I'm happy to introduce the team from Henry Schein. Sorry, getting some feedback. We have Ron South, CFO; Andrea Albertini, CEO of Global Distribution and Technology; and Tom Popeck, CEO of the Henry Schein Products Group. Thanks, guys, for coming out, and good to have you again with us this morning. I've got a long list of questions. Audience, if you've got stuff, throw up your hand. I'm going to sort of start off high level and ask about dental trends. This might be for Andrea or Tom, but coming into 3 Q earnings, we really saw, call it like, stronger traction across the international markets relative to the U.S., not only for you guys, but I would say across a handful of different dental companies.
What I'm asking or going after is, has that trend of stronger international versus US, has that remained intact here as we think about kicking off 4Q? Have you seen that reverse? Any signs of change or maybe the U.S. picking up would be helpful to level set and start off there?
I start?
Floor is yours.
Thank you, Jon. Q3, we announced a good quarter, both in U.S. and international in dental. The merchandise growth in local currency was similar. It is true that some international markets showed very strong growth. We had strong growth in Canada, in Brazil, in some European countries, especially South Europe or Australia. We also said during the earnings call that October was on a similar trend, both in U.S. and international. We did not disclose any further information on Q4, but we have reason to believe that the trend is stable. When you talk about equipment, this is where international was stronger than U.S. Again, very strong growth in some markets. Germany is one of those. Canada again. Australia again. We expect to continue growth also in U.S. in Q4.
The driver of the growth this year in the U.S. is mainly the digital equipment, but Q4 is also a good quarter in terms of seasonality. We expect overall to see the entire category growing.
Okay. Okay. Helpful. Maybe just to push you a little bit, to your point, it seems like more of the same so far in the fourth quarter when we think about international versus the U.S. How about if we think about, call it the distribution business versus more of the specialty products? Has that changed? Really what I'm trying to drill down on is, in the U.S., it seemingly has lagged when we think about clear aligners and maybe implants. Are there any signs of life in the specialty business, right, that we're seeing in the U.S. specific to some of those products?
Yeah, I could speak to that.
I'll turn it to Tom.
Very similar trend with Andrea. Europe strong, Brazil strong. In the U.S., it's better on specialty. It's better, for sure. I think that momentum will continue.
Okay. It is just a factor of what? Just the consumer getting a little bit on better footing, a little bit more confidence? Is it some of the rates coming down?
I think that in general, the market is stable. It's not. We're taking some market share with some new products that we have out in the marketplace. I think general overall, you're seeing the market just continue at the same momentum it's at. I don't really see any meaningful changes.
Okay. This is a good point also for distribution. In a stable market, we said that in Q3 we gained market share. We believe we are in a good momentum to continue to capture market share.
Okay. Very helpful. I'm going to bounce around, Ron. I'll jump over to the savings initiative. Really, coming off the call, this is probably where I got most of the questions around the $200 million of net improvements, net cost improvements, pardon me, over the next few years. How do we think about those savings? I guess a couple of questions. Does it cost something upfront in order to get the $200 million net? The other question that I'll bolt on is the cadence or the pacing. Is it linear? Is it back and weighted? Any color there?
Thanks, Jon. I think there would definitely be some costs we incur. I mean, is it linear? Is it consistent with the pace of the cost savings? Unfortunately, the answer to that is it depends. One of the things we're looking at now is we've identified a lot of what we believe are value creation projects coming out of these initiatives. It's a matter of phasing them in a thoughtful way now that if we try to do them all on day one, we're not going to get them all done. We have to phase them out just for resources, if anything else. We'll take that into consideration when looking at our 2026 guidance, when we provide 2026 guidance in February. I do expect some net benefit in 2026 from these.
I would expect that we would be able to grow on that benefit as we go beyond 2026. That is part of the we've completed the assessment phase, and that is really the phasing that we're starting to go through right now and the planning we're going through right now to assure that we can execute on this in an optimal way.
Okay. When I hear that, I mean, my words, not yours, it seems like it's got to be a little bit back and weighted, right? I mean, if you're saying you're going to see something in year one and it's $200 million over the next few years, it would just seem as a byproduct of that.
Yeah, we will get benefit. We will definitely get benefit in year one, but we should be able to grow on that as we go.
Okay. They want me to ask some tough questions, so I'll preface the next one with respectfully in front of it. What was KKR able to go in there and find where if you do the math on $200 million over the next few years, and I'll make it linear, $60 million-$70 million a year on a $13 billion top line, it's like 50 bp s of OM expansion per annum, and you guys have had a hard time expanding OMs, what were they able to uncover that Henry Schein was not able to really identify and pinpoint on their own?
I would argue that these were areas that we had identified, but it was really working with KKR, specifically with Capstone, sharing with them what we saw as the possible, and then working with them to identify a couple of different consulting firms that really we kind of split the consulting firms up between one working on gross profit optimization, the other one on G&A optimization. I would say the fundamental thing, and the thing that went I do not want to say was counterculture to us, but historically, we have looked at the business as now I have two guys up here who everything in the business rolls up between the two of them, right? Historically, it was broader than that. It was you have a piece of business, you go drive to this goal, you have a piece of business, you go drive to this goal.
If everybody executes on that, we get really good growth. What we haven't done, and a lot of our restructuring was within your business, what restructuring can you do? What we're doing now is we're looking more, I would say, across the businesses. What assets, what infrastructure can we share across these businesses that historically that was not our approach to running the business? That's something that's always been we've had out there, and we needed someone to kind of help us pull the trigger on that. I think working with KKR, working with some of the specific consultants that we have spent a lot of time with over the last three to four months, we've now gotten to the point where we feel confident we can execute on these things and deliver the savings that we talk about in the call a couple of weeks ago.
I was going to call maybe one more, Ron, to tack on, and then I'll pivot and go to implants and specialty. You might answer this in your comments. It seems like it's going to be both a COGS and OpEx thing, right? I mean, some procurement in COGS, I'm guessing a little bit more heavily weighted to OpEx just as we try to think through the $200 million.
Yeah, we haven't really specified. We're really focused on the aggregate amount. You're right. Within COGS, there's a number of initiatives ranging from how do we drive a more dynamic pricing environment? That doesn't necessarily mean price increases. That means perhaps even price decreases that can drive even greater volumes for us. It also means how do we drive perhaps more business towards owned brands, private label that don't necessarily grow revenues, but could grow gross profits for us? How do we work smarter with our suppliers? It's a greater win-win for us, but we still drive a better gross margin percentage there. To your point, too, there's also some G&A savings, some significant G&A savings that we think we can drive. There is we haven't given the numbers around those two separately.
We're really focusing on the aggregate amount because in some cases, there's a bit of an overlap on that as well.
Understood. Understood. Let me pivot, and then I'll come back to some P&L stuff. Over to implants, you guys had really good results in the quarter. Mid-single digit growth, value was up low double digits, premium was up low single digits. I think we all want to ask, like, hey, when does premium come back? Is there a structural thing in the background here where GPs are doing more implants? They're doing single-tooth implants, simpler procedures. They have a greater propensity to maybe use a value implant. It's not a bad thing, right? I mean, it's aiding market growth. Just to level set for everyone, is this more structural in nature? Should we see that divergence between value and premium maybe persist for coming quarters and years?
Yeah. There is no doubt the value segment's growing faster. We have made some meaningful investments in the value segment over the last couple of years with the acquisition, Biotech in France, and our S.I.N. business in Brazil. I see those trends continuing. Value is good for those GPs that are looking to save some money, but also for the DSOs. They are shopping price and looking for the best value. I think it is a trend that is going to stay.
Okay. Tapered Pro Conical . I think you guys gave some specific numbers around it, 1/3 of U.S. implant revenue, if I've got that correct. Where can that go over time? I mean, where do we start to see some resistance? Is that half? Is it 2/3 ?
Yeah. Keep in mind that prior to Tapered Pro Conical, we did not have an implant in the US that played in that market. And that market is 50% of the market. So we are 1/3. A lot of that was just the turn of customers from our older design to the new design. There is no reason that over time that should not be 50% of our revenue.
Okay. Ongoing talent there. And one more for me. Did you guys get a different Tapered Pro Conical approved in the S.I.N. division earlier this week? I mean, we're trying to track what we can through the FDA. Sometimes it's a little noisy. Did that come through earlier this week? And if so, maybe talk to how this is additive to the portfolio.
Yeah, we did. The new product line is called Versalis, and it's out of our S.I.N. business in Brazil, really meant to broaden our portfolio here in the U.S. to make sure we could offer our customer base all the options they need. We're really excited about it. It's launching Q4. We really think that the combination of that new product and our current product line really positions it as well.
All right. Let me continue to go down this road, and I'll round out specialty. It's not that I don't want to give Endo a lot of time, but Endo's sort of Endo, right? I mean, it's Brazilian. It's not very discretionary. Do we think about that in terms of ongoing mid-single digit growth? And let me just tack on Ortho while I'm there. How do you guys view that business today, right? I think, Ron, your comments maybe nine months ago was, we've got to do we've got to make some changes. We've got to at least lose less money. How do we think about that business going forward? Is it essential to Schein specialty? And really, do we think about you retaining the Ortho business?
Yeah. Let's talk about Endo first.
Okay. Endo it is.
We have done well in the Endo market over the last couple of years. We are positioned, we went from a trailing position a couple of years ago to a solid number two position in Endo, mid-single digit growth, as you mentioned. We have done some unique things very similar to implants. We have a premium line. We have a value line. We are selling through our distribution team over the last 18 months or so, which has been received very well. This omni sales channel approach we have with taking a product, putting different brands on it, different pricing, different value propositions. Endo is a great example. We see no reason why that should not continue to be low mid-single digit growth going forward. On Ortho, clarify orthodontics because we also have an orthopedic position.
Good point.
In orthodontics, that's a much smaller part of our business. That business is now stabilized from where we were before. There are really two parts of it. There is the core bracket business, which is a good business, profitable business, and then the aligner business. The aligner business is tough unless you have some real scale. You see that with many of the players that talk about aligners. I do not see orthodontics as really being the major driver of our focus. I think that implants, endodontics, orthopedics is probably a higher focus.
Okay. Very good color. Let me pivot. I'm going to touch on the global e-commerce platform. Then, Ron, I want to go back to some numbers. Help us out with the e-commerce platform. I think you rolled it out in the U.K. and Ireland. It's undergoing sort of a phase launch in North America. Just any more details you can provide on this initiative and help us with the results to date that you've seen?
Sure. You are correct, Jon. We started the rollout in the U.K. and Ireland, and obviously, because it is a more controlled market to launch a new platform. The goal is to have a global platform. The reason why we are launching a completely new e-commerce environment is to create a better customer experience. It is not only to capture the independent shoppers with e-commerce-like features, but it is also in the normal interaction with our loyal customers, driving contents, driving better tools for them to place orders and to find products in our portfolio. It is a better customer experience, and it is not only dedicated to pure e-commerce kind of, yeah, customers.
The results, U.K. went live at the beginning of the year, so it's the only market where we have a few months of stability and data and learning, both on the customer side, but also from our team because this is a new tool, very advanced. The results are very encouraging. We see, first of all, we did a survey on customer experience, on customer satisfaction, and it went very well. We also look at KPIs, of course, that help us to understand how much customers are spending time on this, how do they find products, what is the average size of the order, the GP. The results are very encouraging. We are rolling it out now in the U.S. and Canada with a staged approach to make sure that we have the resources to take care of our customers when they transition.
We will continue steadily across the next few months in the U.S. and Canada and then go to Europe, the rest of Europe next year.
What does this mean for numbers? Ron, I do not know if this goes back to you, but if dollars were to shift to the global e-commerce platform, I am guessing there is some incremental argument there, right? You said just buying behavior in some shoppers. Maybe they were not Schein, and now they are. If someone were to take a portion of their Henry Schein business and bring it over to the e-commerce platform, what does that mean for you guys in terms of margins? Is it retaining that business, but at a slightly lower margin? I am just trying to think through that from a P&L perspective.
I don't believe we ever gave numbers related to this. Think about the platform, as I said, as a tool to capture new sales because it's more sophisticated. This is one goal. It's also a tool to deal with our normal customers, give them a better customer experience, have more opportunities to drive incremental sales with tools like suggested product or customer that normally buys this also buys that. You may want to consider this alternative that allows us to push products that we believe in the segment, in the category, are more profitable. It can be a good tool to increase the size of the basket, but also the profitability of the basket. Plus, it's more efficient because you have the workflow of the order that is digital. Fewer people touch the order, fewer errors, and more efficiency.
If you're giving back something in price, you might be able to make it back a little bit in other areas in terms of when we get to a net margin number.
Yeah. Also, the margin is not worse online. It's not.
It's not at a disadvantage.
It's not. There are areas where we may want to promote, but there are areas where we are able to do more margin, so.
Do you have a rough, when you look at a number of years, is this 5% of the business? Is it 40% of the business? Just any thoughts on how this ramps in coming years?
We are, with the legacy product, with the today e-commerce platform, we are already at a very high percentage in the U.S. Electronically, we get, I do not want to give a percentage without checking the numbers, but very high percentage of orders are already coming in electronically. It is just an improvement on the.
It's just an improvement in next gen or an iteration. Okay. Ron, I'm going to pivot, and I'm going to go to implied 4Q 2025. I know you love it when I'm up here and I start doing implied numbers, which is so much fun. The math for 4Q 2025 revenue, it really is interesting. You look at the midpoint of the new revenue guidance, which you increased on the call. I land at 4Q 2025 revenue implied at around 5.5%-6% year-over-year. You can always cut me off if I'm off there. That shows ongoing momentum. I think clearly we saw the business gain traction 2Q to 3Q. This would, again, imply a further improvement into 4Q. What's behind that? Earlier, these guys referred to ongoing share gains. Let me pause there, and then I'll tack on one more question there.
I think it's truly a reflection of the momentum we saw in the third quarter. When you look at the third quarter, just as reported, consolidated revenue versus the second quarter revenue was $100 million higher. We have a good sequential growth as we go from Q2 into Q3, and we believe we can continue to grow into Q4. This momentum we're seeing, some recovery, some good recovery we had in dental merchandise, both in the U.S. as well as outside the U.S. Q4 is typically a heavy quarter for us on the equipment side. We think we can continue with that. We're comfortable with what we're seeing in terms of the backlog on standard equipment and what we can monetize in the fourth quarter there. Technology has had Henry Schein One has had a series of very good growing quarters for us.
We think that continues as well. When we modified the revenue guidance for the full year, we took all that into consideration in terms of how we thought we could get to that number by the end of the year. I think it is really the momentum that we see going from Q2 into Q3 and continuing into Q4.
The tack-on question would be the momentum, to your point, 2Q to 3Q to 4Q, is that mid-single digit figure sort of the right jump-off trajectory to think about as we go into 2026?
I mean, we'll have to take that into consideration when we do our 2026 guidance, right? We'll provide 2026 guidance at the end of February. That will clearly be something that will influence that guidance. What kind of momentum are we seeing through Q4, not just in Q4 in aggregate, but during the quarter? What kind of increases are we seeing month to month as well? And does that translate to ongoing, perhaps accelerated growth in 2026? That'll be a key factor when determining our 2026 guidance.
Okay. Helpful. Again, guys, if you have any questions, throw up your hand. You mentioned, Ron, in answering that last question, the momentum in technology, really good segue. That's my next topic. Maybe talk to some of the tailwinds in the business. The internal growth accelerated the past two quarters to high single digits. What's been the driver behind that and the sustainability of that high single digit growth profile?
It's really in the core practice management systems. We're seeing some revenue growth in both, especially in the cloud-based systems, both in the U.S., which is the Dentrix Ascend product, and outside the U.S. in Dentally. I think that as we continue to see transition, in some cases, existing customers who are transitioning from the on-prem system to a cloud-based system, but also just ongoing new customers who are signing up to that cloud-based system is driving a lot of that growth. We're seeing double-digit growth in practice management systems driving that high single digit growth, for example, the 9% growth you saw in the third quarter. There are other models not growing as quickly, but the core practice management systems are what's driving that growth.
We think that in spite of the fact that it gets tougher when you have in the U.S., we have greater than a 50% market share in practice management systems. A lot of this comes down to how do you increase share of wallet? How do you add components to your standard system that customers like and allow you to increase that price going forward as well? How do you increase that share of wallet while also driving efficiency in your customers' practices is really the key approach to making sure that we can continue with that revenue growth.
I feel like for a little while in this division, you were trying to prune and clean up maybe the margin profile a little bit. Now you got the revenue growth at your back. Do we think about sort of two tailwinds here? Revenue growth is performing better, and also the accompanying margin profile is favorable?
Yeah. Do you want to take that?
I'd like to add something to what Ron said before because the strategy is around growing our core practice management business, especially the cloud version. As Ron said, we are growing double digit since a couple of quarters, but also to start to add subscription-based solutions around and integrated in the practice management system. We announced many solutions this year or, yeah, early this year, Reserve with Google, Detect AI, more recently, revenue cycle management solutions. These are all solutions that help our customers to improve efficiency, but also running in general better practice and are profitable because they are subscription-based solutions. We announced it last week in agreement with Amazon Web Services for generative AI.
This is a unique partnership that will allow us to release in the next few months new solutions in this direction, like voice script, like the period chart enhanced by AI. These are all solutions that will increase the penetration of our ecosystem around the practice management software into the practice.
Those are incremental opportunities in front of you.
Yeah. I mean, we'll be part of this sustained growth in the high single digit plus that Henry Schein One is having. And efficiency, yes, we drove efficiency that made the bottom line growing faster than top line, but we are also investing in continuous development.
Fair enough. Let me get into the long-term EPS growth and then hopefully round out the discussion with medical. I think there was a prevailing thought in the earnings call, like, "Look, you got this $200 million over three years. Hey, if nothing else, and I do the math on the $200 million, you've got to land at a high single digit plus earnings per annum." I think that math does hold. When I normalize, Ron, for the remeasurement gain this year and last, the figures you provided, your year-to-date EBIT is basically flat year-over-year. You have got the benefits of, call it, the Schein restructuring that's been ongoing. Help us out. Can you grow EBIT from core ops? If so, what's the rate of revenue growth needed?
Because it does look like in your guidance, you do have EBIT growth coming back in in 4Q 2025 versus 4Q 2024.
Yeah, a lot of moving parts.
A lot of moving parts.
Let me digest that a little. What I will say, and just repeating back something that we said in the prepared remarks last week, was that we believe that the benefits that we can derive from the value creation initiatives will get us back to our long-term goal of high single-digit, low double-digit EPS growth, right? When you look at our markets, they have been relatively flat. We've been talking about that throughout the day today with some investors. We feel like to get to our growth goals, we have to take a lot of initiatives internally, things that are company-specific to get there. We think we're making those moves to get there.
As we get to 2026, and you mentioned the remeasurement gain, when we look at the 2026 guidance, we'll take into consideration that revenue momentum that we were just talking about earlier. We'll take into consideration what our best estimates are in terms of the net benefit we can get from value creation in 2026. We'll call out whatever our assumption is around remeasurement gains. To the extent that that remeasurement gain differs from what we recorded in 2025, we'll make sure that we normalize for that and provide some kind of pro forma growth number associated with it. Those are all areas that we can take a hard look at going forward. You're right. I mean, the revenue growth will be driven by the ongoing momentum we see. What's our assumption around market growth in 2026?
Right now, it's a relatively low assumption on market growth. There are pockets of good growth out there. We've talked about European implant growth. We've talked about some other areas where we know we're taking market share, perhaps those markets are growing slightly better as an example. Those are all areas we'll be taking into consideration.
One more, Ron, just the year-to-date flat EBIT normalized for remeasurement, but growth coming back in EBIT 4Q 2025 versus 4Q 2024. I know we do not have numbers in front of us, but what is driving that? What is behind that? Is it the better revenue environment? Is it?
Yeah. I mean, you look at just using the third quarter as an example, strip out the remeasurement gains from 2025 and from 2024. Non-GAAP operating income grew about 4.5% versus the prior year. And I think we're starting to see some of the benefits from the restructuring we've done. We're seeing some margin improvements or margin stabilization, I'd say, on the gross margin side, but we're seeing some of that operating margin improvement start to come back a little bit. So that's really the key drivers. How do we leverage the infrastructure that much better going forward to drive greater operating margin expansion?
That's a great point. I guess, like I was giving you flat nine months, but to your point, if we actually isolate the first six months, it would be down.
That's right.
It would be up 4.5% in 3Q, and then you have more of that continuation in 4Q.
That's the run rate kind of going forward right now, we hope, right?
I never allow enough time for medical, but let me hit on it. You're selling stable products like point-of-care diagnostic tests and injectables in the physician office and vaccines like flu. It did have some turbulence coming out of COVID, and now it seems like it's stabilizing. I don't want to overthink this segment. Is that the right way to approach it? Maybe we're back to that more stable underlying mid-single digit trend specific to medical?
Yeah, I believe so. I mean, we have a 4.7% growth in Q3. We are in the range that you mentioned, the mid-single digit range. We see more stability still on the, of course, we have these flu-related products seasonality that in Q3 was a little bit of headwind because of point of test and flu vaccine. We have also very good momentum in segment like home solution that is growing very fast and pharma that in Q3 was strong. To your point, yes, we see more stability, and we believe this is in the range that we said in the past that was mid-single digit plus.
Is anything changing in the competitive landscape within medical?
I mean, there are a lot of announcements from our competitors, but I mean, we benefit from a trend. The trend is the acute setting procedure are shifting more to alternative care and non-acute setting. This is where we play. In our space, we see stability. We see tailwind. Again, home solution is really a high-growth business that we continue to invest in. So far, not a big change, but let's see what the future brings.
Last one for me, guys, and I'll make sure the audience is okay. Ron, let me go to capital allocation and M&A. On the cost savings, you talked a little bit about it being a function of streamlining past deals, better integration, leveraging back-office functionality. As you go through that process, does that mean M&A might pause for a little bit? You were very active a year and change ago as you clean that up, and you can still go after share repo, et cetera. Or can you still be acquisitive throughout that process?
No, I believe we can still be acquisitive. I mean, it has to be consistent with the strategy. I think that, but we're still going to be opportunistic. If we see an acquisition opportunity that can provide us, I've always said I want acquisitions to make the rest of the company better. If it's something that drives strategy, whether it makes us even better integrated vertically or it gives us a meaningful expansion in a specific product category that can drive more revenue growth, then that's an area that we will still be interested in doing. I think we have to be mindful that as we go through the process, we're going to go through the next couple of years, that we also do it in a way that makes us even more efficient in integrating some of these acquisitions more so than what we've done historically.
Okay. Fair enough. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time. Great to see you.