All right, why don't we get started? Good morning. My name is Jeff Johnson. I'm the Senior Medical Technology Analyst at Baird, and our next presentation this morning is from Dentsply Sirona, a leading manufacturer of dental consumables and equipment, products across the globe. With us today from Dentsply, we're happy to have President and Chief Executive Officer, Simon Campion, and CFO, Glenn Coleman. Simon, I'm gonna turn it over to you for a few minutes if you have some prepared remarks, and then we'll go straight into Q&A.
Great. Thank you, Jeff-
Thanks.
Thank you, thank you for having us here with you today. Just the forward-looking statements as usual to kick off this presentation. As Jeff said, we are the world's leading dental manufacturer with approximately $4 billion of sales. That's reasonably well spread geographically, with about 40% in Europe, 35% in North America, and then we think meaningful positions in some of the countries in Asia-Pacific and LATAM. We spend approximately 4% of our revenue on R&D. We have a very robust R&D program, and we look forward to continuing to invest in that area moving forward.
We also have a very comprehensive, and I think we're well-recognized for our clinical education programs, and in fact, just this morning, we extended that again with a press release announcing our partnership with the Dental Tribune Group, where we now have access to over 500,000 dental professionals, and we will provide training for them. We serve about 150 countries on a global basis, and we are-
Mm.
We have implemented some robust internal processes to identify where and when we should invest in the future. Our strategy is fairly straightforward: to transform dentistry by digitalizing workflows, driving product and service innovation, and delivering an exceptional customer and patient experience. You know, we have, We identified five core tactical and strategic objectives about a year ago as we came into this organization, and you can see them on the slide here.
We want to, you know, achieve our annual growth and margin commitments, enhance and sustain our profitability, accelerate the digitalization of our enterprise, win in aligners and implants, which are two of the fastest-growing segments, and then obviously create a high-performance culture after the turmoil that our organization has had over the past couple of years. And with respect to that high-performance culture, one of the changes since we probably spoke to you all last is we have appointed a new Chief Human Resources Officer, who comes with a legacy of driving cultural transformation within organizations. Our organization is completely aligned behind these five core tactical and strategic objectives.
We continue to leverage and refine our operating model, and we feel that at this moment in time, it's beginning to translate into meaningfully better business performance. As I've said, delivering on our commitments is of the utmost importance to us as a leadership team, and those commitments are not only external to the investment community, but also internal to our employees. We do feel that our operational rigor is improving, but I would say that we are not done yet, and we continue to bring our experience in terms of discipline and robustness to bear on our organization.
We are definitely making meaningful progress on the transformational and strategic objectives that we've laid out, and the work that we embarked upon just about a year ago. We also are not shy to invest back into our business, and we continue to do that. We've done it already this year on a number of different occasions, and we'll continue to do so as we move forward. So with that, I will turn it back over to Jeff.
Yeah. Thank you, Simon. So we've got about 25 minutes. Yeah, about 25 minutes left here, so why don't we just jump into some questions here? I think you're almost exactly to the date, one year into the job. Is that, is that right?
Exactly one year today.
Is it today? Okay, well, happy anniversary. Glenn, I think yours is in a couple of weeks. Is that right?
Yes, that's right.
So, Simon, maybe it'd be great to get, you know, exactly 365 days ago, you joined the company, you probably thought, this is gonna be a cakewalk, we'll get through this quickly. What's been maybe the biggest surprises, either good or bad, or challenges and, and opportunities that have really gone right and wrong so far?
Well, I would say that the operational rigor that Glenn and I are bringing to our company. I deployed that operational rigor as I assessed Dentsply Sirona. And so I would say there are no great surprises one way or the other. Listen, we have a solid employee base that are committed to the practice and advancement of dentistry that have been looking for, quite frankly, inclusive and transparent leadership. And we think we're bringing that to bear. We said, I think on our last earnings call, that we were about to embark on a robust assessment of our portfolio. And so we've just completed that work.
We surveyed over 2,000 dentists in North America, in China, and in Germany, about the robustness of our portfolio, and it came back quite, quite, quite favorable. I would say we've no meaningful gaps in that portfolio, and in some areas we excel, particularly in the connected technology solutions area.
Mm-hmm.
And, you know, as we've brought this inclusively, transparency, and operational rigor, I think we're seeing that manifest itself in one way in particular, and that's turnover. Our turnover has meaningfully reduced in the past 12 months compared to what it was for the previous three or four years.
Mm-hmm.
I think that's a good benchmark for the work that we are trying to achieve. And obviously, over the past couple of quarters, we've delivered on our commitments internally and externally. And so I think they are the positive things that we've ascertained so far.
Yeah. Now-
Yeah, and I would just add on the challenges side, well, not a surprise necessarily. The lack of integration, lack of global processes across the company is clearly a challenge that we have faced for the first year in the jobs here, and it's why the ERP implementation is so important for us. We have about 14 ERP systems, largely three, where you have about 95% of the revenue going through three, but we've got to bring that down to one platform, which we are embarking on. We've already got a good head start on that with our blueprint, but it's gonna be a multiple-year journey for us to get to where we wanna be in terms of our ERP platform. The good thing about doing an ERP conversion, though, is we're gonna do a lot of global process improvement when we do this.
Mm.
So order to cash, procure to pay, global returns process, all those things will really fit into our global ERP strategy and will really help the company to move forward in an efficient way, in an efficient way. So, yeah, outside of that, we also have challenges around processes. When you talk about R&D, as an example, Simon came in and put a significant amount of rigor into R&D. You mentioned 4% of sales. We were spreading that R&D spend across the entire portfolio, and I think we've now got a much more focused approach on where we invest, how we invest, how we look at returns on the investment, and so those are some of the challenges that we faced when we came into the job.
Yeah, fair enough. And then, I wanna come back and talk about the ERP here in a second, just on the cost side of that. But Simon, just one comment you made about just finishing up the portfolio assessment. I think you talked last quarter, you had made the decision you were gonna retain or keep the healthcare part of the business. So that's known. Anything you can share from your assessment, or are you waiting for the next quarter call to do that? Which would be fine, but you know, there's been some talk on initiatives to de-SKU the consumable side. You know, there's been some questions on some of the basic equipment side. Would you keep everything, things like that. So anything we can talk about from a product portfolio at this point?
So I would say to answer the second part of your question first, I think we're pretty happy with our portfolio. As you said, we had a robust assessment of the Wellspect business, and we've chosen to maintain that. On our SKU program, we'll certainly for sure share more at either the next earnings call or at our Investor Day in November.
Right.
But we've continued that work. We're almost complete with the pilots that we have run. We've stood up a team to execute on the SKU rationalization program.
Mm.
So we've identified where and when we wanna take those SKUs out, depending on how the pilots come back to us. And the opportunity we have, as I said, we have a team stood up, ready to go and execute that, and they are aligned with our global Axeos as well. So it is... We continue to make progress against that project.
Okay, great. Well, maybe let me just kind of move on to a couple questions I know I got from investors. They wanted me to kind of go around the globe with you and, you know, I know we're intraquarter, so if there's not much you want to offer, that I completely understand. But starting in Europe, I mean, it seemed like for a while, the macro news out of Europe was a little worrisome. I think the performance has actually held in fairly well there. So would just love to kind of get the update just on Europe. It is probably your... Is it your biggest? I should know that. It's a big part of your revenue.
It's, yeah.
So-
It's a big number.
Yeah. So, so just any updates then on what you've been seeing here in the last few months or kind of throughout the summer season in Europe?
Yeah. So, you know, obviously, the summer season is a difficult barometer in Europe.
Yep
Particularly in Southern Europe. I think our consumables business has maintained to a large degree. You know, as you know, we're, you know, we have our syndicated report now of over 1,500 dentists that we-
Yep
That we survey every quarter. The last quarter, we, you know, we got, I think, pretty robust feedback, and it guided our guidance from our German dental community about some concern amongst them about
Yeah
The economy and their outlook. You know, nine out of ten dentists were concerned. Half of them said that patients were beginning to delay procedures. We saw that a bit in Q2, and I would say we have. It hasn't got any worse, but there continues to be concern-
Yeah
About the performance in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. I think that's the
Yeah, understood.
That's the big, you know, the most meaningful news out of Europe, I think.
Does that translate? So, I think what we're hearing, and we've heard this from Straumann and some of the others over there as well. Obviously, they have a finger on the pulse in those markets as well. You know, a little bit of softness on the higher-end case acceptance. I think the bigger out-of-pocket spends, things like that. Is that primarily where you're seeing it? And how does that translate from a timing standpoint? Is it a lagging impact, where dentists then defer equipment purchases that could lag into later this year, early next year, or is it contemporaneous, almost of, "My business is slowing down, I slow down my equipment purchases?" So the two tend to be tied together, or should we think of one being lagging?
I think it's difficult to say-
Yeah
But for sure, they have expressed concern about investing in, you know, high-end capital equipment.
Mm-hmm.
I think others are beginning to see that now. One of your peers published a note just, I think it was yesterday, about that as well-
Yep
That, you know, there is concern about the German economy. Interest rates are higher, and we know that, you know, many dentists take out financing to purchase some of these higher-end pieces of equipment.
Okay, fair enough. Maybe if we move outside of Europe, it seems like Asia-Pac has been holding in well. I think China has been a big focus with the VBP efforts there on implants. I think you guys have made comments, you know, some of your other competitors that compete in the premium segment of the implant market in China have actually been noticing or seeing some pretty good volume uptake on the trade-off. So just any updates on kind of the volume versus price trade-off with the VBP process there? And then maybe one follow-up on China.
Yeah, I'll take that one.
Yeah.
I think, first and foremost, we started the year off down 30% in the-
Yeah
First quarter in China, and we were still pretty optimistic that once we saw the volumes come through, we would have a kind of a flattish year overall in China.
Mm-hmm.
And as you saw in the second quarter, we actually posted 25% growth, which was better than we thought. We saw a really nice uptick on volume, both on the private and the public sector side, both on premium and value implants. And so the broad portfolio volume pull-through, we start to see in the second quarter, we expect that to continue for the rest of this year. And as I look at it right now, we expect to grow in China on a full year basis, which is a more positive message than we started the year.
Yeah.
You know, we had a headwind on the pricing side with VBP of anywhere from, call it, $10 million-$15 million. We think we're gonna more than fully offset that pricing headwind, which again, we didn't expect that probably till mid-2024 when we started this year. So all things, as it relates to VBP for us, look very positive right now, but we're still cautiously optimistic, right? We wanna be careful with expectations. You know, there's still economic challenges for sure in China.
Sure.
But on the whole, we're very happy with what we've seen so far in the first quarter, you know, eight months of the year.
Yeah. And how much does that growth in China come from... And maybe your comments were purely on implants.
It was, yeah.
Okay, okay. So, so on the rest of China then, I completely hear you on GDP concerns and, and unemployment concerns in, in the younger population there. A lot of things going on that we all are watching. But I think we're also coming from a place of a lot of shutdowns last year.
Yeah.
Some of this dental care delivered in big hospital settings, where was even slower to recover from, from patient traffic flow, things like that, because of COVID. So what are you seeing just in the rest of the business in China as far as kind of overall recovery, even if we may get to a point where then growth stalls out at a certain level?
Yeah, no, listen, when we look at our second quarter as a proxy, pretty much everything in the portfolio grew outside of, you know, imaging.
Yeah.
We did see broad-based strength across the entire portfolio. You know, we did, in our survey results, see an improvement overall in terms of patient traffic-
Mm
In China. That's a good sign, but keep in mind, it's still among the lowest-
Yeah
When we look at our key markets.
Yeah.
So it's still not back to the levels you would expect or hope when you look at other key markets. But it's, it's moving in the right direction, but still low relative to other key markets in terms of patient traffic.
Okay. Anything else stand out in Asia Pacific that we should talk about? Australia's a big market for you guys, I think. I think you have a decent presence in Japan. I should probably know that better than I do, but anything else stand out from an Asia-Pac perspective?
I would say, to speak about, you know, ANZ, you know, their concern there was, I think, similar to Germany's.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I think they had 10 interest rate rises in the past 12 to 14 months, so dental community is concerned about those. We've been pretty pleased with Japan. They had a robust last year. They finished strong in Q2. You know, in relation to investments that Glenn and I are prepared to make, we've just announced internally an investment that we're gonna make in Japan. So, you know, we continue to take some of the efficiencies we're finding in our organization and redeploying them back into the marketplace in an attempt to accelerate growth.
And then back to Europe, you know, we speak about, you know, ortho quite a bit in general. Europe continues to do very well in ortho, and also on implants. You know, strong growth on our value-based MIS implant-
On the MIS
As well, so.
Yeah. Good. All right, in, and ortho is where I was gonna go next, to just kind of finish off the international part and maybe segue into the US. You know, SureSmile and Byte have both probably outperformed expectations the last couple quarters. Maybe sustainability there, and, and what's the real strategy, I guess, in Europe, and, and does it start to extend into Asia-Pac at all with the SureSmile business? And maybe Byte thrown in there, although I think that's primarily a domestic business at this point, right?
It is.
But help us on SureSmile, especially kind of the globalization there, where you've had success. I think it's in the DSO front, in maybe some of the Southern European countries, but I'll let you answer.
Yeah. So it's just in North America, you know, great success on SureSmile, and indeed Byte. Byte still makes up probably 55% or so of our ortho business. Really robust growth in Europe on SureSmile, albeit on a very modest base.
Mm-hmm.
But, it's still growing, you know, very, very significantly. Then we continue to look for more investments globally for SureSmile. You know, we feel we have, you know, a differentiated offering for GPs. We have the VPro product that's available. We have the whitening kits that are available, too. The price point is, we think, you know, in a spot that affords patients an opportunity to have orthodontic aligners. But at the same time, we think the direct-to-consumer business is very attractive for us. It's profitable for us right now, albeit dilutive for now, to Dentsply Sirona.
But again, we're being more judicious with how we spend our money and the channels through which we advertise and promote our product. And we're not seeing any dramatic slowdown as a result of tweaking those investments.
Yeah, I would just add too, just a couple additional things.
Yep.
I think, our product is shown to have fewer refinements, less revisions than others, which is-
Yep
Giving us a lot of good traction. And I think another area that's really important is the patient experience, and we're gonna leverage DS Core to improve the patient experience with a new simulation in our ortho business-
Yeah
Which is coming up here very shortly.
Okay.
So we think we've got a good pathway here to continue to grow double digits with our ortho business over the foreseeable future. Good. That's good to hear. What, two questions, I guess, follow up on ortho. One, SureSmile, there's been some talk about potentially moving it into higher acuity cases. What would be the pathway there? And two, you know, I think when you guys acquired Byte, we could talk about the timing. Was it probably the peak of the market and things like that?
So there's, you know, some issues there that past management for sure. But CACs were lower. We actually heard pretty good things about Byte's competitive process and ability to convert customers even then. I think you've improved it since then. So on the CAC side, especially with Byte, where has that been trending, and how do you, I guess, continue to grow that business without throwing as much money as at it on the CAC side, as it seems like some of your DTC peers do, and yet you're outperforming them by a mile?
So as I said, we have narrowed our funnel down, but the neck of the funnel is wider. So the customers we bring in are more likely to purchase an aligner solution from us. And that's as we refine our questioning and our surveys as they come into the funnel, that we move potential customers to the side if we really don't think that they're gonna end up purchasing. And our conversion rate has, I think, meaningfully improved this past 12 months.
As we roll forward, you know, we will be rolling out Byte+ as well, which will bridge a gap for those patients who don't want to go all the way to SureSmile, but do want to have, you know, a dentist or a involvement in the process. Byte+ will help bridge the direct consumer into the dental community, and drive more volume, drive patients who may not have had a dentist before. And so that's. We think that's gonna help us and help the dental community acquire some new patients that they may not have had previously.
You know, with respect to your question on the kind of segments that we serve with SureSmile, you know, one of the things that attracts me to the dental opportunity is not only is it about new products, but it's also about process, and it's about claims and label expansions as well. So it's not necessarily all the time about a new product. It can be about expanding the reach of your current product, and so that's part of our R&D portfolio now, to assess that type of label expansion as well.
Okay. All right. Fair enough. Couple follow-ups I'd like to ask there, but I think in the interest of time, let me just kind of move over to the U.S. market. I know we kind of touched on it a little bit there on ortho, but the rest of the U.S. market, you know, I think it's been pretty clear from the companies we've talked to, maybe the higher-end, full-arch cases have slowed down on the dental implant side. Just what are you seeing maybe on the dental implant side of your business and kind of then the general dental side?
So on, on implants, I would say, I think I, I answered this question on, somewhat similar on the last earnings call. We're probably the not a great company to ask-
On the full arch, yeah.
About implants, you know, we've invested in the implant sales team this past year. We've reinvigorated our commitment to clinical education in that space. You know, the implantologists are a small family of practitioners in the dental community in the U.S., and we didn't pay them, you know, due attention over the past number of years. So we have reinvigorated our investment with them, trying to build our credibility back up in that space. You know, we do expect improvement in our implant performance in the U.S., as we roll through this year. We continue to train our sales force on implants. It's a long process. It's the most clinically significant/relevant area of dentistry, arguably.
And so by the time you get, you know, your implantologist up to speed on your offering, and convince their referring dentists about the value of your offering, it takes some time. But we are committed to improving clinical education and investing in it. That's why we invested in the World Dental Implant Symposium in Greece, I think it was May or June. And you should expect to continue to see that from us as we move forward.
Okay. The general dental side of the U.S. market and equipment?
On the general dental side, we see it as stable up to this point.
Yeah.
And on the equipment side, we've been pleased with performance so far. You know, retail is strong. Our inventory levels are low, so we continue to be optimistic about equipment in the U.S..
Yep. Big show next week out in Vegas, which I won't be able to join you on, but, you know, that tends to be a good selling event. Should we view it as a selling event next week? Is it more of an education event? How has that kind of emerged or kind of evolved, I should say, over the last few years? Is it still a "selling event" or more of a, an education and kinda rediscover Dentsply kind of event?
Every customer interaction should be a selling event.
Spoken like the true CEO.
Next week should be no different. Glenn, we'll have, I think, over 100 sessions, 100 educational sessions at DS World. It's a big investment. It's a big deal. We'll have 4,000 or so dentists at that event, and the opportunity for us as a leadership team and our wider team to engage with these folks is critically important for us. You know, that is one leg to the Dentsply Sirona stool. Other legs have been missing for the past couple of years around clinical education and sales force execution and discipline within our team. And that's what Glenn and I and the rest of the leadership team are trying to bring to us-
Yeah
Right now.
We'll have some hopefully exciting announcements that we're gonna be talking about, including new product launches. Just to whet your appetite a little bit, we're gonna be announcing a new resin for-
Okay
Our 3D printer, as an example, which we're really excited about. And if you think about the two biggest challenges in 3D printing, it's materials and time. And we think we've got actions in place to address both right now.
Okay.
We have some exciting news, and just one piece of information I'll give to you now, but there's obviously others coming.
I can't not ask a follow-up there. On the resin side, is it for digital dentures or for crown and bridge or for crown?
We'll just say we're keeping it quiet until next week.
Fair enough. Damn, I've got a call with your. Well, I shouldn't say I've got a call with your resin.
I didn't want to spoil the surprise.
Yeah, well, I've got a call scheduled with your resin, who is it that you work with over in France? I think it's France, isn't it, now?
The resins?
Yeah.
It's, there's some in France, yeah.
Yeah. I should have done that call before this conference. It's not for a couple more weeks. All right, so stepping back, Glenn, maybe in the last few minutes here and thinking about the LRP, you know, that $3 number in 2026, I think last quarter, you kind of were still committed to that, still felt good about that. You know, the bridge from here to there, twofold. One, where does organic growth have to go maybe over the next couple of years? And then I want to ask on the cost-saving side.
Yeah, I think we've laid out a 3%-5% organic growth profile to get us to that $3. And, you know, candidly, we weren't expecting to be in that range in 2023.
Yeah.
Good news is, based upon our latest guidance, which has gone up each of the last two quarters, we now expect organic growth to be around 3%.
Yeah.
So we're starting off, I think, in a good place from organic growth, and as we go forward, it needs to be in that 3%-5% range. I will lay out at our November 9 Investor Day, the roadmap and the building blocks that get us to the $3, but this organic growth piece is an important part of that bridge.
Yeah. Okay, and then on the cost savings, $200-$225 million is kind of the range in expected cost savings. I think $85 million of that being realized and mostly reinvested this year. How do we think about the flow-through of that remaining maybe 120-145 or so, whatever that math would suggest, is left for next year?
Yeah, I think we still have more investments to make in 2024. Our ERP, you know, a lot of that gets capitalized, but still a big investment for us. Investments in clinical education, as Simon has highlighted, quality, compliance, even the commercial organization. Simon and I were just in Japan, and we gave a go-ahead to expand our SureSmile team pretty meaningfully over the next two years as a result of the opportunity there, as an example.
So we have more investments to be made. And then keep in mind, we also have cost increases we're gonna see in our business, whether it be, you know, wage increases, inflationary pressures on materials, while not the same levels probably that we've seen in the last couple of years, it's still gonna be higher year-over-year cost for us.
And so our restructuring savings are gonna offset a lot of those headwinds and fund a lot of those investments. Having said all of that, we do expect to see a meaningful improvement in EPS in 2024. You know, this year, if you look at our EPS projections, we're probably gonna be down 5%-6% versus 2022.
Yeah.
We clearly expect to see a meaningful growth EPS number in 2024.
Okay.
With all the actions that we're taking, with the plans we've got going on, and we're gonna lay this out, obviously. And I'll actually give some real color on our 2024 numbers on November 9, by the way.
Okay.
I will give some short-term views on how we look at 2024.
Okay. And I guess one follow-up there, which again, you're probably gonna wait till November, but the flow through rate of those savings has probably been, what, 10% this year? Because it's, or 90%-
Yeah
Reinvestment rate.
That's fair.
I mean, can that come down to a reinvestment rate of 50%, and a flow through of 50 or somewhere in that ballpark, or?
I think there's the reinvestment piece, but there's also the higher-
Yeah
Cost piece, right? So you have to factor both into the equation. And, you know, we don't have all of that laid out just yet, but again, we will see more flow through of bottom-line savings coming from the restructuring efforts that we're doing. And by the way, we're not done. You know, we still have countries in Europe that take a very long time to get completed, Germany being probably the biggest and the longest tail.
So once those are completed, once we get through the middle part of 2024, we'll start to see even a bigger benefit. But for now, we'll definitely get a larger pull-through effect, but we gotta lay out the pieces for you so you can have a better appreciation for how much is gonna come through.
Yeah, understood. All right. Well, I think, our time is up, so we will end it there. So please join me in thanking Simon and Glenn for a wonderful overview here of Dentsply Sirona. As a reminder, the next presentation is set to begin at 9:40 A.M. Eastern Time, include Revvity, Adapt Health, Editas Medicine, and Frontier Medicines. Thank you.