LeMaitre Vascular, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the LeMate Vascular First Quarter 2024 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. J.J. Pellegrino, Chief Financial Officer of LeMate Vascular. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us on our Q1 2024 Conference Call. With me on today's call is our CEO, George LeMate, 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, May 2nd, 2024, 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 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. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is 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. Q1 was an excellent quarter with 14% sales growth, a 68.6% gross margin, and 62% EPS growth. We posted record sales for each of our three geographies and nine of our 12 product categories. I'll focus my remarks on the top line, our sales force, and some regulatory updates. Allografts were up 31% in Q1, bovine patches 13%, and carotid shunts 27%. APAC was our strongest region, up 44% in Q1, driven by $600,000 of Q1 sales growth from our new sales offices in Korea and Thailand. EMEA sales were up 17%, while the Americas were up 10%. Notably, Canada was up 31% and the UK was up 29%. We ended Q1 with 137 reps, including 62 in North America, 52 in Europe, and 23 in APAC. We expect to have 150 reps on staff at the end of 2024, with most of the hiring in North America, where our average territory size is $2.2 million. In Europe, the average territory size is $1.1 million and APAC is $700,000. We also continue to add international sales offices. Last Monday, we had a ribbon cutting ceremony at our new Paris sales office. France is our sixth largest country. Opening this office should improve our connections with French surgeons and hospitals, as well as our eight French sales reps. We've experienced a strong link between opening an office and sales growth. A Zurich office might be next. We seem well positioned for the 2027 MDR CE mark deadline. Based on recent discussions with our notified bodies, we now expect to receive an additional 11 MDR CE marks by September 30. In total, we should possess 14 of our 22 MDR CE marks by the end of the third quarter, and we expect to receive the remaining eight approvals by the end of 2025. Our autograph CE mark filing was made in December 2023. When we acquired Autographed in 2020, it was cleared for sale only in the US, so receiving European approval would be a nice opportunity for our largest US product line. We sold $33 million of Autographed in the US in 2023. We now believe that Autographed will receive its CE mark by Q4 2025. In the meantime, we're also submitting Autographed for approval in Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Singapore. Separately, we continue to pursue allograft approvals in Ireland and Germany. We believe that one of these approvals will happen in 2024 and another one in 2025. These are not MDRCE marks, but rather individual approvals by each country's human tissue authority. To conclude, Q1 was an excellent quarter with 14% sales growth, a 68.6% gross margin, and 62% EPS growth. We believe our profitability and cash balance provide us strategic optionality. With that, I'll turn the call over to JJ.