Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Corporation Limited

Good day and welcome to the Fisher and Paykul Healthcare half year results call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Marcus Triller, VP Corporate. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Jenny. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Fisher and Paykul Healthcare's results conference call for the first half of the 2023 financial year. On the call today are Lewis Graydon, our Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Lyndall York, Chief Financial Officer, Paul Scherer, Senior VP of Sales and Marketing, and Andrew Somerville, our VP of Products and Technology. Lewis and Lyndall will first provide an overview of the results, and then we can open it up to your questions for the team. We'll be discussing our results for the six months ended 30 September 2022. Earlier today, we issued our 2023 interim report, including financial statements and commentary to the NZX and ASX. These documents can be accessed on our website at fphcare.com forward slash investor. With that I'll pass over to Lewis.

Okay well thanks Marcus and welcome to the call everyone. Today I'm going to be referring to the investor presentation pack that we released to the NZX and the ASX this morning. But before we look at our results I would like to start by recognising the ongoing efforts of people right across the healthcare sector. While it's been great to see a normalisation of sorts after the peak of the pandemic, we do want to acknowledge that conditions remain challenging for our customers. And at this time, I'd also like to make a special mention for the people of Fisher & Paykel Healthcare. Seasonal illness and COVID-19 have meant that we've had some periods of home isolation and continued disruption to our work environments and to our customers' work environments during this first half. And we're grateful that our people have maintained their relentless commitment, so thank you. So turning now to page three, I'd like to call out some of the highlights during our first half, which included continued growth of our anesthesia sales force, the conditional purchase of land for a second New Zealand campus, and the rollout of a number of new products to more markets around the world. So move on now to the financials on page four. First half operating revenue was $690.6 million. This is a 23% decline from the first half of the 2022 financial year and it's a 27% decline in constant currency. As we said in our August update, this result does reflect how we're lapping a period of significant COVID-19 driven demand. It is, however, a solid performance compared to pre-pandemic levels. with revenue up 21% compared to the first half of the 2020 financial year. Net profit after tax for the first half was $95.9 million. That's down 57% on the first half of the 2022 financial year and 65% in constant currency. Now CFO Lyndall York is here today to unpack some of these figures shortly, but before we do that, let's have a look at our revenue from the product groups. starting with hospital on page six. Hospital operating revenue for the first half is $438.7 million, down 35% year-on-year and 37% in constant currency. New applications consumables revenue was down 20% year-on-year and 23% in constant currency. Now, customer inventory levels have played a role in this result. A number of our customers purchased a significant amount of product in the second half of our 2022 financial year to prepare for an Omicron wave that eventually required less intensive respiratory support than was expected at the time. As this half has progressed, we saw signs that customers were working through their excess inventory and sales of our hospital consumables have increased month on month since May. This trend has continued through the early stages of our second half. Now, ultimately, we see the stocking dynamics as short-term, and the fundamentals of our sales strategy remain the same. Our teams are committed to helping improve clinical practice and ensuring our hardware is used to benefit a broader range of patients requiring respiratory support. So now let's move on to our home care product group on page eight. Home care operating revenue was $249.9 million, up 10% on the first half of 2022, or 4% in constant currency. OSA masks and accessories revenue was up 16%, or 10% in constant currency. And a significant contributor to this was the strong reception of our Evora full face mask. We received $15,000 clearance in April in the United States, And the feedback from clinicians and end users has been very positive. So now I'll hand over to our CFO, Lyndall York, for a more detailed look at the financials. Lyndall.