LeMaitre Vascular, Inc.

to the Lemaitre Vascular Q4 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. JJ Pellegrino, Chief Financial Officer of Lemaitre Vascular. Go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us on our Q4 2022 Conference Call. With me on today's call is our Chairman and CEO, George Lemaitre, and our President, Dave Roberts. Before we begin, I'll read our Safe Harbor Statement. Today, we will 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 23rd, 2023, 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 and subsequent SEC filings, including disclosure of the factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. During this call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which include organic sales growth, as well as operating income, operating expense, and EPS, excluding special charges, and gross margin, excluding the impact of foreign exchange. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures discussed in this call is contained in the associated press release and is available in the investor relations section of our website, www.lemate.com. I'll now turn the call over to George Lemaitre.

Thanks, JJ. On today's call, I'll cover three topics. Number one, organic sales growth was 8% in Q4. Number two, our Salesforce build-out and APAC expansion continued. And number three, we have largely finished our initial MDRCE filings. We posted sales of $41 million in Q4, an 8% organic increase. Organic growth was led by APAC, up 22%, followed by EMEA, up 9%, And the Americas, up 6%. By product, biologic patches were up 11%, carotid chunks were up 24%, and bovine grafts were up 11%. These increases were partially offset by OmniFlow, which was down 55% due to a backorder. We project this backorder will largely be resolved by the end of Q2 2023. Rep headcount stood at 131 on December 31, 2022, up 27% year over year. Rep headcount grew 25% in both the Americas and EMEA, and 40% in APAC. We also added two regional sales managers in 2022. Territory sizes are now smaller, and we think this will lead to better coverage of our Vasco surgeon customers. Notably, we held sales kickoff meetings for all three geographies in January 2023, our first in-person meetings since January 2020. Looking ahead, we expect to end 2023 with 135 to 140 reps, and sales guidance for Q1 suggests a record $43.8 million quarter or 13% organic growth. We're also opening new direct countries. In Q4, we sold our first products from our new Seoul office. Our Korean business should be approximately $1.25 million in 2023 sales versus about $400,000 of net sales to our longtime Korean distributor in 2022. Korea is our 25th direct market, and we now have 12 offices worldwide. Also in November 2022, we signed a term sheet to buy out our Thai distributor, and we plan to open up a Bangkok office by Q3 2023. Korea and Thailand were previously our two largest international distributors. Turning to Europe, we were happy to see Brussels pass legislation to defer the MDR deadline until 2027. We're still pressing ahead with the filing of our MDRCE marks. We've now filed 12 of our 14 MDRCE applications, and we will file the final two before the end of 2024. Indeed, in January, we received our first MDRCE mark for the Pruitt F3 Carotid Chunt. Q4 2022 was a record sales quarter for our EMEA team, a nice recovery from the somewhat difficult days of the 2020 Before turning the call over to JJ, I'd like to highlight several 2022 achievements. Number one, we grew sales 9% organically. Number two, we became a member of the Dividend Achievers Index. Number three, we built out Team LeMaitre with several headcount records, sales reps of 131, manufacturing personnel of 219, and total employees of 591. We continue to invest in regulatory approvals, including MDRCE applications, RFA allografts in the UK and Germany, and Xenosure patches in China and Japan. Number five, we continue to build out our APAC direct operations. And number six, we undertook a major factory and warehouse expansion in Burlington. I look forward to these 2022 initiatives paying off with improved top and bottom line results in 2023 and beyond. With that, Turn the call over to JJ.