All righty, let's kick it off. Thank you so much, everyone, for joining. Patrick Quinn, I obviously run the U.S. Medtech team, for those who may not know me. Exciting disclaimers. Yeah, Morgan Stanley research website forward slash disclaimers. I'm not even sure if that's the right hyperlink. You-- I'm sure you'll all go there, so that's fine. And obviously, you know, this will be a great discussion. Dan, thank you so much for joining us, the CEO of STERIS. It's gonna be a lot of fun. I think maybe if we can just start sort of big picture, 'cause one of the fun things about STERIS is you guys see such a massive part of the healthcare system that I think a lot of other companies don't necessarily get.
And you read obviously what the other companies are sort of saying about volumes and things like that, but what do you see in terms of your real customers and volumes?
Yeah. So first off, let me say thank you, Patrick, for having us, both from you and also Morgan Stanley. We really appreciate the opportunity to be here today. You're right, we do have a lot of different data points. You know, we run many of the sterile processing departments across the U.S., U.K., and many other places in Europe, so we see what's going on in real time, as it relates to procedure volumes, and have a pretty good gauge. In addition to that, one of our businesses, our Applied Sterilization Technologies business, is the global leader in industrial sterilization for single-use devices. So we have a pretty good pulse on inventory volumes and what's going on in the broader market as it relates to consumption of single-use device, which obviously is directly correlated to procedure volumes.
So at a macro level, what I would say is this: in the U.S., volumes are back, in particular, very strong in the Sunshine States, where we've seen migration over years and seen a lot more growth in the healthcare systems. But even in the older, you know, traditional Rust Belt communities in the upper Midwest, we're seeing strong growth, high single-digit volumes in terms of procedural cases. So across the U.S., we see a healthy, ecosystem as it relates to procedure volume. Outside of the U.S., it's a little bit of a mix-and-match story.
Recovery across Europe has been slower, although we have seen in the last five, six months, positive trends starting to materialize that are more than just one-offs and believe that they're on a trajectory, although it may be six to nine months behind the U.S. market, but they're moving in the right directions now. So nonetheless, we see positive trend outlook for broader healthcare going forward as it relates to procedure rates.
There's been, for some of the other subsectors, things like hip and knee, there's been a bit of anxiety from investors of, you know, in the U.S., could we see volumes a lot less healthy in the second half of the year? Have you seen kind of anything would indicate a change, or is it just very consistent?
We haven't really seen anything, and I think there's still a lot of pent-up demand as it relates to those type of elective procedures. And as my good friend, who's an orthopedic surgeon, says he loves pickleball. It's the best thing that ever happened to orthopedics because a bunch of out-of-shape, old people think they're 21 again, and they need new hips and ankles and elbows from playing pickleball. So I do think that that's a demand that's gonna continue in terms. I don't think it's a short-term makeup.
I love that all those pickleball tournaments are sponsored by, like, Stryker and Zimmer.
Exactly.
It's phenomenal.
Brilliant.
You couldn't have that for any other industry. You know what I mean? It doesn't really work. So maybe we shift into, you know, healthcare as, you know, pretty much the largest segment. You know, again, think about customer demand. You guys had an incredibly strong capital equipment cycle last year.
Yeah.
Did very, very well on that. Maybe if you could refresh the audience, what drove such a strong replacement year? Some of it was catch-up, but some was underlying. That'd be helpful, I think.
Yeah. Well, let me start by saying, we've been doing a really nice job with our portfolio, and we've probably been selling above our normal share counts in the past, based on just performance overall. And then there's been increased demand as we came out of pandemic, and there's still a lot of expansion going on in healthcare. Like I said before, if you buy into the notion that procedure volumes are gonna grow, and you see a migration away from large acute care downtown into community hospitals or ASCs, the capacity as it relates to sterilization has to move with that. So we've been the beneficiaries, you know, of that over time.
And in addition, there's a bit of a falsehood there because we had manufacturing challenges going back two years ago, which effectively caused us to ship five quarters of capital equipment last year. So it was a great year if you normalized it, but it was a silly great year because of the challenges that were somewhat self-inflicted in 2022 , I guess is what I would say. But all in all, despite the current economic system and healthcare financial system in healthcare, where many of the hospitals have definitely crossed over to being cash positive but are still on the line or below break even from a P&L perspective, they see a path to profitability now, which I don't think they saw nine months ago.
That's really interesting. I mean, equally in relation to that, what's the competitive environment been like? Again, on that kind of capital equipment side, because the chemistry's falling out eventually, but the placements, how's that looked?
Like I said, I think we've done a nice job building out our portfolio over a number of years to put us in a very strong position in what I would define as a very narrow space. So down in the basement where we do sterile processing, STERIS is the leading provider, starting from the washers to the ultrasonics, to steam and low temp sterilization, and all the accessories that go along with that process. So, I believe that, you know, we've been, in terms of share, taking a greater portion each year for the last three years and hope to continue that based on the discipline we've built into our normal rhythm.
There's obviously been a bit of a volume shift, to some degree, from, like, a big inpatient IDN institution to the ASCs and outside. What does that mean for you guys?
It means that capacity is gonna move, right? And have to be reproduced in other places. And also it has to be equipment that's easier to use from a compliance standpoint, because you're not gonna have as highly of a trained worker that uses it frequently. So you gotta make it so it's mistake-proof. And so a lot of things that we're trying to do as we build in with our equipment is make it so the instructions for use for the different instruments are right there front of mind, and eliminates opportunities for errors or mistakes when doing the various process to get to a sterile product, to ultimately get that instrument back to the OR for procedures.
One question, the inevitable one. The market, it seems, some participants in it fixated on the idea of the capital equipment growth this year relative to an incredibly difficult year. Assuming it's a valid question, because the rest of it, like, just that one area, anything you would, like, observe about the construct of the year and, and just high level to placate some of the people who seem focused on that area?
Yeah, I think it's the problem is, we've trained all the analysts and investors over the last two years to focus on that because we had this strange backlog situation because of supply chain issues and challenges. In reality, you know, if you look back at STERIS 12-14 years ago, 50% of our revenue came from capital equipment. Now, 80% of our revenue is recurring or annuity type businesses based on consumables and services and everything that we've built out. And not that capital equipment isn't very important, because it is, it does drive some of our chemistry and annuity sales. But, you know, look, if I could take last year and get plus or minus 2% on that for the next 5 years in perpetuity and capital sales for healthcare, I'd sign up for it today.
And the reality is, you know, we said we're going to have modest low growth this year in our equipment in healthcare based on the comps of last year. And if we're plus or minus 2% of last year based on overperformance in the other parts of the businesses around the annuities, it's not going to matter. I mean, it's... So I think it's something that some folks are hyper-focused on, and I understand it because it's math and you want to model it, but in the end, it's the equipment that's in place is already in place, and it's going to drive performance going forward.
Makes sense. Maybe shifting to endoscopy, because it's an area that can get kind of missed, I think, sometimes-
Yeah
... for you guys. And it's obviously an area of multiple exposure to you, both from the reprocessing side, but also your own scopes. I don't think people necessarily clock onto that. So what is it about that market that has been attractive for STERIS and the focus on it?
Yeah, I mean, endoscopy is where STERIS arguably got their start back with STERIS System 1, doing endoscopes at a high level, with actual liquid chemical sterilization. And, you know, but since then, we've put together a number of companies that build out our endoscopy profile. So just a few examples. One, obviously, is Cantel, that came, and there's two parts to that. They were the largest global manufacturer of AERs, automatic endoscope reprocessors, to do high-level disinfection of endoscopes. So virtually every clinic in the U.S. would have a Cantel STERIS AER. And with that comes all the chemistries that go through the cleaning, both on the pre-disinfection prep work, but actually chemistries that go into the machine, and then everything that maintains the drying and safety prior to the next patient use.
In addition to that, original US Endoscopy, STERIS Endoscopy, makes clinical devices that actually go down the channel and lumens of the scope. These would be snares, Roth Nets, polyp traps, all the things used in endoscopy procedures, and we have a strong position in that market. In addition to our IMS group, we do third-party repair for all the major scope manufacturers, as well as power tools and things like that, where we'll take apart and replace lenses, replace electronics, and basically retrofit your scope, so it's effectively brand new and ready for use. Last but not least, we also do offer disposable ureteroscope in terms of going after that very small diameter market of scopes.
That's a market with essentially one player at the moment.
Yes, but other entrants coming in.
Yeah, I was going to say, like, presumably, you guys feel you can take a little bit of share out of that from Boston. Over time, it's quite a quick-growing area.
Correct. And the opportunity there is really in small diameter. Large diameter, you know, colonoscopy scopes are. They're very expensive, and they're easy to clean and sterilize, and then the cost and waste by making those disposable at the current price point just doesn't make sense in our view. Maybe at some point, there'll be technological advances that will, you know, make it a possibility, but for right now, we're focused on where there's smaller diameter, high break fix, is what we call it to operational type scopes.
And then switching gears, you know, the sort of consumables, chemistries, and service side in healthcare has been very, very strong. Obviously, some of that is because of, you know, the prior year you had a very strong hardware sale, but I wouldn't have thought that that many of those hardware sales in the prior year would have been incremental, like, installed base. I would have thought some of them would have been a replacement cycle rather than new. So I guess the question is, how much should we tie the, like, the consumable side of the business to overall healthcare volume utilization, and how much is that installed base growth sort of competition side?
It's kind of one plus one equals three, meaning we are entirely procedural driven. So to the extent there's more consumption and procedures, that means there's more consumption and sterile processing department capacity, which drives use of our disinfectants, cleaners, and chemistries that go into the machines, as well as everything in the prep and around that, sterility assurance and packaging. So that's that. Now, we have the benefit as well of, like I said, maybe doing a little better from a share perspective over the last three or four years, and those machines then drives some volume, incremental volume, as we pick up share.
I think of, like, pricing and, like, customer churn. I'd had a couple of discussions which had suggested that one of the cycles that can happen in the hospital is they get you guys in, they have an infection issue, generally a sterilization issue. They get you guys in, you manage it, fix it. Three years later, the hospital has a new CFO or whatever come in, who's like, "Oh, this is expensive." They go back to doing it themselves. A year later, they have an infection issue. You go back in. A, is that a characterization that exists in the market, or was I misled? And B, is there anything you can do to kind of bridge, if that does happen, to sort of bridge that and stop that gap ever happening?
Yeah, what I would say is, no, it's not a mischaracterization. It does happen. But we're we take a very long view of our customer relationships, and they always come back is what we found. And, you know, I always say we don't care how a customer buys from us, as long as they buy from us, and whether we're providing service or whether we're providing, you know, actual product and chemistries, 'cause ultimately, they'd still be using our equipment, our chemistries in that scenario. And, you know, when it's time to call us back because they have issues, we bring the consulting team in, we bring the on-site leadership, and we'll take it back over.
How can you think about... I would argue you guys have generally been a little bit more careful with pricing than some of your peers, to a point about the long-term customer relationships. How do we think about the interplay between price and volume with the customer?
You know, I think that we still have an enormous opportunity to sell the STERIS enterprise solution into the healthcare facilities, and that's something that our customers are coming to us asking for. So, in the absence of significant price escalation on product, we've asked for more volume and broader penetration into the accounts, and we've been successful doing that and leveraging that. The problem with getting too aggressive in the hospital on price is that especially in our capital equipment categories, you open up sole source contracts-
Mm-hmm.
Potentially and become dual sourced. And so we've done everything we can to protect those sole source arrangements where we have them, and I think in the long run, it's probably the best play.
Mm-hmm. If you zoom out, and you think of the healthcare business at STERIS in totality, are there any interesting puzzle pieces you feel like you're missing, the strategic next direction for the business, areas you'd like to compete that you don't, or geographies, like, from your perspective, the direction of travel?
We still have a lot of opportunity in Europe. Our portfolio over there has vastly improved, but it doesn't have the exact market fit that we need yet, so there's still opportunities to refine and do that. And we're fairly large. I mean, we're a $450 million business in healthcare Europe. It's not insignificant, so we have scale, but we have work to do there. In terms of the broader U.S. market, it's really around compliance and anything that we can do to digitalize, take data, and use that to help make the job easier for our customer, make it less likely to make mistakes, reduce labor, and drive compliance. So things that we can do in that area are really short-term focus.
And then in terms of other ancillary things that we add in there, you know, we'll talk about that as they come up.
That's right.
Yeah. Um,
Thinking of like the bigger, moving to AST and thinking of the big med tech business and that side of things, it, correct me if you feel differently about the world, but it feels like some of the product sides of production have been moving a little bit, whether it's the DR or Costa Rica or bits of Mexico, and things like that. Are you seeing a sort of shift around of where production is happening, and does that have any implication for you guys?
Yeah, so we do, and we have global locations. We have a major presence in Malaysia, where we built out four plants there in the last five years. We've seen a lot of migration from some other Asian countries like China to nearshoring over to Malaysia, and then for the European and U.S. export market for certain products. Costa Rica, we have a major plant down there, a sterilization plant, that we've expanded three times in the last five or six years based on significant growth that we've seen, mostly from U.S. multinationals. In fact, the business park that we're in down there is 30 med tech companies, and it's the top 25 out of 30 that are in that group right there. So that's definitely the case.
And I do think, as we've seen challenges from a regulatory environment in our industry as it relates to ethylene oxide, you're likely to see some migration into Mexico, even for some of the sterilization. But clearly some of the manufacturing, and then we're well poised with multiple plants on the border as things come across to capture that product as it comes into the States.
Do you think people move to Mexico and keep using EO as a-
Yeah
... not a way around, probably poor choice of words, but you know what I mean.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think that the regulatory environmental standards are a bit less onerous, but still at a high level, and it can be done safely, but clearly, some med tech companies may elect to do their own processing across the border.
Do you get given a little bit of a heads-up from some of your partners about relocation and stuff? Because you're committing quite a lot of capital to building new facilities, right?
Yeah, we kind of have two models. One is where, you know, if we have a regional network of four or five plants, and they're running near utilization, high utilization, we'll often expand on speculation based on the pool of customers that we work with in that area, and we can do that at limited to no risk, you know. It's a little different if we have sort of a plant that's near customer site manufacturing, that's not necessarily near their end patients or end customers. That typically requires a much higher level of communication and commitment.
But nonetheless, our large customers, because they use us across the global network, are very communicative with us of what their supply chain challenges and changes will be in time to let us adapt and change and partner, if it makes sense, to build or whatever it may be, so.
I mean, no matter, in the AST side of things, are you seeing any change in the rate of insourcing or outsourcing in terms of the sterilization, whether it's the big or the small businesses?
No, I would say there is a push where it makes sense to do high value, low volume product in-house with the right technology, and we offer. You know, we take a technology neutral, location neutral position. And if the customer has a high value product that lends itself to vapor hydrogen peroxide sterilization that can be done in-house, we believe they should do that, and we'll help them do that, and happy to sell them equipment. And the same thing with electron beam. We're happy to set up small E-beam and let them run an in-house operation. We're also happy to have them outsource this or us build something and run it for them, whatever makes the most sense. It's just finding the solution for the right thing.
On the whole, though, high volume sterilization, because of the complexity and the regulatory environment, over time, over a long period of time, it's likely to continue to shift more to outsource than it will be in-source. It's just, it's not core to the med tech manufacturer who's really good at designing and selling high technology, life-saving devices, versus doing sort of the back manufacturing, distribution, sterilization piece of it.
Yeah, makes sense. I mean, within AST as well, in the competitive environment, any changes there? How are you seeing things, customer discussions, you versus peers?
You know, I think in the increased regulatory environment around ethylene oxide, some of the smaller contract providers and some of the smaller in-house med techs are probably gonna step away at the end before the compliance deadline, is my guess. So I think that will have some impact on and pressure on the existing network. Outside of that, nothing of significance at this point.
You touched on it there in terms of modalities for sterilization, you know, obviously X-ray and a whole bunch of different potential options depending on the device. There's EO litigation. How are you thinking about the ultimate direction of travel and I guess within the U.S., what the FDA is likely to land on in terms of how sterilization looks midterm, let's say?
Yeah, I think the FDA is trying to do everything they can to facilitate off-ramp into other technologies from EO, where it makes sense. But they also understand it's not that easy. It's very difficult. There's a, you know, some percentage of what's in an ethylene oxide now could easily move into other technologies with some work and validation, but it's a small percentage. I mean, two-thirds of it is really, really hard to move, and half of it almost can never go because of the material compatibility issues.
But longer term, I think med tech's gonna have to look upstream into R&D and, and earlier in their design process and be a little more mindful about sterilization, and what materials could be restrictive, early phase design, and make sure we get. Don't get down a decision tree where you can only do gaseous sterilization.
Mm.
Which has often happened in the past. So, it's gonna change over time, but it's gonna take a lot of time, and it's nice that the agency has been helpful on trying to give supply chain options, from, you know, from a surety of supply perspective.
What are some of the characteristics of different devices and products that specifically lend themselves to EO relative to other?
Yeah, there's certain lubricants that are used, as well as electronics, that if you run them through a radiation cycle, it's gonna cross-link the lubricants, or it's gonna fracture the electronics, so they're not viable. So there's... And then a lot of cellulosic materials tend to have challenges with radiation, which is in every surgical kit. And, you know, anything also maybe has iodine package, prepackaged solutions can be a challenge as well, depending on the chemical composition.
Reminds me of the CDMOs on the drug side and small molecules rather than the biologics.
Yeah.
You can't do terminal sterilization.
No, absolutely not.
Right.
It'd be easy if you could, right?
Yes. I mean, that probably makes sense then to touch on, on the life sciences side of things. You know, how, how do you feel like the volume side is looking? Maybe it's worth level setting people, 'cause actually, I feel like life sciences gets some of the least air time.
Yeah.
Apart from bioprocessing, but the rest of life science gets not a huge amount of time. Maybe level set people on the kind of business that you guys do today on that life sciences side.
Sure, Patrick. Everything we do is focused on aseptic manufacturing, which results typically in an injectable drug. Think anything from, you know, Emerald to GLP-1s, you know, basically type biologics to anything in cell and gene therapy or personalized medicine. All those type of things are generally manufactured in a maintained aseptic environment, which is where we come in. It's kind of three parts to the business. One is capital equipment, which is, you know, GMP-type sterilizers, vapor hydrogen peroxide for fill lines, and pure water generators, pure steam generators. Then our largest business is our consumable business, which is everything focused on sterility maintenance and clean room maintenance in terms of chemistry.
Think liquid disinfectants, liquid sterilants, all the things used to clean the aseptic environment to ensure that the products produced out of there are free of contaminants. Those are validated in regulated cleaners that have a high switching barrier once they're fully adopted by our customers. The last piece is our services business. Generally speaking, production volumes have remained strong in pharma, really strong, and in fact, maybe seen some good growth, especially on the back of GLP-1s in the aseptic environment. However, you know, there is some puts and takes. There's obviously a lot of funding that's dried up for startups and smaller biotech, so we're not seeing some of that activity now, and that's just normal pharma cycle.
My guess is, we've seen this play before, and it takes about two years, and then everything's back to normal, and we're a year plus into it at this point. So, it hasn't affected us on the consumable business, but it... I think it'll have a short-term impact on the equipment business.
It might be an unanswerable question, but how much on a sort of like-for-like volume perspective, how much more valuable is an early stage biotech whatever customer that is going for the full service, everything from the hardware to the service side to everything, versus whatever, a Pfizer who's presumably just the hardware and the consumable. Do you think is that a big-
Yeah, all customers are valuable.
Sure.
But our large corporate partners, where they can platform across multiple sites-
Right
With the technology as we do validation work with them, is really the biggest opportunity for us longer term.
How, like, connected do you end up being to clinical trial labs versus the bread and butter actual production side of it?
Now, we're really bread and butter, actual production.
Yeah.
I mean, but we've become part of their filing and their regulatory process based on the processes that use our equipment and chemistries. But we're not. I mean, we're in the clinical trial side of it, but we're a participant.
I should know that. Are you guys specified in the Drug Master File for-
Many cases, yes.
Oof! Okay.
Yeah.
Um-
Which is great, because if you're validated in, you're validated in, but if you miss the opportunity, you're out.
Yeah, it's a permanent... It's an annuity stream.
Right.
And then if I think about the customer exposure from, let's call it an end market perspective, small molecules relative to biologics, I don't know where you want to put peptides, but like, is there like an obvious sort of from how you see it split?
Yes. We really don't play in the small molecule market, with the exception of cleaning to some extent. Our, you know, 90+% of our focus across all of our life science business is in aseptic manufacturing. So your, you know, your biologics, your GLP-1s, your cell and gene therapies, you know, everything along those lines.
And then on the biologic side, there's obviously the drug product and part of the market, but there's also the upstream bioprocessing side. And
Right
Because there's so many public companies that compete in that space, it consumes a lot of airtime. So maybe it's worth helping level set people, how you, compete in, I guess, single use of stainless steel and-
Yeah. So where are the... Oh, you mean in general?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And then-
Yeah, so every company's got their puts and their takes, right? So one of our biggest products in our life sciences are chemistries for cleaning the stainless steel, the big fermentation tanks and lines that are sterile for aseptic manufacturing of biologics. Now, the counter to that is that, you know, over the recent years, we've seen huge growth in disposable bioprocess liners and bioprocess valves and tank bag covers and piping, et cetera. And for us, it's kind of a put and a take. We've seen, you know, a business that was nascent grow to $100 million in AST, where we're sterilizing those disposable products, and then we've seen our process cleaning business continue to grow, but at a lower rate. Because there's still gonna always be a place for high volume, high production, stainless steel biopharma, 'cause it makes sense.
But new age, you know, applications are much smaller campaigns and much more personalized, so it lends itself to disposable. So, puts and takes, but net net, very positive for our company over the long term.
I'm sure Sartorius would enjoy being called New Age. So within that construct, obviously, there's been a big flip around on the bioprocessing volumes.
Yeah.
How has that affected you guys?
More just a headache of explaining it.
Right.
So is what I would say.
Right.
No, we service most of the market, I would, I would say, generally speaking. We saw, you know, for two decades, you know, mid, mid-double digit growth. I mean, just really impressive, consistent in these, these disposable liners and components for bioprocess, single-use technologies, as we refer to them. Then, about the time of the pandemic, between vaccine production and supply chain shortages, the industry just overstocked immensely, and we ended up seeing what was consistently 14%, 15%, 17% growth turn to 34%, 35% growth, which is great, but not sustainable. What we all found out is that we were, the industry was ultimately hoarding product and inventory, and then it's taken a year and a half to burn it back down, as one would expect.
At this point, it's more or less leveled out, and we see volumes starting to return, and most of our customers are saying second half of this year, which is now, should start to see a return, which we've taken a more conservative approach since second half of our fiscal, which is, you know, later in the fall. But nonetheless, it's on the right trajectory, and it's kind of reset off of the new low, which is where it was pre-pandemic. My strong speculation is that that trend of sort of mid-teens growth should continue. There's no reason it should not, if not accelerate, based on some of the trends we're seeing in cell and gene.
Were you surprised how long that destocking process went on?
Yeah, I was. I truly was. That, it's. You got to remember, though, these products are validated in, many of them are in the Drug Master Files, and so when there was scarcities, people bought everything they could buy. And I mean, we pride ourselves on being a lean company and lean manufacturing, lean inventory management, and we went from just-in-time to just-in-case on everything, too, and our inventory is bloated up because we didn't want to have stockouts, you know? And I think there was that fear factor that drove a lot of those buying patterns, and now that's more than normalized out, I think, at this point.
Obviously, the STERIS as a totality, you've got your three main babies. Like, how do you allocate your time, and how do you end up deciding where to invest and spend energy between them?
You know, it's funny, in terms of my time, we've got great business leaders across those, and that's one thing I'll say about our leadership team is, yesterday was actually my twenty-seventh anniversary at STERIS, and but everybody else that's running a business at STERIS has twenty-plus years with the business. And we all know each other, and I trust them emphatically, and, and they're professionals by all means. In terms of allocation of money, that's a different story. That's, that's friendship and trust. In terms of making the best business decisions, we have a rigorous process that measures risk against return, and we weigh those things.
Fortunately, we're in a position that we've paid down a lot of debt, and we throw a lot of cash, so we can be fairly aggressive with our reinvestment, you know, policies and practices in terms of how we look long term at the business, provided we know they're relatively low-risk investments with decent returns.
I guess it's been a year or so since the BD deal. Is that right?
Yeah.
About a year.
It was about this time last year.
I think it was this time last year.
Sure it was.
How's that been relative to your expectations and integration alignment?
You know, it exceeded our expectations. I think I might have said last year here that it's even if we screw it up, it's kind of an easy single. It's at least a double, if not a triple. I mean, it was, you know, kind of a low single-digit growth company for a long time. In our first year of running it, we were over double digits consistently. And I think that's just with getting a little enthusiasm into the channel and also tying it to the rest of the STERIS channels, where we got those opportunities. I think long term, it makes all the sense in the world to have the company that sells all the equipment, that processes all the instruments, also selling the instruments and also doing all the repair on the instruments, which we already have.
So I think it puts us in a position long term, also through data management, to really understand what hospitals need in surgical instruments. So it's been a... I mean, look, it's not that big of a deal. It's $200 million in revenue or something like that. But culturally, the people have been great. The customers get it, the investors seem to understand it as well, and it's kind of a yawn, but it's been a really good deal for us in terms of performance.
If you're thinking going forward and thinking about, you know, in a similar way to how we ask about healthcare in totality, like, is there anything you feel like areas you'd like to be competing in or like little gaps that you'd like to fill at the group level?
Sure. And we've you know, we're scouting those both from an organic development perspective, but we also you know, consistently look to do little bolt-on deals or acquisition of R&D, and and there's a pretty strong pipeline. There's a lot of, a lot of PE stuff that's getting a little long in the tooth that's ready to come to market. And you know, we're in a good position if the right opportunities present themselves, and we have a long history of doing a nice job with acquisition and integration work at STERIS. So you know, we're financially and also from a human capacity in a good position to do something in the future if the right things present.
And then, obviously, you know, you spend your time internally doing a set of things. You do a lot of these... Well, no, you don't do a lot of these meetings, but these meetings that you do, like, with the... I'll take off the table, you can't say healthcare capital equipment. What are you surprised gets a lot of airtime versus what it, you know, the focus internally or vice versa? Like, internally, stuff you spend a lot of time and energy on that you just don't feel really comes up very much externally. Any kind of a discrepancy between those?
I think, I think AST has gotten a lot of airtime in the last couple of years because of the regulatory environment and also because it's a bit of a proxy for a lot of the other parts of the industry. So sometimes, you know, there's a bias in the questions, but that aside.
There's also a clear peer in a weird way to sort of more directly... I don't know if people for healthcare have as many clear peers to compare it to.
Yeah.
Like-
There's really not, right? So I think that. You know, the one thing that I don't think that we talk about that much or get enough credit for is the consistency of performance, not just in the last five, seven, 10, 15 years, but over a long term at STERIS. And I do really attribute that to our ability to develop leaders internally and people to develop and own strategy for a long term. I mean, AST would not be where it is today if we didn't have a 20-year strategy in AST. And you can't do a 20-year strategy if you're only with the company 2 years, you know?
And I think that same thing with our current portfolio and sterile processing, with our IP, Infection Prevention Technologies group, you know, the two folks that have run that over the last 10 years have built out what I think is an absolutely brilliant portfolio that has really put up a moat from a competitive standpoint. And once again, that's long-term knowledge, strategy and implementation and ownership. And I think that's something that our company does a really good job at in terms of the tenure and the expertise and the ownership that we have, and accountability for long-term success.
Nice. I think that's almost perfect timing. Dan, thank you so much.
Yeah.
We appreciate it.
Thank you. Really appreciate it.
Thank you.