Hamilton Thorne Ltd.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Hamilton Thorne Limited second quarter and six-month year-to-date 2022 earnings conference call. Before turning the call over to your host today, please be reminded of our standard public company policy on forward-looking information and use of non-IFRS measures. Certain information presented or otherwise discussed on this call may contain forward-looking statements. These statements may involve but are not limited to comments related to strategies, expectations, planned operations, product announcements, scientific advances, or future actions. This information is based on current expectations that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Should one or more risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results Performance or achievements could vary materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. These factors should be considered carefully and prospective investors and other parties should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. The company assumes no obligation to update such forward-looking statements or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements unless and until required by securities laws applicable to the company. Additional information identifying risks and uncertainties is contained in filings by the company with the Canadian securities regulators, including without limitation the company's management discussion and analysis for the second quarter and six months ended June 30, 2022, which filings are available under the company's profile at www.stater.com. During this call, the company may reference adjusted EBITDA, organic growth, and constant currency as non-IFRS measures, which are used by management as measures of financial performance. Please see the sections entitled Use of Non-IFRS Measures and Results of Operations in the company's management discussion and analysis for the periods covered for further information and a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net income. Now let me turn the call over to Hamilton Thorne CEO, David Wolf. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you. Well, good morning to all and welcome to the Hamilton Thorne Limited second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. I'd like to introduce myself. I'm David Wolf, president and CEO of Hamilton Thorne. On the call with me today is Michael Bruns, our chief financial officer. This morning's call will have the following format. First, I'll provide a summary of operational and financial results for the quarter and six months into June 30th. with a focus on our sales, markets, and operational performance. Michael will follow with a more detailed discussion on our financial results for the periods, as well as a review of our financial position and liquidity. Then I'll return for a few minutes to provide some information on our outlook for the balance of 2022. We will then open up the line for questions. I'd like to remind all participants that we do not provide financial guidance, so I'd ask you to limit your questions to either historical periods or general trends in the business. I'll begin with our sales results. The second quarter was in many ways a continuation of Q1. While we reported a solid quarter with over $14.2 million in sales, we continue to see supply chain issues leading to the delay in production of certain products. More significantly, continuing negative impacts from exchange rate fluctuations at our European and UK operations reduced reported revenues for the quarter by over $1 million and reduced reported EBITDA by over $200,000. which is over 8% versus steady exchange rate in case of revenues and slightly more in the case of EBITDA. I want to give you some of the highlights from our performance. Sales, as I mentioned, increased 14% year-over-year to $14.2 million per quarter. Sales from the six-month period increased 18% to $28.3 million. Sales in constant currency increased 22% for the quarter and 23% for the six-month period, as a result of the significant currency fluctuations, which I mentioned earlier, as the dollar strengthened throughout the first half of the year. Gross profit increased 11% to $7.1 million for the quarter and increased 14% to $13.9 million for the six-month period. Debt income was $275,000 for the quarter and $831,000 for the six-month period versus debt income of $482,000 and $1.34 million in the prior year periods. Adjusted EBITDA decreased 1% to $2.43 million for the quarter and increased to 4% to $4.95 million for the six-month period. Organic growth, which as you know is an important measure for us, was 8% for both the quarter and six-month period. Cash used in operations was $438,000 for the six-month period, leaving us with total cash on hand at June 30, 2022 of $15.3 million. In his remarks, Michael will amplify on our cash use and cash position. Sales into the human clinical market, which grew significantly faster than our overall growth in Q2, continues to be our largest target market, coming in at just over 90% of our revenues. Sales into the animal ART market were also up for the three and six month period, while sales into the research and cell biology markets were down for both periods. Sales into the Americas and the EMEA, which is Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions, grew significantly for both periods, while sales into Asia were somewhat down, partially as a result of renewed regional COVID-19-related lockdowns in China. From a product perspective, our equipment business had the largest growth in both periods, largely due to the addition of the IDF Tech product lines, as well as significant growth in equipment sales in the EMEA region. Gross profit margins were up versus Q1 at 49.8% despite our production delays, which involves some of our higher margin products as the price increases that we instituted at the beginning of the year began to show impact in Q2. EBITDA margins were somewhat down this quarter at 17.1% as expenses increased due to continued planned investments and growth, as well as inflationary pressures leading to increased personnel costs and other expenses. Our operating expenses were generally in line with expectations, with increased costs, as I mentioned, associated with maintaining investments in R&D, sales and support personnel, variable costs of sales returning to historical levels, and acquisition-related expenses. I will now turn the call over to Michael to provide a more detailed discussion on the numbers.

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone. I'm Michael Bruns, the CFO of Hamilton Thorne. I will briefly highlight the second quarter and June year-to-date financial results. David has already provided an update on sales and gross profit, so I'll focus on the other elements of the income statement as well as the cash flow and liquidity of the company as of June 30th. Operating expenses increased 16% for the quarter and 22% for the six months into June 30th. Expense increases were primarily attributable to the inclusion of IVF tech expenses post-closing for the July 2021 acquisition. As well as increased expenses due to volume related increase in variable costs of sales, as well as continued investments in R&D, sales, and support resources. The continued return to normalization included increased spending for sales and support teams travel to customers and increased trade show activities of approximately $208,000 versus prior year during the COVID restrictions. Interest expense increased $31,000, or 46%, for the quarter and 38% for the six months here to date due to the increased term debt incurred in the July 2021 to finance the IDF tech acquisition, partially offset by reductions in other debt due to principal reductions plus interest earned on the company's cash balances. Income taxes decreased slightly to $226,000 for the quarter and $522,000 for the six-month period. due primarily to the reductions in income before taxes. The deferred tax expense, of course, is a non-cash offset credited to deferred tax assets. Net income for the quarter was $275,000, a decrease from net income of $482,000 in the prior year Q2. Net income for the six months here today decreased to $831,000 from $1.3 million in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA, which we consider an important metric of our financial performance, decreased by 1% to 2.43 million for the quarter, and increased 4% to 4.95 million for the six months here today, primarily due to revenue and gross profit growth, offset by the negative impacts of significant foreign currency exchange headwinds and the continued supply chain issues, as well as planned increases in operating expenses. As David noted, the negative impact of foreign exchange rate fluctuations for the euro British Pound and Danish Krona was substantial for both Q2 and year-to-date. The Euro, as everyone knows, is at a 10-year historic low versus the U.S. dollar and a similar profile for the British Pound. Consolidated sales were reduced by over 1 million, or 8%, in Q2, and the resulting EBITDA was reduced by over $200,000. In addition, continuing production delays due to supply chain issues deferred several hundred thousand dollars of sales and resulting contribution margin in Q2. As a reminder, adjusted EBITDA is a non-IFRS measure. Please see the reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net income for the quarter and the year to date in our MD&A report filed today on both CDAR and our HTL website, as well as our definitions of adjusted EBITDA, organic revenue, and constant currency. Turning now to the company's cash flow and financial position, the company's cash balance on June 30, 2022 was $15.3 million compared to $17.9 at December 31, a decrease of $2.6 million. Decrease in cash balances was primarily due to scheduled debt service and lease payments, reductions in U.S. dollars to cash accounts maintained in European currencies due to significant fluctuations in exchange rates of approximately $750,000, as well as typical working capital fluctuations, including continued investments in growing inventories, where we invested over $500,000 to address supply chain issues. The company used cash in operations of 438 in the first six months here to date, versus a substantial generation of cash in the prior year 2021, where the company successfully emerged from the 2020 COVID-19 impacted year. The use of operational cash flow is attributable to increases in receivables, and seasonal changes in inventories, prepaids, and accounts payable and accrued expenses. Inventory levels are being carefully addressed and increased over several months to address continuing supply chain issues and increased product offerings. Cash used in investing activities was $981,000 attributable to the normal expenditures for ongoing investments in capitalized intangible development costs by our R&D teams and CapEx for equipment and demo units for production and sales teams. Prior year uses of cash included the total cash payment of $846,000 in connection with the IVF tech and tech event acquisitions. Cash use in financing activities was $1.2 million for scheduled term loan and lease obligations. Total availability in our lines of credit remains at $12.5 million, consisting of the acquisition line of credit, as well as the full $4.5 million of availability in our revolving line of credit. This combined $12.5 million of bank lending availability is an important additional resource in our ability to complete acquisitions with a relatively low cost of capital. This availability, combined with our cash on hand of over $15 million, makes us well-positioned to support our operations in the coming months, including the continuation of our acquisition program and financing further growth as the business climate continues to improve. Now let me turn the call back over to David to comment on the HTL outlook.

Thank you, Michael. Looking forward into the balance of 2022, we continue to feel that we are in a strong position. We expect solid sales performance based on the positive industry trends in our field, and as demand and growth have returned to pre-pandemic levels in nearly every market that we serve. Q3 third quarter bookings are starting out very strong, and barring new supply chain issues, we expect to achieve solid double-digit organic growth. I also mentioned in last quarter's call and briefly earlier that we have implemented across-the-board price increases in early 2022. These had a modest effect on Q1 margins as there was a bit of delay in feeling the full effect of these increases as, for example, we continue to honor 2021 pricing for certain orders that were backlogged at the end of the year. These increases had a more positive effect on margins in Q2 and will continue as they layer in fully over the rest of the year. That being said, we do see the possibility of quarter-to-quarter variability in sales margins during the year as we continue to work to manage supply chain issues and inflationary pressures of the type that we believe are affecting nearly all market participants, and as we scale our manufacturing and logistics capabilities to meet demand. Finally, I should mention again that while we expect our constant currency growth to be strong throughout the year, the U.S. dollar has continued to gain strength against the euro, British pound, and Danish krona, even in the first month of Q3, and we expect this will continue to affect our reported results. Regarding our M&A activities, we have an extensive pipeline of actively working on multiple acquisition opportunities, and as Michael mentioned, with over $15 million in cash and $12.5 million in committed lines of credit availability and further debt capacity should we need it, we are well positioned to continue to execute on our acquisition program. In summary, despite the various issues that we face on a day-to-day basis, we feel good about our market position and our confidence in our team's ability to execute on our strategy of driving long-term growth and EBITDA expansion by investing in our organic growth while building scale, enhancing our product offerings, and expanding our geographic and direct sales footprint through acquisitions. We'll now open the lineup for questions. Operator, please present the first call from the queue.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star and then one using a touch-tone telephone. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. If you are using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please pick up the handset prior to pressing the numbers to ensure the best sound quality. Once again, that is star and then one to join the question queue. And our first question today comes from David Martin from Bloom Burton. Please go ahead with your question.

Yes, thanks for taking the questions. The supply chain issues that you've talked about, are you seeing any easing of those, or are they continuing as bad as they've been throughout the crisis?

Yeah, so I would say supply chain is continuing to be a serious and significant issue for us in a couple of respects one as we've talked about in the past we often find that with sometimes with very little notice that a individual component may no longer be available either because it's the times are extended or it's been discontinued as vendors try to rationalize their SKUs so we have to spend significant time and effort reengineering around that missing component or finding substitutions generally which leads to to greater expense uh secondly and probably you know more impactful than that obviously affects margins um secondly and more impactful on the revenue number is when due to that unavailability we see uh sales slip from quarter to quarter and that continues to be to be an issue we tamp down on these uh problems and solve them and then seemingly um Every month, every quarter, not quite every day, fortunately, yet another problem arises. So I hesitate to make a prediction because I think it's a global supply chain issue. But as to when we will be out of this, what often seems like firefighting mode on the supply chain side, but certainly we expect it's clearly going to continue to some degree through Q3, though somewhat unpredictable as to whether we'll have impact on results. and probably at least through the end of the year, if not early into next year.

Okay, thanks. Second question, the investments that you're making in inventory and Salesforce, do you see your Salesforce growing further than Q2? Do you see your inventories continuing to climb to address the supply chain issues?

Yeah, so I'll comment on the sales team and I'll let Michael comment on the balance sheet items. So in terms of the sales team, I think we're pretty stable. We did add people in the first half of the year. And as you know, it takes a little time for them to become fully productive. And then we expect as they get to greater productivity, then we look again at challenging people, at adding people. We may opportunistically look at you know, a small increase, but we certainly have nothing significant planned for the second half of the year. Michael, I'll let you comment on the inventory side.

David, just quickly before you go. The travel and the conferences and things like that, was that fully normalized in Q2 or was it only partial Q2 normal?

Again, I'll let Michael amplify. My understanding is it was fully normalized in Q2 and, in fact, probably maybe in some ways greater than normalized because we increased some of our trade show presence to really make a statement, in part because we're now just a much bigger company and in part because it's been so long. And I think we're seeing very much a return to normalized travel. But as we all know, travel costs have significantly increased.

All right. And David, thanks for the questions. I'll take the last one first, which is, yes, fully normalized in Q2, but we have a, had rather a large European and actually international trade show in Q3. So that normalization will continue and actually increase a bit in Q3 in our industry, showing up and being at trade shows, illustrating new products. Talking with customers and distributors is a key component of growing our sales and market shares. We're continuing to invest in that. Relative to inventories, we are continuing to, as David said, there's often little notice or no notice when a supplier says, no, we can't fulfill those POs. Each one of the operations is continuing to look at key components, which are significant in a fully assembled piece of scientific instrumentation that we specialize in. So we are investing in those key components, increasing those, and I fully expect a good, smart use of our cash investment is to continue to try to grow those inventories and try to attack some of these supply chain challenges as best we can.

Okay, thanks.

And our next question comes from Tanya Armstrong from Canaccord. Please go ahead with your question.

Good morning. We're just continuing on the line of questions on supply chain issue. I know you mentioned in your commentary that it had a

several hundred thousand dollars impact in q2 i'm wondering if you can be a little bit more specific in quantifying the impact on revenue yeah i think that's really hard um because you're now getting into all sorts of what ifs well if we had you know if if this had happened we would have shipped this and i think we don't want to um you know over over uh be over explicit about something that's hard to you know hard to measure we know that we had significant backlog in one major product line, and we certainly can measure and quantify a couple of orders that we know at the end of the quarter just didn't get out the door because the components didn't arrive until a few days later. But on the other hand, there's always that slippage from quarter to quarter. So I think it's certainly bigger than it is now, and you can attribute it to supply chain, but I'm a little reluctant to try to quantify too much of that.

Okay, that's fair. And then I think you also mentioned that there was significant growth in equipment sales in the EMEA region. I'm wondering if you can give us a little bit more color on why that happened and what products that pertain to.

So it's a little bit hard to know the why, as always, because even though it's significant for us on a kind of a worldwide demand basis, is it really meaningful? But I think it's an indication in part that some of the supply chain issues that we saw in Q1 were solved. So some of that backlog got shipped. And also just emblematic of continued demand and investment for the equipment. It's not a function of, just to be clear, it wasn't a function of, let's say, significant new lab builds or something of that sort. We did have one of those in the U.S., So I think it's more of business, maybe it's a call to business as usual or maybe business returning back to business as usual.

Okay, excellent. Thank you so much. I'll get back in the queue.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Kyle Bowser from Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead with your question.

Great, thanks. Hi, David and Michael. Thanks for all the updates here. Maybe a couple questions on the organic growth outlook. So just kind of curious, given that Hamilton can outfit a full lab and offers a complete suite of offerings, which is pretty unique from what I understand compared to a lot of your competitors, has this become more of a competitive edge in the current environment where, you know, a lot of healthcare organizations are significantly slowing their contracting process for new products and vendors. So I guess in other words, has your full suite of offerings been kind of a big asset in helping to drive new and existing business?

So I think I can say strategically, yes, it's absolutely a competitive advantage. And that's one of the reasons we have, you know, with intention continue to add to our, our product offerings so that we can be one of the very few providers in the individual countries that we serve that can really outfit significantly part of the lab or even everything that's required in the lab. And you can really count them on less than one hand, maybe less than a couple of fingers, the number of companies that can do that on a true worldwide basis. We think the trends in consolidation at the clinic level will help, um, make that even more of a competitive edge, uh, going forward as, as you say, vendors and, you know, and whether they're in the hospital environment or in the, um, privately owned clinic environment, look to our customers, I should say, look to some degree, consolidate their, their vendors and, um, have, have fewer relationships that they, that they have to manage. So we think that's an important, um, important element. And again, as more of those, particularly the for-profit consolidated chains become internationalized, the ability to at least have some offering, if not really full capability in all the markets where they might be located, will continue to be important.

Sure. No, thank you. And I guess regarding the expected strong organic growth rate going forward? I mean, how should we think about internally developed products? So I think historically, growth has been about two-thirds M&A and a third organic. I guess, how will some of these next-gen versions of internally developed products drive this, or is it more just a function of stronger relationships, pricing, white glove service, etc.? ?

So I think it's all of the above. So thank you for asking that, that, you know, we are continuing to be rolling out new, whether it's new products that we develop ourselves or new, you know, next generation of existing products. So I don't think you should expect to see any significant, a catalystic catalytic event in, you know, half staff of this year or the first half of next year relating to some, some major new product. It's really on a, on a quarterly basis. We're always rolling out new products. We could probably do maybe a, I don't know if I want to say a better job, but maybe be a little more, provide more visibility on those product releases on a quarterly basis. That's maybe something we should think about so you have a sense of that activity. But I think really what's driving our stronger organic growth is I think the two key points are the continued strong demand on a apparently a worldwide basis for IDF related products and ART related products and our ability and our approving competitive position that we through again having a complete product suite having more direct sales and support personnel and how we're positioned as I think you've used it perfectly as a white club service provider as opposed to a, you know, maybe like a pick and pack provider.

Okay, great. No, thank you. That's helpful. I'll jump back in queue.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Steven Quenville from Echelon. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. My first question, and I'm sorry if you mentioned this already, can you please tell me the constant currency service and consumables growth during the quarter? And the second question is, your days payable are down during the quarter. Is something changing with, you know, terms with your suppliers? Are you guys having to sort of pay to get access to products for them? Is there something changing the dynamics with your suppliers?

Okay, so I'll comment on the first one again, maybe one small comment on the second and move it to Michael for the amplify where we are on this on our days to pay. So in terms of constant currency growth in consumables, we don't bring out that number on a published basis. I can tell you, as I said in our remarks, that our equipment business grew much more significantly than any other part of our business, in part, again, because of the addition of the IVF tech products and in part because of strong demand. Constant currency consumables were certainly very, very strong. And, you know, again, we don't break out those numbers.

Okay, but there's nothing going on in that business. It's just most of the currency impact then, so that's fine. Okay.

Yeah, I don't think there was anything I had to do in this quarter in terms of our consumables business. And Michael, if you want to respond on the, I guess, our vendor management, our supplier management payment.

Sure. Payables are down a bit, which is obviously an investment in cash. Some of that is seasonal. We're at Q2. We typically have more paydowns and more purchases in April, May, and June. Some of our suppliers in Europe do summer shutdowns of their facilities, so we tend to have to buy in advance. Some of our prepaids have gone up. And we also have to buy enough in advance. We literally buy in May, it would be a 30-day payable, and pay in June. So some of that is seasonal. You do have a good observation that some of our vendors are actually requiring prepayments that weren't before in order to move to the top of their queue in terms of shipments. Some of our key suppliers actually have the advantage of deciding which customer they're going to actually put on a partial or full-time basis. So in cases, we've actually invested cash in prepaying to assure that we get to the top of the list in some of those instances. So largely due to some of the supply chain issues and some of our challenge in trying to address those, yes.

Yeah, and I'll just add, obviously, if we're in a position where we're trying to replace a component that we normally buy from our steady, trusted supplier and we need to go buy it in a spot market, we're often paying for that with either cash in advance, credit cards, or other sorts of things because we just need that product. And as Michael said, we want to jump to the head of the queue, especially if it's a vendor we don't work with all the time.

And maybe one last question, you know, with the, I guess, you know, the weakening euro and pound versus the U.S. dollar, is that changing any way your calculus in terms of where you're looking for M&A opportunities?

So I guess the quick answer is no, you know, to repeat, I think, a comment that I've made in the past in a different context. While we have you know, in kind of the top of the funnel, over 200 companies that we look at. A little less than half of those, you know, 70 or 80 of them are targets that we think would really make sense for us, and only a small portion of those are truly actionable at any given time because it takes two to one to complete a transaction. So while we have a big enough, you know, kind of if you think of the funnel, 200 down to maybe 70 or 80 down to, you know, somewhere in the range of less or more than a dozen, that you're, you know, that are actually money given time or talk to at least having active discussions with it's, it's a big enough funnel that you can feel confident that we can compete a deep, complete a deal, but it's not so big that we could say, Hey, we're only focused on, um, either a particular geography or a particular product set or, or, or something of that sort. That being said, obviously today, assuming we don't believe that the Euro is going to stay down forever or potentially even go further down on the longterm. it's less expensive for us to buy a business in Europe. We buy a business, convert our dollars into euros and buy it less expensively. And then as it continues to perform, you know, we take those earnings in higher value currencies. I would point out, though, we do keep a fair amount of our cash in those currencies. And that's been in order to, you know, fund those businesses. They're operating cash flows and those sorts of things. Obviously, there's tax when you repatriate cash, so we do manage that. To be clear, that's also had an impact on the cash balances from a balance sheet perspective. I think Michael, in fact, quantified that as the marks.

Great. That's it for me, guys. Thanks.

Our next question comes from David Martin from Bloomberg. Please go ahead with your question.

Yes, thanks for taking the follow-up. I'm wondering if you can give us some color on the uptake of the Gynomed cell culture media products in the US. Are you gaining business? I think you've characterized it as a slow grind before. seeing an inflection point ahead where the rate of uptake will increase. Are you getting sales only when new labs are built, or are you going into existing labs and displacing products? Is everything back to, would you say, pre-COVID levels, and this is a full launch at this point? And then finally, are any of the supply chain issues impacting the Gynamed products, or is that more just on the equipment side?

All right, so that was a three- or four-part question. So I'll try to remember all the parts. I didn't scribble them down as quickly as I could have. So in the last one on supply chain, no, we're not seeing any supply chain issues on the guy in the media, so that's the good news. And in general, we're not seeing, you know, classic supply chain issues on most of our consumables except for some plastic wear, which, again, as we've discussed in the past, is not our key. key product lines. Most of the supply chain issues that we see are on the capital equipment side, and again, it sort of adds to the lumpiness of capital equipment. In terms of progress on the media side, I'm actually very happy to say we're starting to see some significant acceleration on that. I'm not so, I would be a little hesitant to call it an inflection point. I think we'd like to see a couple more quarters of of continued growth, and I want to also be clear, it's still not in any way a material amount of revenues. It's, again, a long, slow growth, but the nice part about it is that it's kind of a cumulative growth. You capture a customer, you continue to sell them, and then as you get a new customer, ideally, as long as you do well, you sell more, and it grows over time. At some point, it could become more at least geometric. I don't know that it will ever become exponential, but we're not there yet, and I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves. So I am feeling better about it than maybe, at least from a body language perspective, than I might have been this time last year. In terms of product, we're having good success with our – products that have, I would say, are more on the more highly differentiated products, which makes sense if you think about it, that we have certain cell culture media that is really a high level of differentiation and people have been more willing to, okay, I'll try that out because I can understand how that might in fact have a significant improvement of results. And we're seeing, again, orders and reorders of that. And I think to your last question, It's clearly a combination of both some new labs but more into existing labs where we already sell other products. And as we're in there talking to them about those products, we also bring up the media line. And, again, over time through repetition, persuasion, and proof by doing things like trials and allowing them to see that it can, in fact, have a positive impact on results, we're seeing those sales grow. Again, I'm trying to be measured in my enthusiasm, but at least we're seeing some positive signs, which is good news.

Are any of the customers taking your full suite of products, or is it the vast majority just taking the occasional differentiated product?

I think most of them are, and I think that's consistent across nearly all media, even in Germany where we have the Gynomed media is very well accepted. Almost no clinics will standardize on an entire media line. They just view, again, the lab directors view one part of their role is to select best of breed products that match their particular methods in their lab. And they tend to be selective and they like a certain product for this particular purpose and like a different product for a different purpose. But the idea of at least being in there with

Starting to open the door with again the more differentiated products gives us the opportunity to add more and more over time Okay, thanks And our next question comes from Paul Stewardson from ia capital markets, please go ahead with your question Good morning, David and Michael.

Thanks. Just calling in on behalf of Chelsea. I Just wondering, can you give us a, now that you've been, you know, through this a few times, it sounds like in terms of a supplier rationalizing a niche component, what does the timeline look like for being able to re-engineer or find a new supplier for, you know, a given niche component in one of your products?

Yeah, so I hate to answer the question with maybe, you know, a question, but it's almost like which products? And it really can vary pretty significantly. So I'll give you a couple of real-life examples just so you can think about this. So we have had some issues with our steady, trusted camera supplier. It wasn't able to provide us a significant quantity of cameras. We had to find a different supplier. And it requires a few software tweaks to make sure that that camera is operates as you want because our software essentially will control the camera. So you need to, through some combination of software and firmware, make sure you have those controls, that you activate those controls. So the actual work in that case is not all that significant. But then the work really begins because now that we've changed out a, in this case let's say a camera, we have to go through as part of our quality management system, we have to document that change properly in accordance with the quality management system, completely test it to be sure that it works properly, so effectively revalidate that system, and then put it together all the rest of the documentation that's customer facing. So they can see what this, because we sell those as a system, not as generally as cameras, a standalone product. So, you know, change the instructions for you. So the manual change and certain, you know, service notes. So there's a lot of overhead that goes with that. So, you know, the word can be a couple of days and then it takes, you know, as much as a month or two before you really can get it out the door. Other cases, you might have, let's say, an actual true electrical component that's not available, you know, a resistor, a diode, maybe a chip. And, you know, then it's a little more complicated because you can't just drop in a camera which is essentially finished goods. You have to go out and find a replacement product with exactly the same technical specifications and then potentially re-engineer. Or if you can't, re-engineer some of the other products in that circuit to allow it to work. So that can take, you know, maybe a little bit longer on the engineering side, but then you end up still, in that case, it's a little bit less from a documentation perspective, customer facing because customer doesn't need different manual to, you know, if a resistor is changing, but we need to be sure that we've really, you know, thoroughly documented that change and tested it and the like. So, again, I think it can be certainly weeks at a minimum and even a month or two You know, an ideal situation, though it's more costly, is we find an alternative supplier of exactly the same component, you know, that just for whatever reason has it available where our primary supplier doesn't, or if it's a discontinued product, as you can imagine, there are all sorts of, you know, surplus and, you know, providers who have, you know, that's how they make their living, selling these kind of niche products. That will significantly cut down on the engineering side, but that usually comes at a pretty meaningful cost.

That's very helpful. Thank you, David. And just in terms of these different supply chain issues as they come up, in terms of how much you can mitigate that with inventory management, do you have a sense, is it realistic to be able to sort of get a short list of which components are more likely to have issues and really concentrate on those for inventory management? Or is this pretty much hitting across the board and you really just have to increase everything?

So a great question. And the problem is, yes, so certainly, of course, and it's part, again, back to our quality management system, part of our quality management system, we are required to both rank our suppliers and rank our various products in terms of sensitivity to a For example, some products might be just a primary supplier or even sold sourced. Obviously, that's a critical component that we would have a much greater inventory of. In other cases, and this is what makes this so challenging, is the supply chain issues are just seemingly extremely random. A classic finished good like laptop computers suddenly goes from lead time of two weeks to eight weeks. Now, again, you can probably find them somewhere in the supply chain at a higher cost, or we can go and just specify a different laptop computer for working with, say, one of our laser systems or as the control system for our incubators or whatever it is. But you just need to go through a significant amount of testing to feel confident when you're selling a medical device that there's no change. So I don't think there's... We do our best, and I think we've actually done a pretty good job on it, because we're talking about, I guess, meaningful for us, but still single-digit variations on a quarter-to-quarter basis in terms of when we have these supply chain issues. But I don't know that there's enough inventory in the world to be able to solve every problem.

Fair enough. Thanks for the call. I really appreciate it and for taking that question.

And our next question comes from Julian Hung from Stiefel GMP. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi, this is Julian speaking for Justin today. My first question is following the Supreme Court ruling on the Roe versus Wade case, have you seen any changes in consumer behavior and moving forward the effect there could be any impact on the business?

Yeah, so that's a great question. I appreciate somebody bringing that up. So I think, again, without moving into a complete constitutional analysis in the U.S. Constitution, just a reminder that the recent decision, the Dodd decision, which essentially overturned Roe v. Wade, did not in and of itself say that... at least on a federal basis, that abortion is illegal or that there is going to be more regulation of reproductive rights, what it did is said that this is a state situation. So it goes back to the states to figure out what they want to do about it. As we have seen, so I should say, by the way, we've seen no impact on this on our business and haven't heard of any specific change in consumer behavior thus far, patient behavior thus far. The reasons we are concerned about it, as does everybody, is twofold. One is a number of states put in the so-called trigger laws that said that if Roe v. Wade were ever overturned, their laws would come into effect that would impact and create restrictions on abortion. Some of those were from an IVF perspective, very carefully written and were clear that as they thought about it, that the definition of an abortion would be specifically relating to fetuses at certain ages or embryos that were implanted and others were not so carefully written and it's unclear in theory that they, at least they could be applied to embryos in the laboratory. Um, most of the, um, as I said, most of those laws were carefully written and certainly, um, any laws that we're aware of that have been proposed after the fact. So you think everybody, and again, not to get into individual States too much, but, uh, Indiana just adopted a pretty significant, um, restriction on, on abortion and explicitly, um, defined, the an embryo as being an implanted embryo. So explicitly carving, carving IVF out of it. Our view is over the longterm as this settles out through combination of the courts interpreting those laws, the legislature is getting together and putting together laws that they actually intended to use. And instead of these sort of trigger laws that were just there in case and sometimes frankly more political than actionable are thought to be more political and actionable. that it's highly, highly likely that in all states, or at least virtually all states, it will be very clear that IVF is not intended to be impacted by, again, the overturning of Roe v. Wade. That being said, we have to be cognizant that there's entirely some possibility, however remote you can, I guess you're as good a sociologist as I am in trying to figure out what that percentage is, that certain states could in fact try to restrict IVF for some reason. in which case we would then, again, it would end up likely going through the courts and either being upheld or not upheld. To me, that seems like a fairly unlikely, and therefore unlikely to really have a meaningful effect on our business. I'll add one more statement, and then I'll move on or take a follow-up question, I guess, if needed, which is, to be fair, labs today, are very unbelievably careful about embryos. They're very protective of embryos. They don't dispose of them without careful thought and consent of the patient. So in some ways, there is unlikely to be really significant change in some behavior in clinic practice, even if there were some more restrictive, you know, more restrictive protections of embryos in place. And then I guess the last possibility is, okay, some state decides to put provisions in place that just make IVF more difficult there. And then there's clearly the concept that people will travel as they do for other medical procedures. And we certainly see that all over Europe where there's pretty significant medical tourism business because of restrictions in certain countries. So that was a fairly long-winded answer. I hope it was helpful.

Yeah, it was very helpful. I just had a follow-up question on price increases. With the price increases that's been implemented so far, have you seen it similar to what your competitors have been doing? And do you expect any further price increases later in the year?

Yes. So in terms of two, maybe the answer to three things. So one is we do a, generally speaking, annual price increases for our product lines. In most cases, consumables, this has just been steady practice over the years. In most cases, those have been on the consumables and services side where we go up single digit percentages. And then on the capital equipment side, we tend to keep the price relatively stable. And then when a new generation of existing product is introduced, that's when we think about price increases and implementing price increases. This year, again, specifically because of supply chain issues, including increased costs of commodities and all the other things that we've been talking about, We increased our consumables fairly consistently with what we've done in the past, maybe a little bit more, but not wildly more, and did significant increases on our capital equipment. Good news is we didn't see, you know, nobody likes prices going up, but we didn't see huge pushback from that, and I think that really gets to your second point, or maybe it was your third, but, you know, which is, our price increases were very consistent with what others are doing in our field and what other people are experiencing. So I don't think we were out of the ordinary at all. With some modest exceptions, we are not planning to do a second across-the-board price increase this year. That certainly will be applied during 2022, but certainly we'll do one in 2021. late 2022 to apply for 2023. Okay.

Thank you very much for taking my question today.

Thank you. And once again, if you would like to join the question queue, please press star and then 1. To withdraw yourself from the queue, you may press star and 2. We'll pause momentarily to assemble any additional questions. And ladies and gentlemen, in showing no additional questions, I'd like to conclude today's question and answer session and turn the floor back over to David for any closing remarks.

Okay, thank you very much. And I'd like to reiterate my thanks, as I've done in the last few quarters, to all of our stakeholders, our employees, for example, who've just shown remarkable resiliency and dedication to our business, to our customers and other business partners who continue to work with us and grow our business, and to our shareholders and the analysts who are on this call for the thoughtful questions and the support you've shown to, and they have shown to our business. So with that, I would like to encourage you to go to our website, which is www.HamiltonThorn.ltd for more information on our company, products, initiatives, further investor information, and As I said, that's the end of this call, and we'll certainly see you in the November timeframe with our Q3 results.

And, ladies and gentlemen, with that, we'll conclude today's conference call and presentation. We do thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.