because you did go down the road of a couple of my questions. I was going to say, look, I think we'd all do a backflip right now if 6%-8% or dental market accelerated, right? I mean, let's just take what we're looking at right now and extrapolate that going forward is probably best off of like a spot rate mentality in that regard. That's not going to get us to a 6%-8% most likely. I was going to say, what are the tailwinds that could help even in a more modest top-line environment? We just discussed a couple, right? Also the restructuring, correct?
I mean, when we think about the restructuring and the way it's flowing through, you do have some incremental dollars or incremental savings in 2026 versus 2025, if I've got that right.
That's correct. I mean, we initiated the new restructuring plan in the summer of last year. At that point in time, we estimated we could get annual savings in the $75 million-$100 million range. We are completing some of those initiatives over the course of 2025, but we believe by the end of this year, we will have completed enough that we will be getting pretty close to the high end of that $75 million-$100 million, so close to $100 million of annual run rate costs that we've been able to, that we'll be able to take out of, or we'll have taken out of our cost base at that point in time.
Okay. I'm going to probably stick with you, Ron, because I've got a couple of model-related questions, and then we'll zoom out and go to a couple of different areas. When I looked at the model, I was confused on one or two things. You talked about the difficult US dental equipment comp last quarter, right? Because there was the flop from the 4Q to the 1Q a year prior. This quarter, if I've got this right, the U.S. dental equipment comp is again mid-single digits, or sorry, 4%-5%. Is there anything to call out when we think about the resumption of U.S. dental equipment growth this quarter? The comps seem somewhat consistent on what you face 1Q and 2Q.
Yeah. I mean, I think especially in the U.S., when you look at equipment, a lot of it comes down to what are we seeing in terms of build-out of de novo practices. One of the things we have talked about is we're seeing an increase in the rate of those de novo practices. And when we say build-outs, we really mean the initiation of these, not the completion of them, right? Typically, you're looking at kind of six to nine months from the time you're going to break ground that you're actually going to start seeing patients in a practice like that. Those are the types of activities that give us some optimism around equipment, probably more so in the back half of the year than now. With the tariff environment, it does create a little bit of macroeconomic concerns for us.
I mean, to what extent are there dental practices out there who were getting ready to pull the trigger on some high-dollar equipment, but with some of the uncertainties happening with tariffs or elsewhere in the economy, pulled back on that a little bit. We have been monitoring the equipment order and the volume of equipment orders that we're getting, because, and I emphasize orders, because orders do not necessarily mean revenues right away. There is going to be a lag of time between orders and when you actually install the equipment and recognize the revenue. We said earlier that the equipment order volumes are meeting our expectations and in a range of our expectations. Will that mean that is there a chance that some practices may push back a little bit that installation before they commit to actually taking the equipment?
is always a risk of that in this type of environment. I think that, let's face it, we are all kind of dealing with each day, okay, what environment are we operating in today, right? That includes our customers. It would not be unusual to see that get pushed out a little bit. If it does, we still feel like we can complete our equipment goals and get to our equipment revenue goals before the end of the year.
Okay. Understood. Yeah, we had a dinner last night, so some things changed in the middle of the day. Understood. Technology, some things have moved around with the reporting structure, but this was seemingly solidly a high single-digit grower. I'm not going to pretend I had this crazy top-line build for your technology segment before, but you used to plug in the sixes and the sevens and sometimes be surprised to the upside. The internal growth is slow to low single digits the last couple of quarters. I think there were some moving parts, right? Stanley talked openly about, hey, the move from on-prem to SaaS, and that changed the timing of the RevRec as it hit upfront sales. I think you also talked about some new products as well.
What's the right more long-term technology growth rate that we should think about from this more recent low single-digit range?
I still expect us to ultimately get back to high single digits. I think when you look at when you kind of peel back our technology business a little, the core part of our technology business are practice management systems. We have an on-prem system, Dentrix, which has been the market leader for years and continues to be a principal core product of Henry Schein One, our technology business. We recently introduced, relatively recently introduced Dentrix Ascend, which is a SaaS model, a subscription model. The shift we're seeing is that more and more customers, the new customers, are signing up for the SaaS model and taking on the subscription-based system. But we still have a lot of Dentrix customers. Matter of fact, it's still about a 90/10 split between on-prem customers and SaaS customers. The conversion of Dentrix customers to SaaS is not a fast process.
Most of our Dentrix customers like Dentrix. They want to stay on it. They also understand there's going to be some disruption to go to the SaaS model. Most of the new business we're getting is with Dentrix Ascend, but we still have a very solid base of Dentrix on-prem customers. Those collectively, those products are getting us pretty much high single-digit revenue growth. It is elsewhere within Henry Schein One where we are consolidating some products, for example, around what we call patient experience modules, where we had kind of multiple brands, a lot of costs kind of spread out between supporting those brands. We are in the process of combining these a little bit so that we can get some efficiencies there. We have already pulled back a lot on some of the OpEx associated with those brands.
That is why in the first quarter, we were able to achieve, well, you mentioned it's a, say, roughly 3% revenue growth in technology. We were able to achieve greater than 20% operating income growth because we just found that it was not really efficient use of funds to support some of these patient experience modules that, quite frankly, are not growing very much. You are seeing that kind of drag down that revenue growth. The core practice management systems are in that high single-digit range. That is why I think that once we kind of clean up some of these other modules, while still being very profitable in the business, we can also get back to that high single-digit revenue.
You clean that up, you lap that, and you sort of exit, you get back to your high single-digit trajectory with a more profitable organization.
One way to look, yes.
Okay. Last one, little dance on the model. If you can help me reconcile this. So the past two years, EPS was up high single digits to low double digits, 1Q to 2Q, just from a seasonality perspective. This year, the street has you up low single digits. EPS growth Q over Q were mid-single digits. Yet what was going on? Revenue growth accelerated exiting 1Q. You talked about Fed March. The dollar's in a better place. When we think about FX, the restructuring's ongoing. It seems like the incrementals would be more favorable this year, 1Q to 2Q, yet that growth rate's more suppressed. Help me with that delta, if you would.
I mean, 1Q did finish, I think, a little better than expectations. That could be part of it. There could be a little bit just of a phasing issue within Q1, Q2. We're continuing to invest in the business. We're getting ready to launch GEP. These are all things that become important in terms of the timing of when certain costs are going to be incurred. So I'm pretty comfortable with what's out there.
Pretty comfortable with where the street currently is.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay. Works. Let's pivot DSOs. We had Heartland here right before, and they had some really nice things to say about you guys. Just DSOs in general, they're going to get bigger, at least we think so. How do we think about the DSOs and the impact on your P&L? Obviously, they get a lower price, but higher utilization, higher margins because lower cost to serve. Can you talk to us about the moving parts in dealing with the DSOs?
Sure. When we talk about DSOs and especially big national DSOs, they are on the price side, they are more demanding. This is a given in return of commitment on volumes, commitment on long-term partnerships, and commitment on having a higher utilization of our portfolio of products and services. Lower price, more portfolio of products and solutions sold from our side. We work, of course, on the vendor side, having dedicated conditions for these kinds of customers. We work on our cost side. For example, we do not have the typical FSCs paid on commission to serve these kinds of customers, but we work more with key account management that are paid on base salary plus bonus. We tend to find agreements with these kinds of customers where we are more efficient in terms of logistics.
In general, we see these customers, this customer segment, as very valuable because they are more interested in which kind of value we can bring on the table. Yes, they are very demanding on prices, but they are really looking at us as a partner to the business.
When you say a partner to the business, again, when speaking to a Heartland, it seems like, look, let's keep as much of this under our roof as possible. Let's go ahead and monetize the patient. Then you look at Henry Schein's portfolio and how it's expanded, notably within specialties. Is that where that sort of partnership comes into play?
That is a very good example, the usage of our product, our specialty products with these customers.
John, just to add to that, I mean, Andrea has really hit on the key points there. The fundamental thing is, and this is not only DSOs, but really DSOs especially, you cannot allow your relationship with your DSO customers to be a transactional relationship. Or else it is just a race to the bottom in terms of who can sell equipment and merchandise at a lower price. You have to be partnering with them to help them drive profits in their practices and in their overall business. If you can have that type of strategic relationship with them, then it gets sticky. We have that breadth of products and services. These guys, both of them, I know that when Heartland was here, they talked about the BioHorizons products they sell. They are able to, their GPs are doing more and more implants within their practices.
We can offer that up to them. We can help get them certified. We can make sure they got the right products. We can go through that whole process with them. They do not have to go to someone else to do that. That is part of the strategic approach we have to have with all of our DSO customers to assure that it just does not turn into who can sell cotton balls the cheapest to somebody because that is just not a winning proposition.
Understood. Great point. I do want to quickly hit medical, and maybe we'll have time at the end for one more. The LRP growth, I think you mentioned it earlier on. I said mid-single, but I think more specifically the 4-7%, I believe, is what you called out. Is that still the right number longer term? It's been low single digits more recently. How did we get there? In other words, you've made some acquisitions. They might lap in a core. Is that going to get you in the right direction? At the end of the day, do we need a little bit more of a firmer end market?
Yeah. Acquisitions will definitely contribute to that. I do think that, especially on the home solutions side, our home solutions business tends to grow faster than core medical, tends to get better operating profits than or operating margins than our core medical. Our home solutions business had 9% internal growth in the first quarter. I think we can continue to get kind of high single-digit growth in that subsegment of medical going forward. Yeah, I think 4-7, I think, is very doable over a period of time in terms of a CAGR for the medical business. A lot of that's going to be how well we can continue to grow that home solutions contribution to that business, though.
Okay. Last one, I mentioned Heartland earlier. KKR has obviously had a very successful investment in Heartland and now an investor in Henry Schein. What have you seen to date from their involvement? Maybe more importantly, as we look forward a little bit, what are the areas that you expect them to focus on? Is it from an OpEx viewpoint? Is it more in CapEx deployment?
With KKR, we've been able to share with them what are some of the initiatives we had in place, whether it be around revenue enhancement, margin enhancement, G&A optimization. What are some of the different initiatives we had within that? We've shared with them what we're working on. They've been able to look at that and determine, where do we have resources where we can help you either accelerate that process or at least increase the chances of success with that process, right? We're still pretty much early stages. There's a lot of data sharing with them at this point in time. I mean, Max and Dan came on the board officially within the last month or so. We're still very much in the early stages with them. I do think that we're excited about the opportunity.
This presentation has now finished.