LeMaitre Vascular, Inc.

Welcome to Delamate Vascular Q4 2020 Financial Resource Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. J.G. Pellegrino, Chief Financial Officer of Delamate Vascular. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Linda. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us on our Q4 2020 Conference Call. With me on today's call are our Chairman and CEO, George Lamate, and our President, Dave Roberts. Before we begin, I'll read our safe harbor statement. Today, we'll make some forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the accuracy of which is subject to risks and uncertainties. Wherever possible, we will try to identify those forward-looking statements by using words such as believe, expect, anticipate, pursue, forecast, and similar expressions. Our forward-looking statements are based on our estimates and assumptions as of today, February 25th. and should not be relied upon as representing our estimates or views on any subsequent date. Please refer to the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking information and the risk factors in our most recent 10-K and subsequent SEC filings, including disclosure of the factors that cause results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. During this call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which include EBITDA and organic sales growth. A reconciliation of gaps and non-gap measures discussed in this call is contained in the associated press release and is available in the investor relations section of our website, www.lomate.com. I'll now turn the call over to George Lomate.

Thanks, JJ. On today's call, I'd like to review a few topics. COVID's impact on our employees. COVID's impact on our company. Our Q4 2020 sales and profits. our 10th straight year of annual dividend increases, and our recent branding change. Surges in COVID infection rates in November, December, and January correlated with our experience at LeMay. When I last spoke with you in October, we knew of 12 employees who had contracted the virus. That number has increased to 32 now, 8% of our employees, with 31 having fully recovered and one still recovering. Indeed, during this recent surge, we began to discourage nonessential employees from on-campus work as an additional way to reduce the spread. As of February 15th, though, our employees are once again being told that on-campus work is voluntary and not discouraged. We've also deployed distance-sensing wristwatches in 100% of our buildings worldwide, where we require masks and physical distancing. Because vaccine administration may not be fully implemented until the summer or fall, We expect that COVID and the measures we've implemented to mitigate its spread will remain with us for some time. With regard to COVID's impact on the company, this recent wave was likely impactful on our sales, though there was no real way to calculate the exact financial effects. Looking at a basket of our peers, however, we saw a 2% decline in their organic sales growth in Q4 2020. Perhaps this is a general proxy for the impact of COVID on peripheral vascular sales. And one would expect that the current declines in COVID, as well as increasing vaccine rates, will start to positively impact hospital-based businesses. Though I have found it hard to predict much of anything in the COVID era. Indeed, the guidance we're giving you today is limited to the current quarter, similar to the short guidance we provided at the start of both Q3 2020 and Q4 2020. As for our financial results, we posted record sales at $37.5 million in Q4 2020, up 24% versus the year-ago quarter. Geographically, sales were up 35% in the Americas, 12% in Asia-Pac, and 9% in Europe. The company's reported sales growth was driven largely by the autographed acquisition, while the organic growth came from aggressive valvetone pricing and embolectomy catheters. More channel loading than normal probably also took place in December 2020 due to various year-end sales rep contests. The Q3 Zenasure approval in Japan contributed some sales growth in Q4, and we've increased our expectations around this launch. Record sales in Q4 and light operating expenses combined to produce strong bottom-line results. We generated $9.5 million of operating income in Q4, EBITDA of $11.9 million, and EPS of 34 cents a share. Just 94% growth in quarterly profitability allowed us to pay down our long-term debt by $21.5 million and increase our quarterly dividend by 16% to 11 cents per share. With 10 straight years of dividend increases, we believe we are now positioned to enter the various 10-year dividend achiever indices. Finally, you may notice that our corporate logo has changed. By dropping the word vascular from our name, and eliminating our tagline, we've tightened our branding to just its pure essence and have also left the door open to more work in spaces adjacent to vascular surgery, perhaps cardiac surgery or interventional radiology. In some ways, we had already made this move years ago by choosing our ticker LMAT and our website, lomate.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to JJ. Thanks, George.