Bausch Health Companies Inc. (BHC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. My name is Arek Kurkciyan, and I am with Morgan Stanley's Healthcare Investment Banking Group. Thanks very much for joining us today. This morning, we have Bausch Health Companies and Joe Papa, who is the CEO of Bausch Health as well as Sam Eldessouky, CFO. I'll start off by stating that for important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. And Joe, thank you very much for joining us here this morning.

Thank you, Arek. Pleasure to be here with you today.

Joe, perhaps we can start off by asking you if you can provide any updates on some of the recent strategic initiatives that you've disclosed? And then we could talk a little bit more about some current trends in your businesses.

Sure. If you go back to our August earnings call, we disclosed at that time that we announced that we were moved forward with an IPO of the Solta business, in addition to the previously disclosed IPO, the B&L business. And let me probably just provide a little bit of an update on that today. In fact, we announced that the company has submitted confidentially draft registration statements on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, related to each of those, both the B&L separation, which we had previously done and now this Solta IPO, which is also we've done. The number of common shares to be offered the price range and all those type of things have not yet been determined. We can't make any specific statements and anything beyond that portion of what we previously said. But importantly, we continue to -- the company continues to expect the Solta IPO and the B&L separation to be completed on the previously communicated time lines that we talked about going back in August. Obviously, it will be subject to market and other conditions. But we're excited about what it means for the future for these 3 different companies at this point.

Great. Joe, perhaps we can move to some of the current trends in your various business lines. Let's begin with a discussion on your Rx segment. Could you discuss the current trends with respect to XIFAXAN, the impact of volumes from any recovery that you're seeing in -- from COVID and what you're seeing from an eventual reopening of some of the long-term care facilities that drive some of the volume?

Sure, sure. Obviously, XIFAXAN being our largest product, it's an important question. So happy to address it. I think the best way to compare the data on XIFAXAN's, look at the last 10 weeks versus the same 10 weeks a year ago, and it gives you some sense of what's happening with XIFAXAN. So let me share with you some of that data. Overall, XIFAXAN last 10 weeks versus a year ago is up 7% which obviously we think is trending in the right direction. And importantly, it's up more than the market. The market is up about 4%. So you can see that not only is XIFAXAN in the right direction, from a trend line point of view, but we are also gaining share. Now within that, there's a couple of components. About 30% of the market is IBS-D or 30% of the XIFAXAN business, I'll say it that way, is IBS-D and the IBS-D is up about 19% versus the same 10 weeks a year ago. So we're seeing really strong returns on IBS-D, which obviously we think is very promising. The long-term care business, which is about 20% of the business for us. That 1 is up about 5%. So it is starting to grow, but it's still not growing as quickly as what we saw with the rest of the business. So -- and we think that that's not a XIFAXAN specific. We think that is specific to the nursing home patient population as that population gets -- there's less people in nursing homes as the census goes up in the nursing homes. We expect the XIFAXAN business to follow very similar to that. So we are seeing growth albeit at a slower rate than the overall XIFAXAN business, but we do see the continued growth there. Obviously, IBS-D is leading the XIFAXAN growth, as I said, with growth somewhere in the plus 19% for the last 10 weeks versus the same period a year ago.

Great. And staying on GI for a minute, could you discuss the recently announced Glumetza settlement and the potential impact on your delevering profile? And then maybe staying on that, any other important litigation updates?

Sure. So obviously, that -- one of the things that we've been working on, I've been here now over 5 years, we've been working on resolving some of these legacy legal issues. All told, I'll get to Glumetza in a second, but all told, we've resolved over the past 5 years, approximately about $2.5 billion of legacy legal settlements. We think that, that's important. We think it's important because it helps us to get this behind us as we now shift to new chapters of the book, if I can call it that, a chapter on Solta, a chapter on the Bausch & Lomb business and clearly, the remaining Bausch Pharma business. So we think it was important to get these resolved and get them done again, behind us, number one. Number two, specifically to Glumetza, this dealt with some issues that occurred in the 2012 and 2013 time frame. Importantly, it was even before the Valeant company acquired Salix. It was when [Indiscernible] asset. But nonetheless, we felt that it was a sizable payment, but we thought the right thing to do is get this behind us so that we can go forward in the -- once again, with a Solta business, a Bausch & Lomb business and our remaining Bausch Pharma business and clear up as many of these legacy issues as possible. This is 1 that we're happy to get it behind us. This -- we got the class portion. This -- that $300 million specifically was for the class portion. We will get this completely behind us, but we wanted to make sure that all these items were appropriately dealt with to make sure that we can move forward. But as I stated, we wanted to get all these things done so that as we thought about the future go-forward state of the Bausch & Lomb business, the Solta business and the remaining Bausch Pharma business, we get these as cleared up as possible. Now there still are some legacy legal issues that are -- we've outlined in our K, and I refer to all of our investors to look at that. But we think far and away, this is getting these class actions behind us was an important step towards moving forward with 3 independent businesses.

Understood. Let's turn over to your B&L segment. Perhaps we can maybe start off by having you provide a brief overview on how you look at the various parts of that business and then we can go into some specifics.

Sure. Well, first and foremost, on the B&L side, what we're most pleased about is that we think we'll have one of the most integrated eye health businesses as we think about it in terms of why do I say that? Integrated in the sense that we have a global consumer business. We have a global surgical business. We have a global vision correction business and a global prescription business. So those natures of our business allow to really have a very significant footprint as we think about having an integrated eye health company. But let me maybe step back a little bit though and say, how are the businesses doing? We think that the consumer product business had a really strong second quarter. It contributed about 36% of our revenue. And we saw good organic growth in everything from Ocuvite, PreserVision, LUMIFY. Overall, global consumer showed 9% organic revenue growth versus the second quarter of 2020, once again, driven by Ocuvite, PreserVision and LUMIFY. Ocuvite and PreserVision was up 13% and -- so versus the second quarter of 2020. So very nice growth in our eye vitamin business. and LUMIFY reported $29 million of revenue in the second quarter, a growth of 93% versus second quarter '20, obviously impacted by COVID. But importantly, what we're really pleased about is as we think LUMIFY, it's growing, and it's right now tracking at about $100 million -- over $100 million business, which from the time we launch would be over $100 million. And in this brief amount of time, we think is really exciting and has a lot to say about not only the LUMIFY business today, But where the LUMIFY business can go tomorrow as we think about new line extension opportunities with LUMIFY that will help more patients. So exciting part of the business for us to talk about LUMIFY. The only thing I would say about our overall business during the quarter, on the consumer side, we did see a recall of a product and I probably should address that. That was a recall of our multipart solution. And this is because we had a vendor in Italy that serviced or provided caps and bottles for our business that we run out of Milan. And because of that we thought it would be best to proactively recall the product and take the product back and allowed us to move forward with a -- once again, solve this. It was a big product for us. It was about a total $50 million recall, about $30 million of it was reflected in the second quarter. But that we thought was an important thing to get it behind us once again as we thought about the consumer business going forward, we can go forward from there. So that really reflects, I think, the comments on the consumer side. Anything else you want me to talk about there? Or otherwise, I'm happy to go into the rest of the business.

Well, it'd be great to just hang on Ocuvite and PreserVision and LUMIFY for a second. I mean, you're talking about 13% quarter-over-quarter -- year-over-year growth. What's driving some of that growth? Is it share gains? How do you describe what is driving some of that growth?

Yes. Clearly -- we believe, clearly, we are showing those gains in market share as we grow the overall consumer business and also the -- obviously, the LUMIFY business being up 93%. All those, we are -- we believe we're picking up additional market share versus what's happening with the overall market, which we think is -- we just have good products we're out there. We're -- the company is executing well. I remind you that prior to COVID, we showed approximately 13 consecutive quarters of organic growth for the overall B&L business. So we're continuing to pick up those incremental opportunities that we see, and we think that's what's going to continue to drive the business for the long term. Probably the other thing I'll talk about is we've had a very successful e-commerce program. E-commerce now accounts for about 10% of the Bausch & Lomb U.S. consumer business. In 2017, it was about 2%. So you can see that we've dramatically improved our overall capabilities in the area of how we compete. But just to give you some sense of eye vitamin share. Our eye vitamin share total was 77.9% in the second quarter of 2021 versus the second quarter of 2020, it was about 75.6%. So you can see we picked up more than 200 basis points of share just in the past year. So I think it's really been that success we've had in picking up share as well as things that we've been able to do in terms of Joe Gordon and his team on the consumer side have just done a magnificent job in putting together e-commerce programs that allow us to pick up this year.

That's great. It's good to understand the e-commerce part of your strategy. Perhaps we could turn a little bit to Vision Care, maybe provide a brief overview there, and we can spend some time there.

Sure. Vision Care, in terms of -- we've had a very strong recovery in the second quarter. We showed 56% organic revenue change versus the second quarter of 2020 obviously driven by the ramp-up in the United States, but also rebound in international. Obviously, the 1 question we get often was how did your business do for the INFUSE around the world? In Japan, what you referred to as Ultra ONE Day or AQUALOX around the world. In AQUALOX, in Japan, we saw 114% revenue growth in the second quarter. So just another example of a very strong business showing good growth. U.S. business for vision correction was up 103% versus the second quarter of 2020, mostly driven by the launch of the INFUSE and continued ramp-up of our stigmatism line extensions for Biotrue and the Bausch & Lomb ULTRA. So very strong business across the board. Very excited to say that now that we've got our INFUSE product approved, I think we're in about 6 countries, but we expect many more in the very near future. We think that's going to obviously be good for us as we think about the future of the Bausch & Lomb business.

And is there any insight you can provide on your launch strategy as it relates to INFUSE given that it is an important event in the U.S.?

Sure. So the primary comment I'd offer on the INFUSE business is that what we have found is that patients that are currently -- consumers that are currently using the SiHy daily lenses still have a problem. At the end of the day, with dryness, they're compromising on that drying issue because they want to wear their contact lenses for 16 hours. What we believe we have a very significant opportunity is to help these patients to a product that helps them with the comfort of the SiHy daily. They're great lenses, but they appeared great lenses, but we think our ability to put [Indiscernible] into our lenses helps tremendously when it comes to the ability for patients to be able to wear their lens all day long. And we've got some exciting data that -- some of that data that we're collecting right now. We look forward to being able to share even more of it going forward. But basically helping those patients wear contact lenses, SiHy daily lenses all day long and provide comfort is something that we're working on very diligently because we think that's an important part of success and how we can differentiate ourselves from existing products out in the marketplace.

And you spent a little bit of time talking about this before, but could you highlight the importance or your view of the importance on Asia Pac as a driver of this part of your Bausch & Lomb business?

Yes. Asia Pac is a very important part of our business. We've got significant market share in many of the Asia Pac countries. We are the market leader, like, for example, in China, for India, I think we're #2 in Japan, #1 in Thailand. So there's a number of places where in Asia Pac that it is very important to us. We did show about 38% organic revenue change versus the second quarter of 2020. And as I mentioned, really strong demand for us in Japan for the AQUALOX up 114% versus the second quarter. So all of those, I think, are reasons why we look at the Asian market and are optimistic about the future, what it means for our overall Bausch & Lomb business.

Great. I appreciate that. And then within surgical, perhaps you can discuss at least 2 points. One is the impact that you've seen from your recent ClearVisc approval. And then importantly, any COVID-related impact on procedures that you've seen more generally within your surgical business.

Sure. Well, in general, let me talk about ClearVisc because it's part of a strategy for ClearVisc. ClearVisc's approval we launched in June, is a marketplace, a viscoelastic that we were not playing in. It's over $120 million opportunity. And obviously, will help protect the cornea during surgical procedures. But what was happening is that we did not have a product that played in this space. We added it because we think that's an important part of our integrated platform for eye health. And we -- if we don't have a product that plays in the space we lose out on some of the bundling opportunity. Now because we have it, we can be a part of the integrated bundles that are out there. Importantly, it's more than just the revenue of the product. It's the ability for us to play in a larger space by having an integrated platform. So that's the concept of why it was important, why we launched in June. But beyond that, I think it plays out to the overall integrated platform that we're developing for Bausch & Lomb, where we will have one of the most integrated platforms. We'll have the prescription business. We'll have the surgical. We'll have the vision correction and we'll have a global consumer. By having that complete integrated platform, which I would submit is one of the most integrated platform. We think this example of ClearVisc is just 1 more example of us having a full platform opportunity to go out and help meet the needs of the ophthalmologists and optometrists that are treating patients with eye health issues. So -- that's a great example for us moving forward and how we're thinking about it. As it would relate to COVID-related impact on procedures, there was clear at the beginning of 2021, there was a significant gap that -- of procedures that did not occur in 2020 because of COVID. We refer to it as a tailwind for us. And we think that tailwind is still there. But it will get hit by spotty problems or issues of elective procedures like for example, in some states, they may make some judgments on reducing the amount of electric procedures until they can get the Delta COVID issue behind them. So you're going to see some variability by state and variability by some countries like India and Latin America countries were curtailing some of their procedures, same comment on Australia. But as they hit certain COVID milestones, we expect that to be behind us. But importantly, for all these procedures, especially like procedures like cataract, ultimately, if they don't happen this year, the patient still is going to need the surgery. It will happen a year from now, 1.5 years now as they get more comfortable with the COVID situation. But if you have cataracts and you weren't able to have the procedure because of COVID, at some point, once we get this behind us, people will have that procedure. Most of the geographies, there's no issue in getting the procedures done, but there are going to be some variability in certain countries or even within the United States within certain states like Texas or California may have some challenges now. But once they get it behind them, they will go back and redo those procedures and redo those procedures.

Understood. Great. One last question on B&L and then we'll move to other areas. As it relates to your Rx business, could you comment on the recent NDA resubmission and any kind of launch plans that you have post the PDUFA date, which I believe is in October?

For XIPERE specifically, right?

Correct. Yes.

Yes. So XIPERE is an important new product opportunity for us. The FDA accepted our NDA file for XIPERE. We have a PDUFA date is October 30, 2021. Once again, to me, it's just having 1 more opportunity to build out our portfolio of integrated eye health business. We think that XIPERE has a very novel mechanism of how to treat eye problems in the eye. But how they deliver into a certain space in the eye. We think that, that's an exciting opportunity for the future, certainly for XIPERE, but certainly, there may be opportunity to take other medications, interest on the eye, and we're excited about what it means to launch XIPERE, but more importantly, to prove the concept and then take this potentially into other locations. We've been working very closely with our partner and look forward to getting it ultimately and FDA approved for the product. And if approved, we think it can help more patients.

Great. That's great. Let's move to your international business. Maybe you can spend a minute or 2 describing how to think about the various kind of geographies and product offerings there? And how some of the regions have kind of impacted the recovery?

Yes. I think overall, as I said before, there's some variation around the world, but we're seeing a strong recovery across our business units. And we do see some COVID impact related to Delta particularly outside of the U.S. We continue to monitor very closely. But probably can't speculate exactly when things will be happening like Australia, for example, some of the decisions they've made. But importantly, what we're looking at is making sure that we have a healthy and safe environment for our employees and that making sure that we have our products that are available for patients as they need them. And importantly, one of the things that we've been able to manage it, we think very well is through this entire COVID crisis, the global pandemic, we've been able to continue to make sure our product is available for patients every day when they need the product, we do have product availability. So we're very pleased with what we've been able to do notwithstanding COVID and look forward to continuing to make sure that we're going to manage these different variability across the world or across country A or country B as well as maybe within state A or state B for the United States.

Okay. Great. I'm conscious of our time here, and I do want to spend a couple of minutes on capital structure. But ahead of that, maybe you can provide just a brief overview of some of the pipeline and advancements that you've announced recently, and I'm referring more specifically to amiselimod for UC and then NOV03. And if I've missed some more important ones as well, please do share.

Sure. Well, let me start with the NOV03 because that 1 is very excited. We completed the data for the first 2 Phase III trials in April of 2021. We had very significant results relative to both signed and symptoms of dry eye disease associated with meibomian gland dysfunction, very exciting data. Importantly, we also announced that we have completed enrollment in the second Phase III trial that we completed in July of 2021. If this is positive, trial is anything close to what we have in the first trial, we'll be able to submit a file to the FDA in 2022 for our dry eye product. It's a product that, unfortunately, so many people need both in the United States and around the world. We think that's a really exciting 1 for the future. Amiselimod, we've announced that we have started the recruitment of patients for our Phase II trial in ulcerative colitis. We think that, that's very important because whatever you thought about the opportunity for ulcerative colitis before, it's become an area of even more importance to for patients and for doctors that treat ulcerative colitis. Some of the JAK inhibitors have [ run ] into some issues. And we think that if we can prove that we have good data on amiselimod. It will be a great opportunity to help these patients who have, unfortunately, ulcerative colitis for the future. So we're moving that forward. We're advancing that -- those trials, getting all the sites enrolled and then looking forward to patient data on the Phase II results. And once we get that Phase II results, we'll make some additional decisions on where we go with the product. But we think it's an exciting future opportunity for us.

That's great. Appreciate that. I think Sam is with you here, right?

Sam is here as well.

Okay. Great. Sam, perhaps I know our time here is limited together, but perhaps you can talk about some of the recent changes to your capital structure. And I'm talking more specifically about the impact the leverage that you've seen from recent debt reductions, legal settlements, the Amoun divestiture? How does that all kind of fit together?

Thank you, Arek, and it's good to be here. So I'll step back and just reflect back on the second quarter. So during the second quarter, we repaid $300 million of debt with cash from operations, which brought our year-to-date debt repayment as of end of June to about $500 million. This drove our net leverage ratio to decline a whole half a turn from 7x in the first of '21 this year to about 6.5x as of end of June. Also at a year -- for the quarter, we repaid $500 million, and we also used proceeds from the sale of Amoun as you referred by $600 million of debt was to repay down the debt, which brings the aggregate debt reduction for as of year-to-date, about $1.6 billion. So we're very pleased with the progress that we made on our debt pay down. As you look forward, we're factoring in what we look -- as we look forward to the rest of the year, we expect our net leverage to remain flat or slightly increase versus our 6.5x leverage that we had as of end of June. So really nice progress we made on the debt and the leverage and we look forward to continuing to pay down.

Great. And 1 last question here just around margins. As you look across your business and the impact that we've seen from COVID and then the beginning of the recruit here, how have margins been impacted across your businesses? And any thoughts to share there after Joe gave us some of his insights on how the business has performed in a COVID environment?

Sure. It's a good question. So we guided the full year gross margin to be roughly about 71% for us. In our second quarter, we saw the gross profit margin was favorable by about 60 basis points versus Q2 of 2020, which all our business contributed to the improvement in the gross margin. So the way [Indiscernible] the 71% for the full year in '21. We continue to identify and implement operating efficiencies within our global supply team which will enable us to absorb in COVID-19 factors and other mix impacts that we will see in the second half.

Great. Excellent. Well, folks, thank you very much for joining us here at the conference this year. It's always a pleasure to have you. And thanks, everyone, for joining via video conference. So have a great rest of the day.

Thank you, Arek. Thank you for your questions. Good questions.

All right.