The Cooper Companies, Inc. (COO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Welcome back. I'm Larry Biegelsen, the Medical Device Analyst at Wells Fargo. And it's my pleasure to host this session with the Cooper Companies. With us, we have AL White, the President and CEO; and Kim Duncan, Vice President, Investor Relations and Risk Management. The format is going to be fireside chat. If anybody has a question, please raise your hand, and we will call on you. AL, thanks so much for being here.

Sure. Absolutely. .

So AL, let's start with the outlook for the rest of fiscal 2024, not a lot left. But you delivered a strong Q3 just last week. EPS beat on 8% organic sales growth, 25.5% operating margin. Talk about what drove the strength and how you're thinking about the sustainability into fiscal Q4.

Yes. We just reported our fiscal Q3, good quarter. We were pretty happy with that performance. The top line was CooperVision, our contact lens business growing double digits back to 10% and our fertility business growing 10%. So our kind of focused markets being strong. I think I could probably talk for an hour, if you will, about the contact lens market and the durability of growth there. But I think if we went 10 years in the future and look back, I believe you'll see a contact lens market that's grown 6%, 7% annual revenue CAGR, right? And there's a number of factors that are driving that, whether it's the ongoing conversion to dailies, the growth in torics and multifocals, new wearers, that's a new thing, right? I mean we're seeing wearer growth right now on a global basis that we weren't seeing in pre-COVID. So we've got that. We've got some specialty segments at the market that are doing well, and we've got pricing and you probably have some questions on pricing, but we've been able to take price. And I think it's for us for Cooper and also for the market, you're going to continue to see the opportunity to take price. So I think a really strong growth market long term that were contact lenses. And then when I look at the fertility business, a little different story. But at the end of the day, I'd say if you went 10 years in the future and looked back, you're probably going to see a market that's going to grow 6%, 7%, 8%, maybe something like that. It's a good healthy market that's being driven by a variety of factors right now. So yes, it was a good quarter, and its future looks pretty bright.

Good. Glad to hear. So AL, you raised the fiscal '24 guidance. for both CooperVision and CooperSurgical. -- you expect CooperVision growth of 9% at the midpoint of the guidance range for Q4, I believe, which is a slight deceleration from the 10% in Q3. Is that just conservatism, especially with the comps being easier in fiscal Q4 versus Q3? .

I hope it is. We did a 10 of 13 comp. We have a 10 comp in Q4. I would say the underlying market dynamics are very similar. That's what we're seeing this quarter as we did last quarter. Good, strong markets around the world. Demand for our products remains really healthy. We don't have enough supply to meet all the demand out there at some products, especially within the MyDay family. But I would say the market characteristics of the contact lens space, as we're moving through fiscal Q4, very similar to what we saw in Q3. So I think the 8% to 10% was probably the right way to look at it. We'll see how the year plays out and finishes and what happens with different moving parts, but should be a similar quarter.

That makes sense. So you raised the EPS guidance by $0.09 at the midpoint, which was more than the $0.05 beat versus consensus in Q3. How much of the $0.04 difference is deal-related accretion versus operational versus less currency .

Yes. So we had a couple of small deals that we just announced, but they're small. At the end of the day, there would be very little from those deals that went into the fourth quarter. If I looked at FX, per our guidance, it's probably about $0.01 improvement from where we were last time. I think we've been burned enough times with FX over the last few years. We took some conservative assumptions there even for the quarter. So where rates sit today, I think we probably have a little bit of upside from an FX perspective. But if you pinpoint back to that question of 4%, right, $0.01 maybe a little bit over when you put those factors together. The rest of it coming from we'll have stronger revenues on a sequential basis, and we should continue to see leverage through the P&L leverage. So we should have good margins. .

That's helpful. Sticking with CVI, the market, you said, grew 7% in calendar year Q2, which means the first half is about 6%, what's the outlook for the marketing calendar year '24 and you see that momentum continuing as we see maybe less pricing.

Well, I'd say -- I'll touch on that. I'm not sure we're going to see less pricing. Yes, I think you've got a market right now that's probably in that 6% to 7% range that I was talking about earlier. I think that, that's a pretty sustainable 6% to 7%. Pricing is some of that. But I think you've seen the market be stronger than 6% to 7%, supported by some of that pricing activity. Now -- we took pricing this past year in our fiscal Q1, which is October, November, December. We're going to take pricing again is our plan in our first fiscal quarter be before competitors. So it's a little hard to comment on what competitors may or may not do with pricing. But I think you'll see a similar kind of price increase from us for next year. So that should support some decent growth for us. We'll see what the market does. But I think you'd probably see that similar growth next year.

That's helpful. You made an interesting comment to me on the Q3 call about Cooper being #1 in terms of wearers. I think in terms of -- and this is globally, I believe right? In terms of dollar share, you're #2. .

Correct. .

So what's the difference? .

Yes. Yes. So it's really a fascinating thing. I was going back through it this quarter. And when you look at our strategy and what we've accomplished over the years and how we win wearers, how we win contact lens wearers, it's just been a fantastic story, right? I mean, we're the #1 company. There's more people in the world wearing CooperVision contact lenses than any other companies contact lenses. That's pretty cool, right? And we're pretty proud of that, right? . And it continues to grow. I mean we're taking word on a consistent basis. So we're actually continuing to expand that leadership. If you compare that to revenue dollars, which is how most people look at it, right? I mean the reason that we're #2 is because of our percentage of the daily market. So a daily wearer contributes quite a bit more revenues than a monthly wearer. So we have more wearers, but we're skewed on the monthly side of things. That daily wearer space is so valuable. It's such a great segment, and it's growing nicely. If you look at our market share, our global market share on a revenue basis, revenue dollar basis, we're somewhere around 26% or about 21% of dailies. That daily percent that 21 continues to grow, it continues to grow, and it's lifting that 26% number up higher. So you're going to, for a number of years here, continue to see that daily market share that we have trend ever so slightly higher each year as the plant, right? And it will push our total share up. What we've been trying to do from a strategic perspective, if you go back and look over the last several years and say, well, why were we so successful in the monthly space? Why do we have so many wearers, right? Great products, of course, great design products. Our competitors have great products and design products, right? But we also have a great portfolio of private label customer brands that we do. And we have a really broad set of portfolio. We have the broadest SKU range out there for torics and so forth. So we've worked hard to bring that technology and that thinking into the daily space. And that's working out well for us. So -- that's the difference between the two of them. And I think if we can be nearly as successful as we've been in the torics, multifocals and monthly space as we are in the dailies, the future looks bright for us.

AL, on the Q3 call, you talked about your contact launch schedule and pipeline being strong. What's on cap for fiscal '25 .

Fiscal '25, I'd say, actually, I'd probably even go further and say maybe the next couple of years, the launch strategy would be products that you know, right? It'd be a product that's doing really well as an example is MyDay Energys here in the U.S. market. We know there's a lot of interest for it outside of the U.S. There's a lot of demand for it. Once we launch the product, we know we're going to sell it, and we're going to have success selling that. So we need to get that product launched outside of the U.S. clariti, multifocal, the three ad very similar to the MyDay multifocal just got launched in the U.S. We need to take that internationally. We've got the MyDay toric expanded range [ gamer ] set. We need to take that in markets around the world. So although it won't necessarily be anything new, where you're like, "Oh, this is a brand-new product." It will be a lot of existing products that are very successful that need to be expanded around the world.

Got it. And you're wearing what MyDay multifocal.

Multifocals, I don't know, what are you wearing?

So trying to break my -- turning the thought out. So AL, back-to-school is obviously very important for the contact lens market. What do you see -- what are you seeing with back-to-school this season?

I'll break that back-to-school kind of into to -- when we look at our MiSight activity or [ my control ], our contact lens to reduce the progression of myopia in children, we have seen fantastic interest in that. It is a strong back-to-school season for MiSight. And I think the reason for that was we have one of our investors this morning was saying that she was putting her second child into MiSight. And we've heard that from more people, which is people saying, "Hey, I know what my side is now, I know what myopia is, I know all this works. I get the product. I can Google it and find it." Right? The practitioners we are talking about it are more well versed than it. People are much more comfortable once they put one of their kids in it and it reduces or stops the progression of myopia to put their other kids in it. So the discussion, if you will, around myopia management has definitely improved, and we've seen that on MiSight. We've taken that strategy, that real back-to-school education strategy that we deployed in the U.S. last year that we're doing again this year and we push that in different markets around the world, and we're getting really nice receptivity there also. I would say outside of that myopia management side, the regular back-to-school session is going well. I'd say that's similar to last year, it's another good year of back-to-school. Yes. I mean as much as I hate it, I have a 17-year-old, 19-year-old, and I know how often they stare at they stupid phones and stuff. And I hate it when I see kids everywhere doing it, but I mean my pocketbook likes it, right?

Got it. A couple of other data points on the Q3 call. One, SiHy dailies grew 13%. Only a little better than the 11% for the SiHy reusables, Biofinity and Avaira. On the one hand, the Biofinity Avaira franchise has been amazingly durable at 11% growth. Biofinity was launched, I remember Gosh. 2005, 2006 or whatever a long time ago almost 20 years now. But SiHy dailies are supposed to be more of the growth driver. Why are we not seeing faster growth from the SiHy dailies relative to the reusable.

Sure. I think you have to be careful looking at any individual quarter because you get some fluctuations on channel inventory. Growth was 13%. It's going to be strong. It's going to be teams for many years in front of us, I think. So I wouldn't take too much from that. I mean we are supply constrained in definitely in certain markets. If we had more MyDay, that number would have definitely been higher. So the flip side is what you said. I mean Biofinity and Avaira are great products. We saw a lot of strength in those products in the torics, the multifocals, the toric multifocal, the extended range products, where we came off backlog on some of that stuff. So people didn't necessarily know what I talked about it a little bit, but we did have supply constraints within our Biofinity family. We've been able to work through some of that stuff. So we were able to get a lift from some of that activity.

Got it. And another interesting comment to me on the Q3 call was you talked about applying the monthly technology to dailies to improve the margins. Maybe could you elaborate and remind us where you are in your SiHy daily margins today where they can go over time? .

Yes. Yes, sure. Yes, I think the quarter that was taking our -- taking Biofinity mainly our monthly strategy that's been so successful in moving that over into dailies. In order to make that successful, you have to make your manufacturing really flexible, right? You want to be able to say, "Hey I bought a manufacturing line. These lines are huge." As you know, you've been to our plants. I mean they're massive lines. You want to be able to use that line if you're producing MyDay to be able to make MyDay spheres torics, multifocals, Energy's, whatever else you're making, and you want to be able to be really efficient changing that over and manufacturing those products, right? So we've been able to take that technology expertise that we have, deploy that into the daily space, and that's clearly helping us. Not only is it helping us, it's standardizing those lines, meaning as we come out with new products or we do things like [indiscernible] as an example, can be made on a MyDay line. So the more we can standardize that it allows us to go through these product life cycles more efficiently, right? Because I mean, we've talked in the past about how much CapEx we spend, and then you'll see CapEx come down and go back up and come down, right? If we can put ourselves in a situation where as we continue to launch products and we're working on new products, that you're using those same manufacturing lines or more efficient manufacturing lines, right? That obviously helps with margins, reduces cash flow pushes up free cash flow. If I look at margins, it would be margins on dailies or any of our products, it's highly dependent on the geographic side, where we're selling those products, how they're being sold and so forth. Right now, our daily franchise is a gross margin drag out of the business. A lot more dollars coming through the P&L because of the dailies, but lower gross margins on that. We haven't given details around that other than I would say that it's improving. Those gross margins are improving. Some of that is definitely coming from where we are, right? We spent a lot of money in the last number of years, expanding capacity. Every time we do turn a MyDay line on and we're producing new product. Right now, we know we're going to sell all those lenses. But when we start producing those lenses, those are fairly high cost per unit. We capitalize that, rolls through the balance sheet 6 months later. As more of those lines get turned on and run and run efficiently at full capacity, your cost per unit is coming down, that inventory is turning its way through the P&L. We're starting to see that now. So we've seen the leverage in SG&A. We saw it last quarter. We saw this quarter, we'll continue to see it. We're going to start seeing some of that positive gross margin side here in the coming quarters. So that's going to help the daily margins lift with the entire company .

Historically, dailies, we thought about them is a 50% gross margin. Has that changed?

That's changed. Yes, we can push that higher now. .

We thought about kind of the monthly, maybe the specialty lenses 70-ish .

Yes. Yes, but still a good way to look at it. .

But daily is better. .

Daily is better. Yes. And then you have your product life cycle management, I would say, is the one I would add on that, right? Because some of these products like your legacy hydrogel lenses that had really high margins as those businesses continue to decline, right? You're seeing the margins, you're seeing the inefficiencies creep in and come down. So those are negative margins on us as those business decline. And ultimately, those businesses decline, we'll move out of them, but we're managing through it. .

That's helpful. Let's talk about myopia management. Really nice quarter in Q3, 50% growth for MiSight, 29% growth for myopia management. And what was impressive. I don't remember the exact numbers, but the sequential growth was pretty -- was very strong. How sustainable? What's driving particularly the MiSight growth. It's been 50% now for a few quarters in a row and the sustainability of that?

Yes. MiSight is in a really good place. It took us quite a while. Obviously, we launched it when COVID started, and we had some bumps in the road, but we've established that on a global basis. I would say [ hindsight ] 2020, right, we went probably a little broad in terms of all the optometrists that we were going to get certified in order to fit that. Because the optometrist who's seeing three kids a month or something like that, isn't jumping behind the technology, but the higher traffic pediatric offices clearly have jumped behind that technology. So we see it there. We see the growth there. As I was mentioning earlier, right, siblings and so forth, getting fitted. We've seen success in some surprising places like, to me at least, we're seeing more success in Costco, as an example. And some of our retailers in our chains are starting to show up and be more successful. So I'm really happy with that number. The funny thing about that is if you and I were sitting here, a couple of years ago when we were talking about 50% growth, I would have bet you that we would be talking about China. And we're not -- that growth is coming outside of China. China has been a struggle for us on the MiSight side of things. So if we had anything going in China, you'd be growing well north of 50%. And that's a separate issue. We'll talk about that and so forth. But I will say that if you're outside of China, the myopia space and MiSight is doing really well.

One more myopia management question. What's giving you the confidence in that second half calendar year 2025 approval for SightGlass. Is there still work that needs to be done?

Yes. So I mean, we had some great data. I thought we would get SightGlass approved on the data that we had before. The FDA is being very stringent on all our activity associated with myopia management, be it MiSight, which is approved, but extensions on MiSight. New materials and so forth, they're requiring clinical data and so forth. And they've got a standard out there that's pretty high in order to be able to receive approval. So we're doing some more clinical work with them. We've got the breakthrough designation. So we're having good dialogue with them. The next set of clinical data and so forth that we need to get in front of them will come this coming summer, and we'll get it in their hands and have a discussion about that. And hopefully, it's sufficient to receive approval.

So -- but summer of '25.

Summer fall of '25 .

So what would give you confidence that if you give them submit additional data then that you could still have approval in the second half of calendar '25. It seems like a short turnaround.

Well, you'd have to keep in mind, right, that we've been running this clinical data for years. We've submitted it. We've been back and forth with them a number of time. We got the breakthrough designation now. So we have a dedicated person, so to speak, from the FDA who are working with on this. And we're in pretty frequent communication with them to try to explain the data and support where we are and so forth. So there's no guarantees on that, right? It's the FDA, but that's where we sit today.

Okay. But you -- it sounds like you're still optimistic or cautiously optimistic.

I am. I mean we have to get glasses into the marketplace, right? Because when you want myopia management, children, you have to get glasses. You just do. We're doing well with contact lenses. And as we just said, they're growing nicely. But what we want is every single child that goes in and has myopia progressing, the optometrist has to say, let's put you on a product, right? That's going to kick off insurance reimbursement, of course, right? But that's also going to get every single optometrist thinking about it. What's going to happen then is you're going to go down 3 paths with that child, right? Because basically, what you're saying with myopia control is you're putting a little dot almost in the middle of the lens that you want them to look through. Right? That's great. If they do that, and they're looking at a computer and they're doing their homework and so forth, the eye will get strained fairly quickly, and it will reduce or stop the progression of their myopia. But any child who comes in, and that's not happening is probably because they're not wearing their glasses all day. The only way you're going to get through compliance is contact lenses. The other issue that kids are going to have is you run around playing soccer or baseball or whatever else, you're going to have a hard time with that. You're going to want to switch over to contact lenses for your myopia control. But we have to get glasses in there has to become standard of care. And we've already seeded the market from a contact lens perspective. So whoever gets approval and gets that product in there, whether that's SightGlass, I hope, our joint venture with Essilor or another product, that's going to be good news for us. So I'm probably -- I'm optimistic partially because I want to be optimistic, but also because I do think with our dialogue, we've got a good chance of getting there.

All right. CSI, IVF returned to double-digit growth in Q3. How is that sustainable?

Yes. Yes. Yes. The fertility market is a good market right now, growing around the world, expanding markets or some markets that are doing really well right now. Be it new fertility clinics, fertility clinic build outs, improving technology and so forth, a number of things that are supporting that market. I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day, women delaying childbirth is arguably the biggest driver in that marketplace, and you're continuing to see that. And I mean, whether we see it radically on the news, right? Somebody comes out and says, "We need more babies." And there are so many countries where we need more children in order to keep the population stable, and fertility is there to support them. So I think you're going to see that, right? I mean, politically, it seems like it was just the negative with Alabama and stuff more recently. Some really positive news. That would be a home run for us if we saw that. So cheering for that. I mean you get insurance reimbursement and coverage. You're just going to open that up as an opportunity for more patients.

Do you think that's realistic possible?

I don't know. It's a good question. I mean there's a number of countries around the world that have reimbursement in different forms of reimbursement for different things. I mean, there's areas within the fertility treatment. Genetic testing as an example, I would say, yes, you should reimburse that. I mean if you have 5 embryos, you want to be able to rank those embryos and say what embryo is going to be the most likely to be successful. If you're an insurance company, I would support that rather than having somebody go through another cycle. So we'll see. I mean, I know politically these things kind of swing and so forth, but that's certainly a positive.

AL to shift to fiscal '25 you, as always, gave helpful color on the Q3 call. One question you didn't answer was about the top line growth. Three years in a row, you've started with 6% to 8% organic sales growth. What would be the reason why you might not start this year the same?

Well, we'll see. We get a couple more months from now. We'll see where we're at with the economy and so forth. I mean I like that 6% to 8%. We've been able to say 6 to 8 and then put a pretty good results and kind of progress through our fiscal year outperforming and raising guidance. So I like that. That feels good. Right now, I'd say there's not a lot to stop that, right? Our fertility business doing well, contact lens are doing well. So we'll see, but I would expect another good year next year.

That's helpful. Currency is starting to go in your favor. So maybe 130 basis points to top line, $0.05 to $0.10, the EPS right now. Historically, you've said you'll let currency flow through to the bottom line. Is that still the case?

That's still the case. Yes. It was funny. I was looking at a number today when Kim and I were talking, and I was like something's wrong with that, and I shot a note to our team, got a note back, and I was like, but that still seems wrong then they were like, no, currencies in our favor, you're just forgetting, it's been so long that it seems like currency was a negative, but it's nice to have it the other way. Yes, we were conservative. Where we sit today, but we've been burned on currency before. Let's see how it plays out and where it goes. But currency was probably over the last 3 years or something like that on a split-adjusted basis, I mean probably $0.50, $0.60, something like that negative. If it moves the other way, then that would be fantastic. When we talk about guidance and I talk about our growth, right, I talk about it at constant currency. Whatever that currency is going to do, and hopefully, it's positive, holds where it's at gets better, we'll let that flow through the P&L.

That's helpful. Interest expense has been a headwind for you as rates have gone up. Could it be conceivable that interest expense is under $100 million next year?

Under. Oh, yes, definitely. .

I mean you're paying down debt. interest rates are coming down.

Yes. I mean we're $109 million this year, right? I mean we're at a point now where we're starting to generate some free cash flow. Q4 is going to be a good free cash flow quarter. Rolling into next year should be a pretty good free cash flow year. Right now, all that is going to go to pay down debt. Yes, I mean -- so even if you don't get any Fed moves, you're going to be under $100 million.

And the tax rate of 15.5% next year, that doesn't assume any discrete items. I guess if you have discrete items, and it will be lower this year, it's what, 14, 14.5.

Yes, that's right. The discretes are mainly tied to older issued stock options pre, I think, 2018, where you have the tax benefit when those options get exercised and that was disallowed starting, I think it was in 2018. So most of the options that we had issued prior to that have now been exercised. A lot of them was tied to our old CEO. And so we don't have as many discrete benefits as we used to have. That's why I think the tax rate probably does end up coming in closer to that 15.5%.

And I guess the punch line, I don't know where consensus came out, but we were $4.09 for fiscal '25 EPS. We're just under 12% year-over-year growth in any reaction.

Yes, that's a good spot to be.

Okay. I mean there's a lot of moving parts, but you gave a lot of color. You didn't give EPS, but not a bad spot.

Yes. We didn't -- we said low double-digit constant currency OI growth. This year, I think our guidance implies kind of '18 to '19, so upper teens growth. We should continue to get leverage within SG&A. We've got some opportunities in cost of goods. We've got our top line working well. We should be able to deliver that kind of growth. And we'll see what happens with currency. As you said, interest expense is going to be a positive for us. It gets offset to some degree because of taxes. Question mark would be some of that currency activity. .

And capital allocation, paying down debt, still doing tuck-in M&A mainly in CSI?

If we could find them, right? I mean we just did a couple of small deals. Those 2 deals are accretive to our consolidated revenue growth and they're accretive to our gross and operating margins on a consolidated basis. If we can find deals like that, where we're basically buying a company, and we're just buying the product and putting the product into our sales force. Those are highly accretive transactions for us, and they make a lot of sense. So if we can find those kind of deals, yes. Otherwise, I think you'll see us pay down debt.

And the last deal you did, OBP Surgical .

Yes. .

$100 million, but it was 7x trailing 12-month sales, decent valuation, especially compared to what you typically pay more like low single-digit sales multiple. What was so attractive about that asset?

I mean we expect that asset to be growing 20% plus, like, for a number of years. I mean it's just a good business. It's lighted retractor. It's a product that's very similar to a product we acquired from these same guys 3 years ago, and we've had a lot of success with that product. They've launched this 1 to a great degree of success. And once we put in our salespeople's hands, I don't see any reason we won't be successful. So if we can buy a product that's accretive through the P&L, that's growing at those kind of rates, that's a pretty attractive deal for us. .

And the margins were really strong in Q3. You're committed to the double-digit operating income growth next year. You still have a long way to go to get back to kind of pre-COVID margins. How should we think about the path? Just to consistent double-digit operating income growth. .

That's correct. Yes. I would say that we're looking at it right now, saying, hey, we want to deliver consistent low double-digit constant currency OI growth, right, every year for a number of years here. That doesn't mean we can't outperform it. We obviously did this year. It will be our intent to outperform it, right? But if you're modeling that and looking at it in order to get back to those 30% operating margins, we'll do that in a very solid, consistent basis. That's our plan. .

And I guess we have time left, so I'll ask it CSI and CDI still make sense together.

They make sense together. We've done some stuff here more recently, where it makes it a little bit more advantageous having those business in my mind. You've got some things like IT as an example, where we're spending a lot of money in 2 separate businesses. We've been able to kind of behind the scenes, pull some of that together to deliver some leverage. As we go through the end of this year and next year, there's some low-hanging fruit leverage opportunities, if you will. Because I think people sometimes are like, well, how are you getting leverage in these different spots. And there's definitely the investments we've done and the returns we're getting. But there's some lower-hanging fruit there that we're able to get our arms around a little bit easier and a little bit faster in terms of leverage. And some of that's coming from back office stuff of these businesses. .

And what would trigger -- is it just -- what would trigger you saying, okay, it makes sense to kind of split these 2 up.

Well, I mean, we're a public company, someone's come to pick up a phone and call us, right? I mean we have some great franchises. Obviously, our fertility business is ridiculously strong, and that's highly valued as an asset that's out there. But to me, it's a matter of I love both businesses. I think they operate well together as a company we have them linked together. We're driving leverage. We're driving support. It allows us to move some people back and forth. We've had some really talented people on the vision side go to surgical and same with surgical go into vision. When I think about some of the big growth at fertility coming from key accounts and big corporate activity, we've been able to take some of our talent on the vision side and deploy that over in surgical very successfully. So to me, the way it's set up right now is a great business model, and they go really well together. I don't see that changing.

All right. Questions. Got about 1.5 minutes left. All right. AL, thanks so much for being here. Appreciate it.

Thanks.