Becton, Dickinson and Company

Stand by, your meeting is about to begin. Hello and welcome to BD's second fiscal quarter 2026 earnings call. At the request of BD, today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay on BD's Investor Relations website, investors.bd.com or by phone at 800-688-9445 for domestic calls and area code plus one For today's call, all parties have been placed in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call over to Sean Bevick, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to BD's earnings call. I'm Sean Bevick, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us. This call is being made available via audio webcast at BD.com. Earlier this morning, BD released its results for the second quarter of fiscal 2026. The press release and presentation can be accessed on the IR website at investors.bd.com. Leading today's call are Tom Poland, BD's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President, and Vitor Roque, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I want to remind you that we will be making forward-looking statements. You can read the disclaimer in our earnings release and the disclosures in our SEC filings on our investor relations website. Unless otherwise specified, all comparisons will be made on a year-on-year basis versus the relevant fiscal period. Revenue percentage changes are on an FX neutral basis unless otherwise noted. Also, references to adjusted EPS refer to adjusted diluted EPS. The financials discussed here and included in the earnings release and 10Q are presented on a continuing operations basis. Prior periods have been recast to reflect the spinoff of our life sciences business in combination with Waters, which is now accounted for as discontinued operations. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures are included in the appendices of the earnings release and presentation. With that, I will turn it over to Tom.

Thank you, Sean, and good morning, everyone. Before turning to Q2 results, I wanted to take a moment to highlight this morning our announcement of Vitor Roque as CFO. As you know, Vitor has been interim CFO since last fall and has done a fantastic job serving as a partner to me and the leadership team. Since he stepped into the role, we've delivered two solid quarters of performance and closed our transaction with Waters ahead of schedule, enabling us to fully initiate our new BD strategy while also enhancing our capital allocation strategy. In partnership with a leading executive search firm, management and the board ran a comprehensive process that evaluated a broad range of external candidates, in addition to Vitor. Our goal is to identify the best candidates to lead BD's finance function. We were focused on identifying a CFO with a demonstrated ability to lead sophisticated finance organizations in complex operating environments, deep understanding of our markets and value creation model, and a strong track record of driving strategic, operational, and financial performance. As we work through the process, it became clear that our best talent was already within the organization with VTOR. With 25 years at BD across our businesses, regions, and segments, he brings the experience and perspective to translate strategy into results, drive consistent execution, and create long-term shareholder value. I look forward to working closely with VTOR as we continue to execute on our strategy. Turning now to our Q2 results. We delivered a solid second quarter with revenue, adjusted margins, and adjusted EPS all ahead of our expectations. More importantly, performance reflected broad-based execution with more than 90% of the portfolio delivering mid-single-digit growth and tangible progress in operational, innovation, and commercial performance through BD Excellence. Reflecting our first half performance and improved visibility into the remainder of the year, we are raising our full-year adjusted EPS guidance. This gives us confidence that the new BD strategy is delivering through a dynamic environment. Revenue is $4.7 billion, up 2.6%. As I've discussed, we've been focused on building multiple scaled growth platforms that sit at the center of secular trends that are driving the future of healthcare. It is in these areas where we're focusing on enhancing our commercial execution, and driving product innovation. During the second quarter, we delivered double-digit growth across these key growth platforms, including biologic drug delivery, advanced patient monitoring, PureWIC, and advanced tissue regeneration. We also delivered mid- to high-single-digit growth in oncology, peripheral arterial disease, and ROA pharmacy automation. As you can see, these platforms are scaling. They're outpacing the broader portfolio and are becoming a more meaningful driver of our long-term growth profile. As expected, results were partially offset by focus pressure in Alaris, vaccines, and China. We've been clear about these factors, which represent less than 10% of revenue, and we're managing them with discipline. We delivered adjusted operating margin of 24.2% and adjusted EPS of $2.90, reflecting strong operational execution through BD Excellence and the high quality of our revenue performance. Taken together, the quarter demonstrates the increasing quality, breadth, and resilience of new BD. We're executing against three priorities that define how we're building new BD, compete, innovate, and deliver. By expanding BD excellence into commercial and R&D, we're building a stronger operating system, one that strengthens our competitive position, accelerates innovation in attractive markets, and improves the earnings and cash-generating power of the company over time. Starting with Compete, we're raising the bar on commercial execution with greater rigor, faster decision-making, and more disciplined use of data. In Q2, those actions translated into measurable share gains and customer conversions across several key platforms. A few to highlight. Within Connected Care, APM continued to grow above market, driven by strong Hemisphere Alta adoption, and a nearly 20% increase in smart recovery consumables demand. With incremental Salesforce hiring largely complete, we're well positioned in the back half of the year. In Alaris, we drove share gains of approximately 50 basis points in the quarter and roughly 150 basis points year-to-date, with momentum continuing into Q3. In Biopharma Systems, we secured several significant long-term customer wins, including two next-generation GLP-1 programs, with leading global pharmaceutical companies. Biologics are now expected to represent about 55% of segment revenue, reinforcing our confidence in the long-term growth outlook for this business. In interventional, we continue to build competitive momentum across surgery, with strength globally from our synthetic hernia and advanced tissue regeneration portfolio, and early contributions from recent launches, including Surgifor Pulse and Avatine Flowables. In UCC, we drove continued adoption across the PureWIC portfolio, including expanding our PureWIC at-home initiative and adoption in the VA. This is a good example of how we're combining innovation and commercial execution to expand both our penetration and our addressable market. What's important here is that these are not isolated wins. They reflect improving commercial discipline and our ability to convert strategy into tangible outcomes. Our second priority is innovating. We're strengthening our pipeline and increasing the pace of launches in high-growth areas that advance BD's leadership in connected care and enabling the shift to lower-cost settings and in advancing the treatment of specific chronic diseases. While we're still in the early innings of applying BD Excellence to R&D, we're already seeing momentum. Year-to-date, we've applied BD Excellence to five development programs and, on average, have reduced the time to launch by over 10 months. This is increasing the cadence of high-impact launches that expand our addressable markets and support sustainable long-term growth. In peripheral intervention, we launched the OnCore and Compass biopsy system in the U.S., strengthening our position in the $450 million global breast biopsy market. The system simplifies workflow and works across all imaging modalities, enhancing both efficiency and clinical flexibility. We also advanced our peripheral vascular portfolio with the early launch of the Ravello vascular coverage stent in Europe. This expands us into new procedural segments within PVD and addresses more complex lesions. The U.S. launch is planned for next fiscal year. In APM, we expanded the launch of the Hemisphere Stream module in the U.S. and Europe. Stream enables continuous non-invasive blood pressure monitoring with real-time data and extends beyond traditional care settings. significantly expanding our addressable market. Collectively, these launches in the quarter show that innovation at BD is becoming more focused, more disciplined, and more impactful in the categories that matter most to our long-term growth. Our third priority, deliver, reflects our focus on quality, operational excellence, margin expansion, and cash flow generation. Our BD excellence system and operational performance is a significant differentiator for BD, and a key source of confidence in our ability to continue investing in growth while expanding earnings power. We're building a simpler, more efficient manufacturing network, reducing our footprint by roughly half to around 50 sites globally today, with actions underway to reduce it further. BD Excellence drove approximately 8% productivity in the quarter and service levels of over 90%. These actions are supporting growth, expanding margins, increasing cash flow, and strengthening the resilience of our operating model. We also made strong progress on our $200 million cost-out program, with a run rate of $150 million already completed and clear visibility to fully deliver by the end of next year. Product quality is core to VD, and I want to provide an update on the FDA warning letter we received last Thursday related to our El Paso, Texas facility that manufactures ChloroPrep and PurePrep infection prevention products. In response, we voluntarily place these products on ship hold in the U.S. while we complete additional final release testing. This additional testing is already performed for products sold in Europe. We expect this testing to take approximately three weeks, and pending satisfactory results, we would resume shipments at that time. We are continuing to manufacture product during this period, and importantly, there's been no patient safety signals, and we stand behind the safety of these products. Moving to capital allocations. we remain committed to a disciplined framework, which prioritizes returning capital to shareholders, investing in high-growth opportunities through disciplined tuck-in M&A, and driving consistent improvement in return on invested capital. Our capital allocation actions continue to align tightly with our framework. In the quarter, we returned $2.3 billion to shareholders, including $2 billion through share repurchases. We completed the separation of our life sciences business at approximately a 19 times EBITDA multiple, and our advanced patient monitoring acquisition continues to perform well ahead of our deal model. In closing, we are pleased with our first half performance and improved visibility into the remainder of the year as we continue to execute across our new BD growth strategy. With that, I'll turn it over to Vitor to provide more detail on our financial performance and updated guidance.

Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone. I'm honored to step into the CFO role at a pivotal moment for BD as we accelerate our new BD strategy. I appreciate Tom and the board's confidence. I firmly believe BD's finance function must support the company's strategy to drive shareholder value creation. I see tremendous opportunity ahead as we have clear, well-defined strategy to unlock growth while continuing to be diligent on our cost structure to improve P&L leverage and drive sustainable EPS growth. This must all be paired with a clear capital allocation strategy that will continue to focus on shareholder returns while maintaining a strong balance sheet. I look forward to continuing to engage with the investment community in the weeks and months to come. With that, let me turn to the quarter. We delivered a solid second quarter with $4.7 billion in revenue, up 2.6%, reflecting broad-based growth across most of the portfolio, with a stronger contribution from higher-margin businesses and disciplined execution through a dynamic environment. This was partially offset by expected pressure in Alaris, vaccines, and China. Medical essentials grew 1.7%. MDS and specimen management delivered solid growth in the U.S., driven by share gains in vascular access management and BD vaccine portfolio. This was partially offset by market dynamics in China. Connected care grew 3.2%, led by advanced patient monitoring, which grew 12% on strength in the U.S. consumables. MMS grew modestly, with a difficult prior year comparison in Alaris Capital, offset by strong infusion sales performance on increased utilization versus last year fluid supply disruption and pull-through from Alaris share gains. Bio-pharma systems declined 1.8%, in line with our expectations. Continued double-digit growth in biologics, led by GLP-1, was more than offset by lower demand for vaccine products. Intervention grew 5.3%, with solid mid-single-digit growth across the segment. UCC was led by continued double-digit empirics. Surgery performance was driven by double-digit growth in infection prevention and advanced tissue regeneration. PI growth was led by peripheral vascular disease and oncology, partially offset by China market dynamics. In summary, revenue performance was not driven by one business or one geography. We saw strength across multiple platforms where we have been investing, and that strength more than offset known and focused headwinds. Turning to the P&L, adjusted gross margin was 54.7%, down 90 basis points versus the prior year. These include 70 basis points of positive benefits from productivity and mix, offset by 160 basis points of tariffs. Adjusted operating margins was 24.2% down 110 basis points versus the prior year. This includes 160 basis points of tariffs and increased commercial investments in key growth areas. Importantly, both adjusted gross and operating margins were ahead of our expectations. Adjusted EPS was $2.90, up 3.9% and ahead of our expectations, reflecting solid revenue performance, better than expected margins, and strong operational execution. Adjusted EPS excludes approximately $450 million of non-cash asset impairment charges recorded in the quarter. Following the separation of our life science business and combinations with water, We exited certain activities that no longer align with the new VD strategy. These actions are part of the work to simplify VD, sharpen our focus, and align resources behind the platforms that matter most to the long-term value creation. Turning to cash flow and capital allocation. Year-to-date, free cash flow was $1.1 billion, up significantly versus the prior year. The increase was driven by disciplined working capital management, including improved collections and inventory management, as well as continued progress reducing non-operational cash items. This increases our flexibility to invest in growth and return more capital to shareholders. During the quarter, we returned approximately $2.3 billion to shareholders, including $2 billion in share repurchases and $0.3 billion in dividends. We also retired $2.1 billion of debt in the quarter. We ended the quarter with net leverage of approximately 2.9 times and remain committed to our 2.5 times long-term net leverage targets. Our capital deployment remains aligned with the framework we laid out. Return capital to shareholders, invest in focus growth, and maintain balance sheet discipline. Moving to our updated fiscal 26 guidance. While we are reaffirming our full-year revenue guidance of low single digits, we expect revenue growth in the second half to be roughly similar to the first half. Based on current spot rates, currency is estimated to be a tailwind of revenue of about 120 basis points. Moving down to the P&L, we continue to expect adjusted operating margins of approximately 25%, inclusive of the impact of tariffs. our adjusted effective tax rate is expected to remain between 16% and 17%. Given our first-half performance, the breadth of growth across the portfolio and continued productivity to be the excellence, we are increasing our adjusted EPS guidance to $12.52 to $12.72. With that, I'll turn it back to Tom.

Thanks, Vitor. Before we open the call for questions, I want to recognize Rick Bird, President of the Interventional Segment, who recently announced his intention to retire after nearly 25 years with BD. Rick has been a strong leader and partner over his career at BD, strengthening our portfolio and helping build a strong foundation across the interventional business. We're grateful for his many contributions and wish him all the best in his retirement. With that, let's start the Q&A session. Operator, can you please assemble the queue?

Thank you. At this time, if you have a question, please press star 1. If at any point your question is answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. In order to allow for broad participation, please limit yourself to only one question. Lastly, to provide optimal sound quality, please pick up your handset while you ask your question. And we'll take our first question from Vijay Kumar with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, Tom. Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. Maybe one on just the performance here in the quarter, both on the top and bottom line. Organic, headline organic was 2.6. What was underlying excluding the one-timer headwind strike? Which segments did it impact? And on the bottom line, maybe for WeTour, it looks like TSA income was a driver. Is PSA income sustainable here in the back half? What's that other income that is here in the second quarter? Thank you.

Thank you, Vijay, and good morning, and welcome back. Good to have you back covering BD. We are, as you said, really pleased with the performance in the quarter, and we saw it play out with really those are key growth platforms. You know, we had multiple platforms growing double digits in the quarter. We talked about a number of those, our biologics business, our advanced patient monitoring business, a number of others there. We're continuing to see also, you know, another major portion of our portfolio growing high single digits. And the overall 90% of the company continuing to grow solid mid-single digits, you know, right around 5%. And the three areas that we called out in the beginning of the year, right, the China, the vaccine, market dynamics, as well as Alaris, playing out as expected as well. And that's offsetting kind of that mid-single digits in the remaining portion of the portfolio. But we're really pleased with the execution that we're seeing across the team, the up-tempoing on our commercial rigor, as well as the pace on innovation and launches. I'll turn it over to Vitor to address the other questions.

Good morning, Vijay, and thanks for the question. So, As Tom highlighted, we are very happy with our performance, both on the top line and the gross margin. We had a strong performance in both those areas. On the item that you are mentioning, it's not necessarily related to the TSA. What we had was a planned item from the very beginning of the year in a different line of the P&L on the GMA line that on the accounting when we booked, we ended up booking in the other income line. but it's just a reclassification between lines. It's not driven by the TSA. Everything planned out as expected on the quarter for us. So there's no benefit on the P&L from that. Thank you, Vito.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Travis Seed with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, thanks for the question. Maybe start with maybe thinking about the cadence of the year, both on revenue and margins. I know you said revenue growth kind of roughly similar first half, second half, but comps do get tougher. So when I think about, you know, how some of the Alaris China vaccines headwinds play out to kind of get the similar growth rate in the back half and the top line, and when you think about margins, kind of the same idea. I have to think about margins over the course of the year and what you're assuming on inflation as well. Thank you.

Hi, Travis. Thanks for the question. So starting with the revenue, I think we feel very good about the revenue we have on the back half of the year. We delivered solid performance on the first half over delivering on our internal estimations and expectations, and we see good line of sight to deliver on the back half of the year, as we mentioned on the prepared remarks. The comps are pretty much similar in the back half of the year. There is no specific topic there. So we feel confident about delivering the back half of the year from a revenue perspective. From a margin perspective, we also see good performance over delivering the quarter on the gross margin, which makes us increase confidence for the back half of the year. A lot of our ramp in margins in the back half of the year is driven by the execution of our BD excellence, which has been part of our plan all year long. We are seeing results of that with achieving 8% productivity in Q2, and that's going to generate benefits for us on the later part of the year. Given our cap and roll, we have good visibility of our margin profile for the back half of the year, which also increases our confidence on delivering the margins in the back half.

And I would just say, you know, the other couple factors there is we do end up lapping a bit vaccines, right? If you recall, that started in the very back end of Q2. of last year. So we do see that, you know, not as significant of those headwinds in the back end of the year versus, you know, what we saw in the front part of this year. I think maybe just another one, since it's probably on folks' minds, just to address too, as we think about, you know, questions around oil and resin and the Middle East, you know, from a business, you know, perspective, you know, resins and molded plastic components, they represent about 5% of our COGS. I think we've talked about this many times in the past, but, you know, we've really, very effectively, I'm very proud of the work that our teams have done to effectively mitigate any impact this year. That's really done through the hedging actions that we took several years ago, which we're seeing benefit us here, as well as obviously the normal cap and roll mechanisms and the very strong, right, top quartile, top decile productivity benefits that we're seeing, right? As we think about next year as well, we obviously have a very focused team pending where oil prices and resin prices go. Obviously, we continue to drive BD excellence. We've got multiple resin sources. And pricing actions are also something that is, as you know, that's an area that BD has a lot of focus on. And we would make sure from a margin perspective that we seek to protect that as we, you know, pending where those prices stabilize over time. So thank you for the question, Travis, and we'll look forward to seeing you next week.

Thank you. We'll get our next question from Robbie Marcus with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Oh, great. Good morning, and congrats on a good quarter here. Tom, I wanted to ask on sort of the new BD strategy here and really the priorities for free cash flow. I believe in the past it used to be predominantly talking M&A to drive growth of creatives, you know, additions to the business. And now it seems like that's slotted number two behind share repurchase. So maybe just give a quick overview on how you're thinking about capital allocation here and the priorities, if you don't mind.

Yeah. Thanks for the question, Robbie. And so as we've communicated, as we look at the new BD, and particularly, right, in this window and given the valuation of the company today, it's we believe that the company is substantially undervalued. And as, you know, we have a very strong focus on cash flow generation. You saw that, you know, come forth in the quarter. You can see it in our operational excellence, really operating at a top tier there. So as we think about how we deploy that cash flow, which we're, you know, obviously highly focused on continuing to increase today at current stock price, right, we have a top priority on buying back shares as we do that as a top form of value creation for our shareholders. Now, with that, we obviously pay a very strong dividend, which is a very high yield rate at – a very solid yield rate at today's stock prices, again, which we view as undervalued. And we do have an active M&A pipeline. But we – as we look at those, you've seen us be extremely disciplined in our M&A track record over the last several years. We've been focusing exclusively on deals that accelerate revenue growth, drive margins, and – improve our return on invested capital, right? We haven't been doing dilutive deals. And that framework doesn't change from in terms of the types of deals that we look at. But from an allocation, so we do have an active M&A funnel. It is in a focused funnel as we are prioritizing towards share buybacks at the current valuation levels. But I would expect that we would do tuck-ins, you know, forthcoming, but again, in a focused way in that order of capital prioritization. So thank you for the question, Robby.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Larry Bagelson with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Hey, Tom, I thought I'd just ask on the ChloroPrep chip hold. I thought if I heard you correctly, what's assumed in the guidance? How much of U.S. specimen management is ChloroPrep? I assume, you know, the vast majority. And what gives you the confidence the chip hold will only last three weeks and that the testing will be positive? Thanks for taking the question.

Yeah, thanks for the question, Larry. So just a little bit of background. The ChlorPrep and PurePrep products are primarily within our surgical business with a little bit in our MDS business. And those products are made in that El Paso facility. So as we have put those products on hold from shipping them, we're continuing to manufacture full out. As I said, there's been no patient safety signals and we stand strongly behind the safety of the products. The testing that we are performing today is testing that we've been doing for many years on the product that we ship to Europe. So we have a strong track record with that testing on this exact same product. We've extended that testing. We've added an additional testing loop, that testing loop, onto the finished goods that are going to be shipped in the U.S. That testing takes approximately three weeks. We're beginning that testing this week and, again, pending satisfactory results like we've seen, you know, for the product that we've been shipping to Europe. Pending that, we would resume shipment at that time. And in the meanwhile, we're not slowing down manufacturing. So I think that's an update there. Thank you, Larry, for the question.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Rick Wise with Stiefel. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Good morning, Tom. Hi, Vitor. Look, I'm going to ask, it seems like sort of a soft question, but I'm curious to know, what you're charging Vitor with, what you're tasking Vitor with as he steps into the role. Obviously, he's been there a long time. Obviously, he knows the job. Obviously, compete, innovate, deliver. He's going to be integral in making that all happen, Tom. But there's a, you know, he's stepping into the role at a different time in Vitor's life. History, what's he prioritizing? What are his financial priorities? Is something, anything changing or different or that you're emphasizing? I'd just be curious to understand how you're both thinking about it and what we should think about it, honestly.

I think, obviously, Vitor and I are highly aligned on the new BD strategy and, you know, our focus on execution quarter after quarter, on the commitments that we shared. And again, we're very pleased with this quarter. We're highly focused, obviously, on the continued cash flow generation and revenue growth of the company. Those are reflected in top two priorities, which is commercial excellence and innovation excellence, which fuel our revenue growth. And why don't I turn it to Vitor to maybe share his priorities and financial philosophy. And again, We're joined at the hip on that.

Sure. Thanks, Tom, and thanks for the question. Of course, I'm very honored to be taking this position at Pivotal Moment at BD. New BD, we are very excited about what we can unlock going forward, and I have spent more than two decades at BD across different businesses, regions, and segments, and I do have a clear view of what drives performance and what is true of true versus typical. My focus is driving growth in partnership with Tom and the leadership team but also setting expectations that are confident and sustainable. Communicating transparently, delivering consistently against lofty commits. Over time, I think that consistency is what builds trust and drives, preserves, builds trust and preserves flexibility. In terms of priority, I would say, of course, driving growth is going to be the top of our agenda. We're going to continue to drive that, but execute without disruption. making sure that we keep the team focused on delivering the commitments through this moment. Maintain a clear and consistent communication so investors and shareholders understand our performance drivers outlooks without any type of ambiguity. And I think, as Tom mentioned before, stay disciplined for our capital allocation. Protect the balance sheet, maximize return to shareholders, and invest on selected growth drivers. It's about continuity. It's not about changing drastically, but it's sharpening the execution and not changing direction. Thanks for the question.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from David Roman with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and congratulations on the permanent role here at CFO. I look forward to working with you. Maybe you just dive in a little bit deeper on MMS here. Clearly a ton of focus on the Alaris business, but maybe you can help just frame for us some of the different other pieces in that line item. For example, what are the opportunities on the pump disposal side, especially given the disruption in a competitor? I believe your pump set share, especially pump sets outside the pump, is lower than your pump capital share. You talked a little bit about but maybe help us just break down a little bit further in any detail you're willing to provide on sizing the businesses in there and how you're thinking about the growth trajectory, especially in light of the previously disclosed comments around the well-known Alaris headwinds.

Yeah. Thanks for the question, David, and obviously you know the business extremely well. As we think about, so let me start with Alaris and then we can move over to dispensing and pharmacy automation. So within Alaris, as we said, we actually saw Alaris perform modestly better than expected in the quarter. It was another quarter of share gains, as we said, about 50 basis points, year-to-date 150 basis points, which year-to-date halfway through the year, that's hitting stride even better than we had before historically. That's really good, and we see that momentum in Q3. In fact, we have the largest Alaris competitive funnel in the history of the company. And so we're, again, very focused on that. We lost no infusion accounts in the quarter. As we think about the consumables growth, we actually saw and we're seeing in the quarter, we saw low double-digit growth in infusion sets in the quarter. And that's driven – I think you need to recognize there was an easy comp relative to the – there was the fluid shortage last year that held that back. But it's also driven by, as you referenced, share gain pull through that's happening there. And that's a big focus of ours, right? Not only on the dedicated sets, but on the non-dedicated sets and pulling all of that through together to help support the customers with BD solutions. As we think about Pixis, obviously, we're right in the middle of, we're right in the early stages of our next generation Pixis launch, Pixis Pro, which is the first new Pixis platform in essentially 20 years. So, again, bringing really new, fantastic breakthrough innovation that's for the first time in a while. And it's a very important step in our connected care strategy. The new Pixis Pro is the first AI-enabled Pixis, and it's the first future cloud-enabled Pixis. Our early customer response has been strong. The launch is translating into competitive traction. Actually, in the first half of the year now, 75% of our wins are competitive conversions. which is reinforcing our view that this is really a meaningful share gain platform over time. What we're doing with that platform, so it enhances capacity, it enhances security and durability, but it also has our new AI platform, BD on Kata. And, you know, under Bilal's leadership, he's really brought in a new team of AI specialists, of data specialists who are building out in Kata as our solution that all of our devices, whether or not it's Alaris or Pixis or APM or other software platforms, will all feed in to this AI model that will help customers improve that end-to-end medication management workflow, improve inventory visibility. And ultimately, that's our platform that we view connecting in our patient monitoring and the drug delivery side to take things to a next level of breakthrough innovation. On the pharmacy automation side, you know, at the same time, we've recently hired in a new president of that business to give it even further focus, you know, under the law's leadership. And that's still a subset of within MMS, but we brought in another level of leadership there because we do see a significant opportunity, both with Parada and ROA. The trends around automation and labor shortages certainly are not changing anywhere, particularly Europe, right? When you go into hospitals, labor shortages are the number one topic we hear time and time again. And pharmacy automation is a fantastic solution. The other thing you're seeing in the U.S. is as people are wanting to ship drugs directly to patients' homes from a population health, pharmacy automation and these lights out, automated warehouses really become key. Same thing on the direct consumer, the large direct-to-consumer places that we could be buying our own goods that are now offering pharmaceutical services to deliver those medications for home. They don't have pharmacists counting pills and putting them in amber vials in their warehouses, right? They're using, in many cases, our automation to do that, and then they're shipping those to you, those online retailers. And so, again, future growth opportunity because we do see that is a trend which is going to continue going forward, and we see very strong interest from both online retailers but also from hospitals as well as pharmacy providers directly. So overall, within that MMS business, there are a number of different levers that we're focused on executing against, and we'll continue to drive those. Thank you for the question.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Matt Mitzk with Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Great. Thank you so much for taking the questions, and congrats on a really strong quarter year. I wanted, if we could talk just a little bit about some of the initiatives that you mentioned around BD excellence and excellence in manufacturing. It's one of the areas that it seems like, you know, the organization continues to just drive more efficiency, more cost outs, more you know, back-end fixed asset rationalization. And it's kind of in the middle of another big, you know, big wave currently. So, you know, color, you know, strategy, pace, you know, any comment there. And then just to follow up on your comments on oil, to the extent that the, you know, your positioning is around hedges and there's a sort of a time window that, you know, those hedges work well and then less well. just how much protection you have out into the future and maybe what, if any, options you have in the past you've pulled, you know, I don't say pulled, but you've made some changes in price and been able to offset some of that in addition to internal mitigations. Any strategies you're putting in place or, you know, have after maybe some of the temporary benefits of hedging start to wear off if that's the situation you find yourselves in, say, in nine or 12 months? Thanks so much.

Yeah. Thanks for the question, Matt. Two great questions. On BD Excellence. So, again, BD Excellence, as you know, didn't exist really three, three and a half years ago, and something that I couldn't be more proud of the teams who are driving that. It's now deeply embedded in the company. This year we'll do over 2,000 Kaizans across the organization. That's up substantially from last year, and last year essentially doubled from the year before. So, as you said, It's at significant scale, and it continues to scale with momentum. Every one of our plants, every one of our business units has dedicated BDX on leadership. Our leadership team is involved in Kaizans directly themselves. I was just out of plants engaged in those recently. And what we're seeing in every case is we're improving safety in our plants. We're at record safety levels. We're improving quality in our plants. We're improving delivery. We're really pleased from our customer service levels, over 90%. I was out with our sales team earlier this week meeting with a very large customer, and the feedback that we hear from our sales team, the best service levels they've seen for our customers, it's allowing them to focus on selling product, not back orders, and that's all a result of that momentum. And obviously cost, right, what you're seeing. I think certainly top quartile, perhaps top decile, very likely top decile. Overall, what you're seeing in 8% productivity, which was, by the way, what we delivered last year as well, so it has momentum. And you're seeing that complemented with a very aggressive posture on our network architecture. We've cut that in nearly half over the last several years to now about 50 sites, and we still have more underway. That's allowing us to again, have more scaled facilities where we can also invest in informatics, AI, BD excellence capabilities that create a flywheel effect. And what I'm really excited by right now, and so our appointment of Mike Feld to Chief Revenue Officer, he comes with a very strong lean background, and he's applying BD excellence. He has a team of folks who are helping apply BD excellence to our commercial processes now. That same processes of how do you solve problems, how do you continuously improve every single day on our sales execution, on our funnel management, on how long it's taking us to close deals, on our value propositions, that same problem-solving mindset and continuous improvement, right, we're taking that into our selling organization today. And we're starting to see some early benefits of that. We're also taking in, we have dedicated BD Excellence people who just work in our R&D organization now. And I talked about the first five projects that this past two quarters this year that we applied BD Excellence to. And on average, we pulled the timelines forward 10 months, right, That's on the first five projects that we did. We've got many more planned in the back half of the year. But we see BD excellence now, and this was the year that we were going to start expanding it beyond operations as we started getting – as we kind of have that going. And we're excited about where that can take our commercial side and our innovation side now as well. As we think about – and we see it – the last thing I'll say on that is we see that as a long-term strategic advantage for BD across each of those avenues. When it comes to oil and resin, I mean, you nailed it. Hedging works for this year. It works well for us. As we think about next year, obviously, you know, you've got kind of this five to six months flow through of the P&L that, you know, we can see. And so the good thing is then you have visibility to mitigate it, right? And we have teams taking actions, you know, against those. And that includes teams looking at pricing, right? And those are very active. We obviously have been monitoring where oil is going to be. I think it's fair to say we're not assuming that oil will reset to a lower price. We're taking the assumption that it will remain high, including into next year, and are going to be taking actions accordingly under that assumption. Obviously, if that were to get better, that's great, but that's certainly not a posture that we would take. Maybe, Vitor?

No, I think everything you said, Tom, is spot on. We have the hedging programs, especially for the North America resins that we buy, which is approximately 50% of our resin in North America is hedged. And that gives us the flexibility. We also have multi-source of suppliers from a resin perspective. We also give us flexibility to navigate this cost environment that we have for 26. But as Tom mentioned, we are monitoring the cost, tracking that very closely, given that it's an important part of our raw material component. But given our cap and roll timing, we have, The teams are working to offset these through efficiencies and price is also a very important topic for us heading into FY27. Thank you for the question, Matt.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Josh Cheney with TD Callen. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks, Tom, for taking the question. Just thinking about the potential for the portfolio to drive an acceleration in organic revenue growth back into the the mid-single-digit range over the next 12, 18, 24 months. I'm hoping to just touch on the expectation for the average market growth rate of the portfolio. It seems like, you know, the tuck-in M&A strategy has evolved, at least for the near term, and guys are making additional investments in some higher-growth segments like biologic drug delivery, APM, and regenerative technologies as well as, I guess, in the urology space adjacent to PureWIC. But I mean, how should investors think about the way the average market growth rate of the portfolio and the evolution here over the next 24, 36 months? And is the reacceleration going to be driven by a combination of increase in WAMGR and share gains or primarily stable WAMGR and share gains in your various business units? Thanks for taking the question.

Yeah, thanks, Josh. So to your point, our view of the long-term new BD growth profile continues to be very confident in our ability to deliver durable mid-single-digit growth over time. And you can see that in our broader portfolio continuing to perform well, just around 5%. In fact, this quarter, that 90% of the portfolio that we've talked about As you said, we've built over the last several years a number of scaled growth platforms that we're continuing to double down on. And just as a reminder, in the beginning of this fiscal year, we announced that we were investing about $35 million of incremental selling resources behind those. And again, you're seeing that pay off. We increased the APM U.S. selling organization by 15%. Our peripheral vascular growth focus, we increased the U.S. region growth PI Salesforce by 15%. We put more money specifically behind the supporting veterans and getting access and penetrating that category with Purewick for at-home use. In biologic drug delivery, we've supported additional resources there as well, and we put more feet on the street, more sales focus on advanced tissue regeneration. We have certain claims for tissue reconstruction and cosmetic use in Europe and in Brazil, and we've put more resources in those markets to pursue that. That was part of that $35 million investment, right? So to your point, we're taking a number of these high-growth categories that we've invested in, many of those being tuck-in acquisitions that we've done over the last several years, and we're focused on scaling those as rapidly as we can with commercial investments, and making them a higher-weighted mix of BDs portfolio, right? And so, in fact, again, in the quarter, biologic drug delivery, advanced patient monitoring, PureWIC, advanced tissue regeneration, they all grew double digits in the quarter. And then, again, we saw that supplemented with a number of other categories growing high single digits. So, we'll continue. We also have a lot of our R&D investments that have been, that we've been executing over the last several years, our organic R&D investments. They're fueling into those categories, right? And so, we've been putting more money behind next generation PureWix, which are coming, next indications and applications in tissue regeneration. We have a number of new solutions coming out in biologic drug delivery as well. And obviously, that hyper-focus on the GLP-1 market and share gains in that category. And same thing in advanced patient monitoring, right? The system that connects with Alaris is advancing really well in our pipeline. That'll be a really exciting new opportunity. So our innovation funnel, as it continues to now drive launches later this year into next year and beyond, it's going to continue. It's hyper-focused in higher growth, higher lambda spaces, as well as higher margin spaces. Our innovation portfolio has a higher gross margin profile than the current gross margin profile of the company. And that's something we've been very purposeful in driving. Higher lambda markets, higher profitable markets is what we've comprised our innovation pipeline of. At the same time, right, we're not stopping looking at tuck-in M&A. Again, we've been very clear in what our capital allocation priorities are. We've been very clear in the use of the term focus tuck-in M&A. And, again, we're active in exploring those right opportunities that fit into our model for focus, tuck, and M&A that supplement and drive revenue growth because that is a priority for us. But we also recognize the value of the stock today and what we see as undervalued and what gives the best return for shareholders with the use of our capital. But the good news is we have strong cash generation, and we think we can do that in a balance-focused way. So appreciate the question, Josh, and we'll look forward to continuing to give updates on that as we move forward.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Joanne Looch with Citibank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Good morning, and thank you for taking the question. A couple of things just looking forward. At the beginning of this, you highlighted pressures, which you had already explained previously from the Laris vaccines in China, and I'm curious how that rolls off or eases over the next couple of quarters, and I know we're way too early to be thinking about fiscal year 2017. but I'm sort of curious how you think about sort of the new BDs template for revenue and EPS growth. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Thanks, Joanne, and looking forward to hopefully seeing you soon. For the headwinds, first off, you know, our view hasn't changed on those, right? We're focused on executing with excellence through those dynamics, and they are playing out as expected this year. I think that's important that we really spent the time studying those and got those. They're playing out as we expected. I think it's for each of them. Obviously, China is going to continue to become a smaller portion of our revenue, around 4% of new BD today. And we'll probably drop below that just as the rest of the portfolio grows as we go into 27, perhaps into the threes. So I think the market dynamics in China As we've talked before, we do expect the value-based procurement will have gone through the majority of our portfolio, but I think that market continues to just have challenging dynamics. As we think about Alaris, that's a very clear path that we understand. Again, it's a very unique situation where we're actually moving at record share levels and continuing to grow, but it's obviously because of the comparison. versus that very large upgrade cycle that we went through as part of remediation. So we have 100 basis points of Alaris headwind this year. We've been very clear that that will move to 200 basis points of headwind next year, and just as we've completed the remediation this year, and then that will stabilize. So we'll have that headwind in 27, and then in 28, Alaris will no longer be a headwind, and we're very, very confident that that's exactly how that will play out. And then when it comes to vaccines, look, there's been a significant drop in vaccine demand. You see that across essentially every pharma company that's in the vaccine space and in companies that are supplying devices for their use, of which we're by far the market leader in. You know, with that drop that occurred this year, I think the question is, are you going to see another subsequent drop next year? I think many folks would comment that that's not what is expected. We'll know more about that as we start getting orders from our partners there going into next year. But at this point, our view would not be that there would be a repeat of that at that same scale next year. But we'll have more to come on that. Thank you for the question.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Shagun Singh with RBC. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Great. Thank you so much. Just a quick follow-up there on the letters. When in 2027 would you expect that transition to kind of complete? I'm just trying to figure out, you know, when do you return to kind of that mid-single-digit growth? Is it sometime during 27, or should we think about it in FY28? And then just a quick follow-up on GLP-1s. It seems like you continue to be positive on it, but, you know, just wondering if there is any negative impact you should expect, you know, given oral GLP-1s, et cetera, to your pharmaceutical business. Thank you.

Yeah. I think it's, again, a 200-base point headwind next year from Alaris. You're looking at, you know, we're basically 18 months from the end of 27, and that dynamic subsiding and then that underlying performance of the company popping back through. I think that's what we've shared and what you can expect and what we have confidence in. Yeah, if you think about GLP-1, any other comments on that, Vitor?

No, I was just going to mention that the Alaris remediation, we are driving the finish of the remediation this year, this fiscal year, and we are going to hit a run rate starting next year in 27, but the 200 basis points is driven by the comparison that we have in 26 that are higher base compared. But 27 and 28 going forward is going to be like a run rate revenue from Alaris. It's just a comparison in 26 that is

like higher 26 compared to the 27 number. Yeah. And then we'll continue to obviously grow off that 27 base for Alaris. And then essentially when you start hitting 2031, 2032, and the newest Alaris pumps that we've put out start hitting a seven, eight-year replacement cycle, right, it'll restart again kind of in that window. But it'll not have any negative impact on our growth, you know, after 27. So that will have completed. And again, 90% of the portfolio today in BD is growing about 5%. We would expect, again, if that headwind comes off, we'll see that come up, and we're very confident in that and continuing to drive that underlying business in the ways that we discussed with our portfolio with innovation and commercial execution. On GOP1s, so how we kind of think about that, our view is unchanged. Oral GOP1 is expected to be incremental and complementary. It's great to see the progress on that and how it's helping so many people around the world. Injectables expected to continue to remain a backbone of the category for the foreseeable future. And of course, a number of the next generation treatments that include protecting against muscle wasting that are coming out in that injectable format as well. GLP-1s, they remain a strong growth driver for us and a big focus. As we said, we actually announced on this call two new significant deals with large pharmaceutical companies for new novel GLP-1 molecules, and that continues to be a focus of ours is ensuring those come into our devices. We also now have, you know, over 80 GLP-1 biosimilar deals signed to be in our devices, and those are not just in our syringes. but they also could be deals that we've signed with our auto injectors or with our pens, which come at higher ASPs, several times higher ASP than when we just sell a syringe, which is really what we're selling today in GLP-1. So the value opportunity for BD in biosimilars is actually higher per dose than it is with the novel GLP-1s that exist in the market today. And again, we're really pleased with how our commercial team has been partnering with customers there to get that combination of both new novel GLP-1s that are coming to market, but also biosimilars so that we have the broad exposure to those categories. The other thing is, and we shared a new update today, I think the last update we shared was that biologics, which again, not only are GLP-1s growing strong, but biologics are growing strong, which is a larger category. The last update we shared was biologics had reached 50% of the total farm systems business unit revenue. And today we share that it's now reached 55, about 55% of our revenue. And so again, you've got that benefit of a high growth category become an increasing weight of one of our businesses. And that's a theme that obviously we're focused on across those major growth platforms. So again, we're pleased with the momentum there. Our teams are executing to support ensuring that continues as new molecules come to market and as eventually biosimilars come to market to make sure that BD is a company that has leading exposure to those trends. Thank you for the question.

Thank you. That will conclude today's question and answer session. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor back over to Tom Poland for any additional or closing remarks.

Well, thank you, Operator, and thanks, everyone, for your questions and your continued interest in BD. We look forward to connecting with everyone again next quarter.

Thank you. This does conclude this audio webcast. On behalf of BD, thank you for joining today. Please disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.