speaker
Conference Operator
Operator

Welcome to the Royal Philips First Quarter 2021 Results Conference Call on Monday, April 26, 2021. During the call, hosted by Mr. Vance Van Houten, CEO, and Mr. Abhijit Bhattacharya, CFO, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the introduction, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If any participant has difficulty hearing the conference at any time, Please press the star followed by the zero on your telephone for operator assistance. Please note that this call will be recorded and a replay will be available on the Investor Relations website of Royal Philips. I will now hand the conference over to Mr. Leandro Mazzoni, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

speaker
Leandro Mazzoni
Head of Investor Relations, Royal Philips

Good morning and welcome to Philips' first quarter 2021 results conference call. Joining me today are our CEO Franz Van Houten and our CFO Abhijit Bhattacharya. Franz and Abhijit will take you through our strategic and financial highlights for the period and after that we will take your questions. Our press release and the related information slide deck were published at 7 a.m. CET this morning. Both are available on our investor relations website. A full transcript of this call will also be made available today on the website. Before we start, I would like to remind you of a few things. As mentioned in the press release, adjusted EBITDA is defined as income from operations excluding amortization of acquired intangible assets, impairment of goodwill and other intangible assets, restructuring charges, acquisition-related costs, and significant one-off items. Comparable growth for sales and orders are adjusted for currency and portfolio changes. As of this quarter, the domestic appliances business is reported as discontinued operations. Sales and results from this business are no longer included in the results of continuing operations, and relevant assets and liabilities are reported under assets and liabilities held for sale. The restated statements of income for 2019 and 2020 reflecting these changes are available on our investor relations website. Finally, all forward-looking projections exclude the domestic finances business. Over to you, Frans.

speaker
Frans van Houten
Chief Executive Officer, Royal Philips

Hello everyone and thank you for joining us today. I hope that you and your families are keeping safe and well. The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over and our teams remain focused on delivering against our triple duty of care, meeting customer needs, safeguarding the health and safety of our employees and ensuring business continuity. Despite the ongoing impact of COVID-19, our performance gained momentum with a strong 9% comparable sales growth and an adjusted EBITDA margin increase of almost 400 basis points in the first quarter. Diagnosis and treatment sales grew 9%, our connected care businesses delivered 7% comparable sales increase, and sales for personal health grew a very strong 17%. We are also encouraged by the strong 11% comparable order intake growth for the diagnosis and treatment businesses with all major markets contributing, driven by the sequential improvement of electives and hospital CAPEX and the very positive customer response to our innovative products and solutions. Comparable order intake for the connected care businesses decreased as anticipated following the exceptional growth in Q1 2020 driven by the demand for hospital ventilators and patient monitors. Looking ahead, while we continue to see uncertainty related to the impact of COVID, we see increased demand in the diagnosis and treatment and personal health businesses. We are raising our growth guidance given this momentum and we now plan to deliver low to mid single digit comparable sales growth in 2021 Compared to our earlier plan of low single digit growth, still with an adjusted EBITDA margin improvement of 60 to 80 basis points. I would like to provide some color on some of our initiatives to respond to the needs of today's hospital leaders across the globe as they plan for the future. In the quarter, we expanded our range of remote patient management solutions with the launch of the medical tablet, A portable monitoring kit designed to help clinicians remotely monitor large patient populations during emergency situations. This new offering, which is available in North America, Europe, and Japan, provides remote access to patient data to improve workflows and better manage increased patient volumes. Highlighting our strengths in smart diagnostic systems, we expanded the incisive computer tomography platform with the launch of Precise Suite, an AI-enabled solution that delivers smart radiology workflows from image acquisition to reporting with AI-enabled image reconstruction, automated patient positioning, motion-free cardiac image capture, and real-time interventional guidance to drive precision in dose, speed, and image quality. Precise Suite is the latest enhancement of the incisive CT platform which already includes a newly designed patient table that accommodates bariatric patients, the tube for life guarantee, Philips Performance Bridge process improvement services, and our dose-wise portal radiation exposure tracking solution. All of this makes the incisive CT unique in the industry. We also further strengthened the image-guided therapy portfolio with our Smart CT application for Azurion. which provides interventionists with CT-like 3D images to enhance procedural outcomes and it fits seamlessly into the existing workflows. And our Clarify augmented reality surgical navigation, an industry-first solution to advance minimally invasive spine operations in the hybrid operating room. Very important, we continue to drive market share in our core businesses Through deeper, more comprehensive customer partnerships. During the first quarter, we signed several new long-term strategic partnerships with hospitals in the United States, Europe, and Asia, helping them achieve their clinical and operational goals. For example, we signed a five-year agreement with the Spanish group VITAS to provide diagnostic imaging systems combined with advanced informatics and image-guided therapy solutions to enhance patient care. The agreement also includes collaboration in technological innovation projects and joint scientific research. In personal health, we continue to invest in innovation and new product introductions. In the first quarter, we introduced the Lumea IPL 9000 series with Sense IQ technology for personalized hair removal, which is available through a try-and-buy subscription model in several countries. We also produced the 100 millionth OneBlade blade, just 5 years after OneBlade's original launch. The Philips OneBlade has disrupted shaving markets worldwide, creating a new category for shaving, trimming and edging. In line with our plans, we signed an agreement to sell the domestic appliances business to global investment firm Hillhouse Capital for a total deal value of €4.4 billion. This comprises of an enterprise value of around 3.7 billion and an exclusive brand license agreement with an estimated net present value of around 0.7 billion for the first 15 year period. We expect to receive cash proceeds after tax and transaction related cost of 3 billion euro in the third quarter. We are very pleased that we have found a good home for this business and a transaction is expected to be completed in the third quarter, subject to the customary conditions. In Q1, we also took important steps in our strategy to strengthen our leadership in connected care solutions with the completion of the acquisitions of biotelemetry and capsule technologies. The combination of our leading patient monitoring position in the hospital With BioTelemetry's leading cardiac diagnostics and monitoring services outside of the hospital, make us a global leader in patient care management solutions with potential for further expansion. And with Capsule, we have a unique medical device information platform that connects almost all medical devices and EMRs in hospitals through a vendor-neutral system that transforms streaming clinical data into actionable information. These acquisitions will further broaden, enrich and scale Philips patient care management solution as well as monitoring and software as a service offering. Biotelemetry and capsule will be accretive to sales growth and adjusted EBITDA margin in 2021 and will be reported within our connected care informatics business in the connected care segment. On regulatory matters, regretfully, we have identified possible risks related to the sound abatement foam used in certain sleep and respiratory care devices currently in use and this is primarily related to the first generation DreamStation product family. We are in the process of engaging with the relevant regulatory agencies regarding this matter and initiating appropriate actions to mitigate these possible risks. Given the estimated scope of the intended precautionary actions on the installed base, we have taken a provision of 250 million euro. I would like to flag that our latest CPAP platform, the DreamStation 2, is not affected, as it is of a different design. Let me now update you on some changes in our management team. Earlier this quarter, we announced that Rob Cashala Currently strategic business development leader and formerly in charge of our diagnosis and treatment segment, stepped down from the executive committee, effective from April 1. This in relation to his planned retirement from the company by the end of this year. Rob will continue to play a role in certain strategic business development projects on a part-time basis until the end of 2021. We also announced that Ches Partovi joined Philips Executive Committee, effective from March 22nd to succeed Jeroen Tas as Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer, effective from July 1. Ches brings deep healthcare and informatics experience to Philips and most recently served as the Global Head of Business Development for Healthcare, Life Sciences and Medical Devices at Amazon Web Services. In that role, he was responsible for the business go-to-market strategy, charting the path for customer cloud transformation and the adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Jeroen Tas, who joined Philips in 2011 and became Chief Innovation Strategy Officer in 2017, has made a personal decision to assume a part-time position within Philips and we'll focus on the continuation of several strategic business development projects until the end of 2022. I want to thank Jeroen and Rob very much for their very valuable contributions to the transformation of Philips. Jeroen played a very important role in inspiring and executing our innovation strategy for digital health and healthcare informatics While Rob has successfully shaped our diagnosis and treatment segment over the last several years, including the addition of IGT devices to our portfolio. To round off, let me reiterate that I am pleased with the progress that we are making on our strategic and performance roadmap. Our journey to health technology leadership continues, and we have a clear strategy to help transform care along the health continuum Combining smart systems, devices, informatics, data and services. And I am convinced that the growth and margin profile of Philips remains very well underpinned. And with that, I'll turn the call to Abhijit.

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