Good morning and welcome to the twenty seventeen Global UBS Healthcare Conference. My name is Kapil Gupta and I'm happy to be your host for this session. Our next presenter will be Liam Kelly, who is the President and Chief Operating Officer of Teleflex Incorporated. A breakout session in Juilliard will immediately follow after the presentation. Thank you.
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining me today. We truly enjoy attending this conference and we appreciate your interest in Teleflex. My goal today is to keep this presentation a bit more generic and to assist you in becoming more informed about our company. And in the interest of time, I will keep my prepared remarks to a minimum, so we will allow for Q and A in the breakout session. Before I begin, I want to make you aware that during this presentation, I'll be referencing forward looking statements and information.
The full advisory concerning these statements is located in this slide for your reference. Teleflex is a more than seventy year old company, which got its start making specialized cable systems for aircraft during World War II. Many of those same cabling systems were also useful in ships, which led to the establishment of the Teleflex marine business. Teleflex had always been a good acquirer of companies with high quality products and good technical resources regardless of the industry. Over time, we acquired assets in the automotive and commercial fields and a few medical device companies along the way as well.
Around the year 02/2005, members of the Teleflex management team and Board began thinking about expanding its presence in the medical device arena. At the time, about 50% of our revenue was in the automotive space and the future didn't look especially promising for parts manufacturers supplying big automotive customers. That strategy led the divestiture of our automotive businesses and the acquisition of Arrow, a $500,000,000 medical device company, which was the company's largest acquisition ever. Over time, the trajectory of these decisions led us to the conclusion that we will be best to shed our non medical device assets, which was concluded in the year 2011. Given the relatively rapid nature of our transformation, the Board of Directors felt that it was essential to have a management team that was well experienced in the medical device industry and as such a new management team was put in place in early twenty eleven.
I think that I can speak for the entire management team in saying that we joined the company enthusiastically because we all thought that it was well positioned to take advantage of some latent opportunities in its cost structure and that we would be able to develop a strong product portfolio that would be ideal in the future healthcare economy. Today, Teleflex is a global provider of medical technology and our focus is on products that improve clinical outcomes, reduce procedural costs and improve patient and provider safety. We employ approximately 12,600 people worldwide and have market leading positions with well recognized brands. At the end of the first quarter twenty seventeen, our last twelve months revenue totaled $1,930,000,000 The majority of our products are sold to hospitals or healthcare providers. Some of our products are also used in an at home setting and some of our technologies enable us to provide specialized products to other medical device manufacturers.
One of the things appealing about Teleflex is that we are well diversified both from a geographic and clinical use perspective. And as a result, we are not dependent on any one product, procedure or market. That fact has allowed us to deliver consistent results even when some of those markets, products or procedures have experienced significant volatility. Now as we move on to a description of our segments, I would point out that in North America, our segments are driven by call points and clinical practice. While outside of North America, our segments are organized around regions and countries.
Our largest North American segment is Vascular Access, which generated approximately $363,000,000 of revenue during the last twelve months. These products are used to administer intravenous medications or other therapies directly into the blood system where the use of a standard IV would be inadequate. There are two principal kinds of catheters that are used in this application. One is a central venous catheter, which you can see pictured here. In recent years, we have been providing a variety of kit configurations, which help reduce injuries to health care providers and expedite the placement of these catheters.
However, our primary focus has been on improving the performance of our catheters through specialty coatings that reduce the likelihood for infection and thrombus. We have the only central venous catheters that have an antimicrobial claim and recently published studies demonstrate a considerable reduction in infections when our catheter is used versus an uncoated catheter. Reducing infections and eliminating the costs associated with those infections has become an increasingly important goal of healthcare providers. So not surprisingly, we have a global leading market share in this product category. A peripherally inserted catheter or a PICC is another device that can be used.
And while we are not the market leader in this category, we have introduced highly accurate teeth placement systems and catheters with antimicrobial and antithrombogenic coatings that are starting to show promising growth trends. We believe that minimizing infections and improving tip navigation and targeting will be increasingly important in the future and we continue to invest in this area. A third way to introduce high volume fluids into a patient's blood system is by drilling a small hole directly into the bone. Surprisingly, this is not as painful as it sounds, but most patients are unconscious when this is being done. Patients in need of immediate high volume fluids usually have a loss of blood pressure, which makes a needle stick into a vein extremely difficult.
By drilling a small hole into the bone, it acts as a very large vein and the fluid is very quickly absorbed into the bloodstream through the marrow. This is an excellent clinical alternative in emergency situations, whether it's in an ambulance, in the emergency room in the hospital, or in the crash cart in the intensive care unit. Turning next to our anesthesia business. We have two principal product areas in anesthesia. One is area management and the other is pain management.
Our revenue during the last twelve months for this segment was approximately $2.00 $1,000,000 The most frequent use of Aerie products is for patients who receive general anesthesia. During general anesthesia, the airway needs to be protected in cases of regurgitation or reflux. Historically, an ET tube has been used, but a more recent innovation is a laryngeal mask, which is pictured on the slide. Rather than penetrate the airway and cause potential damage to the vocal cords as an ET tube does, the laryngeal mask covers over the airway opening and eliminates certain complications associated with an endotracheal tube. As a result of those advantages, the global use of laryngeal mask spread quickly as an alternative to endotracheal tubes, particularly in shorter procedures.
Teleflex has a leading market share in the laryngeal mass segment and during 2016 and 2017, we've introduced and will be introducing new products that we believe will increase our market share even further. The product you see pictured here is an example. It is our next generation device, which is designed for much longer intubations. We believe this will convert many ET tube users over to laryngeal mask. Teleflex is also a leading supplier of laryngoscopes.
Laryngoscopes are devices that are used to place ET tubes. This market is rapidly moving towards completely disposable devices and Teleflex has an excellent product offering. We've acquired our supplier of the product in Israel and this should help to improve our margins and increase the speed of new product development. Finally, one of the promising areas in our anesthesia business unit is a product called Mad Nasal. Certain medications, pain medications for example, can be much more quickly delivered into the blood system when atomized and absorbed by the highly vascular nasal passages.
This is much less invasive than NIV and quicker acting than intramuscular injections. We have some regulatory hoops to go through in The U. S, but the product is already developed and being used more and more extensively in third world countries as it eliminates many of the problems associated with traditional needle injections. Moving on to our Surgical business. It is the third largest segment in North America and its revenues was approximately $179,000,000 during the last twelve months.
Our Surgical products include ligation closure products, specialty suture access ports, reusable handheld instruments and fluid management. One of the unique innovations driving this franchise is our Hemaloc product, which is pictured here. While more expensive than the standard metal clip, Hemaloc has a locking system that the surgeon can feel when the clip has been properly closed. This offers considerable advantages in laparoscopic procedures, which may have limited visibility. This product is an excellent example of the fact that hospitals will pay more for products that have an obvious clinical benefit.
A relatively new area of focus for the company is microlaparoscopic products. Almost since the beginning of laparoscopic surgery, there has been an effort to make the procedure even less invasive. The focus has been on eliminating the need for additional ports, but unfortunately those efforts were unsuccessful because they were either too complicated to learn or had their own set of complications. Our Percutaneous product line solves these problems and was the result of four separate acquisitions, one of which was the basic Perkivance technology, while two were related to patents and the fourth acquisition was the MiniLab product line, which rounded out our portfolio. Both sets of instruments can be introduced into the body cavity without the need for a port.
It is our belief that these two product offerings will allow the company to take advantage of the growing microlaparoscopic surgical market and accelerate revenue growth and improve the margin profile of the company. Outside of North America, we manage our businesses by geography. Our two largest regions are Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia. Our EMEA region contributed approximately 27% of the last twelve months revenue, while our APAC Region contributed approximately 13% of revenue. In nearly every major country, we have our own country management and direct sales forces that creates demand at the end user level.
However, in a number of emerging markets, we still utilize distributors and therefore have an opportunity to further improve our revenues and margins by converting to a direct sales model and delayering our distribution network. That takes me to our OEM business, which is where Teleflex began in the medical device industry more than thirty years ago. Sales in our OEM segments totaled approximately $170,000,000 during the last twelve months. Within this business, we have a number of technologies such as custom engineered extrusions, specialty sutures, performance fibers and bioabsorbable resins that are quite useful in clinical markets in which we don't sell products ourselves. By designing and manufacturing products for other manufacturers who do have significant presence in those markets, it allows us to participate in segments we couldn't effectively compete in on our own such as interventional cardiology and orthopedics.
Finally, our remaining businesses are reported under a segment we refer to as All Other. This segment includes our intra aortic balloon and pumps, respiratory therapy products and our Latin American businesses. Our strategy is built around three principal components. The first is our perspective as to what the medical device market will look like in the coming years. This strongly shapes our R and D and acquisition efforts.
As we think about the healthcare market, it is and will continue to be driven by two connected but often conflicting trends. The first of which centers around increased utilization. This trend is driven by an aging population in the traditional industrialized countries and a growing middle class in developing countries. Beginning in 2011, the first baby boomers began crossing over the 65 year old age line. Just in The United States alone, it's happening at the rate of about 10,000 people per day.
Now we're not suggesting that people go to the hospital the day they turn 65, but as they get into their early 70s, the frequency of healthcare interventions increases dramatically. In addition to the aging demographics, there is an expanding middle class in select developing markets and these people are demanding better healthcare. This is true for areas like China as well as the rest of Asia and South America. As a result of these trends, we can expect extremely favorable demographics and utilization over the next ten to fifteen years. But the other related and conflicting trend is that of increasing costs and the question of how to pay for this level of healthcare.
We expect that economic pressure is likely to result in changes in how care is delivered and what care is delivered. The second part of our strategy surrounds capitalizing on Teleflex's current strength to succeed in the future healthcare environment. Particularly advantageous to us is our scope and size. First, our scope and by that I mean the areas of healthcare we are zeroing in on. As we look into the future, we believe that improved diagnostic capability, changes in reimbursement and other technology developments will have different impacts on current procedures.
We are in multiple clinical areas and that generally involve acute interventions which cannot be easily postponed without severe consequences to the patient and we really like that space. What we have observed over the past twenty years is during tough economic conditions, procedures that can be postponed will be postponed. For Teleflex, that means we need to continue to build our franchises that are most likely to benefit from increased utilization and least likely to be negatively affected by economic pressures. Another advantage is our size. We are large enough to be a global company and have a substantial presence with customers.
However, we are small enough to benefit from investments or acquisitions like our recently completed acquisition of Vascular Solutions, which would not move the needle much for significantly larger competitors. And finally, our third strategic initiative includes opportunities that are somewhat unique to Teleflex. A number of such opportunities like footprint consolidation and the delayering of our distribution channel could enable us to continue to expand the margin profile of the company for several years into the future. That takes me to the end of my prepared remarks. By way of conclusion, I will summarize Teleflex's key investment highlights.
First, we are a diversified global medical technology company and we are not dependent on a single product or single market. This diversification helps to mitigate the risks of a changing macro environment. Second, we are currently well positioned to succeed in the marketplace. This is due to both the non postponable nature of many of our products as well as the continued opportunity for non revenue dependent margin expansion. Next, we have leading market positions with well established global brands and are committed to continuous improvement in our portfolio.
We have a diversified customer and supplier base. We generate strong free cash flow and have a proven history of deleveraging and margin expansion. And finally, we have an experienced management team that has executed a broad array of activities from manufacturing reorganization to product development to acquisition, all of which have led to significant shareholder value creation over the past five years. Thank you for your time and attention today. We will now move to the Q and A session in the off-site room.
Thank you very much.