Hamilton Thorne Ltd.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Hamilton Thorne Limited fourth quarter and year-end 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 relating 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 of the quarter ended September 30, 2022, which filings are available under the company's profile at www.feeder.com. During this call, the company may reference adjusted EBITDA, constant currency, and organic growth 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 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.

Thank you very much. Good morning. Excuse me. Good morning, all, and welcome to the Hamilton Thorne Limited Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2022 Earnings Conference Call. In addition to my participation, I'd like to introduce my colleague, Francesco Fragasso, our CFO, who is also on the call with me. This call will have the following format. First, I'll provide a summary of operational and financial results for the quarter and year ended December 31 with a focus on our sales, markets, and operational performance. Francesco will follow with a more detailed discussion of our financial results for the periods, as well as a review of our financial position and liquidity. I'll then return for a few minutes to provide some information on our outlook for 2023. We'll then open the line for questions. I would again remind all participants that we do not provide financial guidance, so I would ask you to limit your questions to either historical periods or general trends in the business. I'll begin with our sales results. 2022 was another successful year for Hamilton Thorne. With well above market average organic growth of 11% for the year and the quarter, we continued to gain market shares. Reported sales of 58.2 million for the year and 16.4 for the quarter continue to be negatively impacted by exchange rate fluctuations at our European and U.K. operations. As we have discussed in prior calls, these currency fluctuations in translating financial statements into the presentation currency of U.S. dollars has a substantial impact for the year, reducing reported revenues by approximately 9% for the quarter and 7% for the year. Fortunately, these headwinds are easing somewhat. I'm also happy to report that supply chain issues continue to improve leading to fewer delays in production and shipping. Let me give some of the highlights of our performance. 2022 sales increased 11% to a record 58.2 million and 19% on a constant currency basis. Fourth quarter sales increased 5% to 16.4 million up 14% on constant currency basis. 2022 adjusted EBITDA increased 3% to a record 10.1 million and approximately 12% on a constant currency basis. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA increased 2% to 3 million. That would be approximately 11% on a constant currency basis. Organic growth, as I mentioned, was 11% for both the quarter and the 12-month period. Gross profit margins were 52.5% for the quarter and approximately 50% for the year. Net income decreased somewhat to $1.9 million for the year, but increased to just under $1 million for the quarter. Sales dropped across all of our product categories, with equipment sales leading the way with strong organic growth, augmented by the addition of IVF tech sales for the full year. We also completed a significant expansion of our product line geographic coverage and scale when we acquired Microptic at the end of November, expanding our product lines and establishing a direct sales footprint in Spain. I was particularly pleased to see our gross profit margins improving to 52.5% I mentioned for the quarter. This was primarily due to economies of scale, product mix, and increased direct sales of our own products, augmented by the addition of higher margin Microptic sales for the one month that we owned them. We also grew adjusted EBITDA to record levels even as we navigated supply chain and inflation issues and continued to invest in sales and support resources, R&D, and enhancing our operations. Our operating expenses were generally in line with expectations, with travel and trade shows increasing substantially as they returned to historical levels, as well as increased costs associated with maintaining investments in R&D and investments in sales and other personnel to support growth. We expect these numbers to level off in the future. I will now turn the call over to Francesco to provide more detailed discussion on the numbers.

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone. This is Francesco Fragassos here for Atomic Contour. I will briefly highlight the fourth quarter and the 22 financial results. David already provided an update on sales and gross profit. So I will focus on the other elements of the income statement as well as the cash flow and liquidity of the company. Operating expenses increased 16% to $7.7 million for the quarter and 20% to $26.8 million for the full year. Expenses increase was mainly due to the addition of IVF tech expenses for the full year. and increase of costs associated with investment in sales and other personnel to support growth. The return to pre-COVID level for sales and marketing activities is also a factor for expenses increase. Overall increases in operating expenses were in line with our expectations. Net interest expense in 2022 increased by 20% to $433,000, due to additional term debt incurred to finance IVF tech acquisition in July 2021 and macro optic acquisition in November 2022 and higher use of a bank line of credit to fund working capital. This is partially offset by the repayment of outstanding principle on term loans. Income tax expense decreased to 89,000 from a million point eight in 2021. This is due primarily to the reduction in income before taxes and to deferred income tax recovery of $640,000 in the year compared to a deferred income tax expense of $1.2 million in 2021. The change relates to the temporary differences between income tax value and the carrying value of assets and liabilities. The company consolidated effective tax rate in 2022 was approximately 4.4%. Net income for the year was 1.9 million, compared to 2.4 million in the prior year. This is primarily due to increased operating expenses, partially offset by a decrease in income taxes. Adjusted EBITDA, which we consider an important metric of our financial performance, increased by 2% to $3 million for the quarter, and increased 3% to $10.1 million for a year. This was primarily due to revenue and gross profit growth, offset by the negative impact of foreign currency exchange headwinds, as well as planned increases in operating expenses. As a reminder, adjusted EBITDA is a non-IFRS measure, So please see the reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net income for the quarter and for the year in our management discussion and analysis report filed today on both CEDAR and on our website. Turning now to the company cash flow and balance sheet. The company's cash balance at the end of the year was $16.7 million compared to $17.9 million at the end of 2021. a decrease of 1.3 million. The decrease in cash balances was primarily due to about 1.9 million reduction in US dollar of cash account maintained in European currencies due to significant fluctuation in exchange rate, investment in working capital to support expected growth and mitigate potential supply chain issue, and investment in product development and expanding our manufacturing capacity. The company generated cash from operation of $1.8 million in the year after having invested in inventory about $2 million. Cash used in investing activities was $10.3 million, including $7.5 million related to assets acquired with MicropTec. The remaining $2.8 million is related to the normal expenditures for ongoing investments in capitalized intangible of product development activities, and these are the improvements related to the expansion of manufacturing capacity in some of our operating business units. Cash generated in financing activity was $7.2 million in 2022. This is the result of $9.6 million proceeds relate to $8 million for term loan to fund micropic acquisition and the use of $1.6 million of the working capital line of credit. Net of payment to term loan and lease obligation. Note payables and term loans outstanding at the end of the year, total $12.6 million, equal to 1.3x our adjusted EBITDA. At the end of 2022, the company continues to have a strong liquidity position of $28.2 million, including $16.7 million in available cash and $11.5 million in unused borrowing capacity, which includes $8 million line of credit for M&A under renewal. This liquidity availability makes us well-positioned to support our acquisition program and finance the expected growth. I will now turn the call back to David to comment on Hamilton's own outlook.

Yes, thank you, Francesco. Looking forward into 2023, we continue to feel that our company is in an extremely strong position. We expect solid sales growth based on positive trends in our field, and this demand and growth in local currencies clearly have returned to pre-pandemic levels in nearly every market that we serve. Q1 sales, thus far have been very strong, and supply chain issues, as I mentioned earlier, appear to have lessened in recent months, which should again lead to organic growth that is well above the market's growth. As Francesco mentioned, based on our year-to-date trends in exchange rates, we see foreign currency headwinds in Q1 easing somewhat, actually probably between 4% and 5% of impact on reported results versus approximately 9% in Q4. And if this trend continues, it should provide some tailwinds in the second half of the year. Regarding our M&A activities, we have an extensive pipeline. We're actively working on multiple acquisition opportunities with significant cash on hand as well as our unused credit lines and debt capacity. We're well positioned to continue to execute on our acquisition program. In summary, despite the various issues that we and every company face on a day-to-day basis, we feel extremely positive about our market position, and confident 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 line for questions. Operator, could you 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. We'll pause momentarily to assemble the roster. Our first question today comes from David Martin from Bloomberg. Please go ahead with your question.

Good morning. First question is, you mentioned supply chain issues are improving. I'm wondering, does that include both the timing of getting the goods in and pricing, or is it just the timing is improving?

Yeah, great question. So, yes, I would say it's both to varying degrees. Clearly focused more on the timing in the sense that we're seeing less issues with availability of specific components or specific parts that, as we know, does tie into pricing to a certain extent because in the past when we've had to essentially scramble to fill those holes, we end up paying a little bit more. We're also seeing in certainly some very, generally some cost, certain stabilization, if not cost decreases in freight, very much stabilized, certain commodity products that are used in our, certainly things like large incubators like steel and aluminum prices have stabilized and in fact come down somewhat. So we're seeing pricing decrease improving as well. We're obviously cautious and note that this is all happening in the background of an inflationary economy. So I think overall we're not looking to, expecting to see significant cost improvements as much as unbalanced cost stabilization.

Okay, next question and then I have a related question to it. What was industry growth in 22 and fourth quarter?

So it's always hard to know exactly, but we've estimated the industry growth to be about 7% based on our best estimates and increases in what we see increases in reported cycles. Our peers who publicly traded peers who do announce or use a broader range of five to 10%. So it's, um, it's a little, it's certainly our customer company estimate, as opposed to, I would say an absolutely verifiable number.

Okay. So the related question to that is most or all of your acquisitions come with potential for synergy. Um, do you think that's reflected in your 11% organic growth rate? or are there opportunities to increase beyond that 11% organic growth?

So we've had organic growth in the past since we've been reporting it, which is well over, I believe, over five years. I believe every quarter, save perhaps one, it's been above 10%, and occasionally in the mid-teens and even the high-teens. So clearly that's a combination of growth of the field. We participate in the growth of the field. I believe our ability to out-execute in some cases and expanding our sales forces and all those kinds of things, as well as some of those synergies. So we're clearly recognizing some sales and marketing synergies that's embedded in our organic growth. we remain positive that that can continue and perhaps improve in the future. But certainly our goal is to keep our organic growth in the, you know, above 10% or above range, and again, well above industry averages. Okay.

And my last question before I jump in the queue, you mentioned the factors that improve the – the margins this quarter and adding Micro-Optic in December, they have a higher EBITDA margin than the rest of your business. Do you expect the gross margin to continue to increase or is it kind of peaked at this point?

So that's a hard one, as we know, because as we talked about earlier, we clearly are Our margins are very sensitive to a multiple number of factors. Scale is obviously one of them. So we get certain of our cost of goods and costs embedded in our cost of goods and labor are at least somewhat fixed in the short term. So scale improves it. Mix matters. So again, the extent we both mix of the products that we sell the mix of how we sell them selling direct is more profitable to us generally especially for our own products and selling through distribution so I would say that we are certainly optimistic and and and hopeful that margins and you know are going to continue to have stabilized and will continue to rise at least certainly versus our our full year margins and I'm not quite ready to go out on a limb and say that we're in 52.5% territory for the entire year.

Our next question comes from Michael Freeman from Raymond James. Please go ahead with your question.

Good morning, David and Francesco. Thanks very much for taking our questions, and congratulations on the strong year. I noticed that in the fourth quarter during the last couple of years, it's been the year's strongest quarter. And I wonder if you could speak to seasonality that occurs in this business and if this is something we should expect to see years ahead.

Yeah, that's a good question. So the seasonality in our business, maybe I'll step back and say, as you probably know, we have three – broad product and service offerings that we report, at least on a sales number, which are the precision instruments and other capital equipment that we sell, which have one kind of sales cycle and cost level. The consumables that we sell, which are used on a daily basis in the labs, and then the services to support the labs. Services and consumables tend not to have as much seasonality as capital equipment, as I'll describe in a second, though there is some, you know, that summer tends to be a little bit slower and then the last couple of weeks of the year tend to be a little bit slower because, you know, nobody's, generally speaking, people aren't starting IVF cycles in the last week of December. On the other hand, capital equipment, for a number of reasons, tend to peak in Q4, and that's certainly the case this year. As we said, Q4 was very, very strong in capital equipment, and that's a combination of a variety of factors, budgets expiring, certainly in a lot of public and private institutions, tax incentives that typically are tied to the calendar year, and just, I would say, in general, compensation programs for our people who clearly have annual goals. Hopefully our compensation programs are effective. You would expect that to have some effect. And I think the general bias towards, you know, let's finish off the year and let's get everything done that we wanted to get done. So, yeah, and I would see that continuing in the future, again, in the capital equipment part of our business. That being said, capital equipment part of our business, which is now in around mid-40s, peaked a little bit last year in part because of IVF tech, has historically been diminishing a little bit year by year versus our consumables business, which has historically gone faster.

Okay. Thank you very much for all those insights. I appreciate that. Another question here is you talk about a very active full M&A pipeline. I wonder if you could give us some details on the profile of that M&A pipeline, perhaps the value of the deals that are being contemplated either in aggregates or sort of the average size of individual deals. And also if this M&A is focused toward individuals taking on products to add to the portfolio offered by Hamilton Thorne, or more geography-weighted, seeking to access new geographies?

Okay. So I'll preface this by saying that we're very cautious about being too specific about what goes on in our acquisition program, in part because we certainly don't want to signal to the market that anything is imminent and inadvertently provides I guess in this call it would be public information, but not necessarily very cautious about not providing non-public information. In terms of, and also most of the transactions that will lead into the size that we're working on tend to be relatively smaller transactions with relatively smaller companies and entrepreneurial or founder-owned that often have a cadence that is harder to predict. So in terms of, maybe I'll start with goals and then move to size. So in terms of our goals, our acquisition strategy is built really on three premises. One is we want to increase overall the size and scale of our business. As I mentioned earlier, scale absolutely matters. I think in general as a business, we're still a little bit subscale and that there could be some meaningful, certainly useful, if not meaningful operating leverage as we grow. We are looking to add products to our portfolio because our goal is to be able to provide a full suite of the high-value products that are used in the laboratory, and while we still have some gaps in our product line, so we certainly are looking at those kinds of things, and potentially over time even look to expand the addressable market. And lastly, to at least maintain, if not improve, what I would call the quality of revenues, which gets to the geographic side because the more direct sales we have, I would say direct sales generally would have higher quality revenues and more recurring revenue we have would have more value. So we focus on those. That being said, there are certainly round numbers, about 200 potential targets of which about half we have – at least for now, disqualified for one reason or another. They may be too small or not profitable or just not interested. Our universe is big enough that we can feel confident that there are deals to be done, but not so big that we can just focus on, let's say, geographic expansion or a particular product line. We work a broad range of potential transactions, trying to keep them all moving along at a pace that makes sense, and then a Assuming things percolate to the top, we are able to make decisions about which ones really make sense for us. I should mention again in terms of size, it's in fact a true function of our available universe. Most of the companies that are in our field that are acquirable are relatively small, founder-owned businesses. So in the sense, in terms of size, we'd love to look at larger businesses, and we do. There just aren't really all that many of them. So I would expect if you think about what you might see going forward, you've seen a cadence of transactions that we've done. We would expect to do similar cadence, maybe a little bit faster if we can. We certainly now have more organizational capacity to absorb transactions. a little bit faster cadence. But I think in terms of size, scope, geography, and valuation, they'll be pretty similar to what you've seen in the past.

Okay. All right. Thank you very much. We look forward to the first quarter. Take care.

Our next question comes from Julian Hung from Stiefel. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi. This is Julian subbing in for Justin today. My first question is,

there were price increases implemented last year are there any of price increases expected for this year thank you yeah so yes we have implemented price increases for this year I would say they are a little less extreme might not be the right word but a little smaller in scope and a little more selective than they were last year so last year's price increases were a substantial increase and across the board. This year we reverted back more to some of our past practices with consumables having, for the most part, consistent price increases, relatively lower single digits to mid-ish single digits, and only certain of our capital equipment having price increases this year. And again, our goal both last year and this year um, on price increases is really to maintain, um, margin, not to not, you know, we'd love to enhance margin as obviously as you can, but you know, we, we, we, we want to be respectful of our customers and not be looking to, um, increase prices, uh, so significantly.

Okay. And, uh, on the, uh, sales and R and D side, uh, the company's been increasing its investments on these. Uh, can you, uh, provide some insights on how big your direct sales team is right now and if there's any further plans to expand it in 2023.

Yeah, so our direct sales team right now is in the range of about 20 people. It's in some ways a relatively small direct sales team considering about 60% of our sales are direct. That is, I think that's a reasonable number. We did expand, depending on how you think about it, we did expand in the end of 2022 when we bought Microptic with the direct sales team that we picked up there, which will be focused in large part upon direct sales in Spain and some adjacent countries. So obviously that expense certainly wasn't part of most of the 11 months out of the 12 months of 2022, so you'll see that increase in 2022. We're also expanding selectively in other markets where it makes sense for us because of the size of the markets and the capacity we have to increase our direct sales teams. We have no plans at this point to do what I would call a complete greens field, major expansion, opening substantial new territories. But you may see us place a person here or there to start that process. Generally speaking, as you well know, we have been trying to balance costs and profitability and reach sort of an optimum approach and not get overweighted in investing huge numbers and growing sales teams, which certainly would pay off and could pay off in growth in the long term. but could have a substantial impact on profitability in the short term.

Okay. And on the topic of expansion, with the declining population in China and Japan, can you maybe allude to the business's long-term views and goals in this region?

Yeah, so both of those markets have been and would continue to be very important to us. I think the trends of declining population is one of the major macro drivers that is increasing the need for IVF and assistive reproductive technology services. Japan clearly recognized that, and we're now just about a year into it, but about a year ago, They dramatically expanded funding for IVF, which has increased the market, as you can imagine. There's obviously a little lag for that, but that's going to – and Japan has always been a pretty good market in terms of per capita use of IVF. China, similarly, again, is looking and has at least announced as national policy that they are going to start funding IVF not 100% clear how and when it's going to be implemented, but that will clearly help improve availability and utilization in China, which is obviously a huge country and has very high numbers in gross numbers of IVF usage, but on a per capita basis is still well below you know, the average of countries that, you know, that have good funding and more, you know, have more mature markets. So we see, you know, significant growth there, and we see that as an area that, you know, we will continue to invest in.

All right. That was very helpful. Thank you so much for taking my questions today.

Thank you, Julian.

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then 1. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. Our next question is a follow-up from David Martin from Bloomberg. Please go ahead with your follow-up.

Thanks for taking the follow-up. When you go to direct sales from distributors and regions, you're capturing 100% of the sales, so that's on the upside. Are you typically reducing or increasing the number of reps selling the product, and do you see increases or decreases typically in unit sales?

All right, so I think there's two or three questions in there. So, yes, obviously one of the reasons to go direct is you pick up the margin you formerly essentially had paid to a distributor. But there's also a more subtle improvement, which is you end up with much greater customer intimacy, much greater knowledge of the underlying trends in the market, demand, growth, who are the important clinics and the KOLs. So there's an intangible element to that. direct sale that's, you know, like a lot of things that are sort of marketing-oriented, hard to measure but still extremely valuable. As you alluded to, I think that comes with cost. You know, we have to either, you know, again, if we bought a business, it comes with people who are fortunately embedded in a book of business and then we would look to increase it or we end up hiring people And the day they start, you know, as you can imagine, they're not necessarily all that productive, and then their productivity increases over time until they become perhaps, you know, overburdened, and then you hire another person, split the territories, and that's sort of the nature of, you know, how you grow a direct sales team. So, you know, and clearly we expect to see not only, you know, a pickup in, you know, the math of picking up the margin from the distributor, but we do believe that our own people should be and can be more effective in selling our products than distributors who are pulled in a variety of different directions, and we would expect to see and hope to see unit growth increase as well over time. I think that covers all of your questions.

Yeah, you did. My last question is, you mentioned several times coming out of COVID, but what about the economic uncertainty these days? Is that playing into the business of your clients or their openness to spend on capital?

Yeah, so that's a good question. I think at some point, I'm curious, maybe listen to a couple more conference calls and see if people have finally said COVID is largely in the rearview mirror and maybe we should stop talking about it. Um, but, uh, clearly it's, it's, you know, it's still sort of lingers out there as well as the, you know, the, the after effects of COVID, which may be some of the economic, uh, uncertainty and, and, you know, some of it is unrelated to that, of course. So I would say, um, we're, we're very mindful of the overall economic, um, effect, uh, you know, overall economic, um, situation, the thus far, we have not seen a, um, that we've been able to measure a reduction in demand at the end user level, which is basically at the clinic level, nor, you know, a meaningful reduction. You know, obviously certain clinics, you know, have their ups and downs, but, you know, across the board. And because of either, you know, cost, which could be, you know, inflation cost to the extent you have to borrow to pay for IVF in a, in a, private payer market with interest rates or economic uncertainty relating to, you know, recession and job losses and those kinds of things. You know, it's something that we're mindful of, but it's something we have not meaningfully seen thus far.

What about same-store sales of consumables? Are they trending up or stable or down?

So generally speaking, we're seeing more activity at the clinic level. Again, it's sort of two things. That's really a leading indicator of what's going on. So in most markets, we're certainly still seeing growth. It's, again, moderating in some markets and accelerating in other markets. So there's a lot of variety going on. But if you look at something where we have consistently provided a certain number of certain kind of product to a number of clinics, We're generally still seeing growth. Just a reminder that the majority of the world, at least in terms of the number of cycles that are being done, and certainly the majority of our business is in countries where there is pretty strong social support, meaning government pay, directly or indirectly, for IVF. So I think those areas tend to be a little less sensitive to these kind of moderate macroeconomic trends. I think, again, if there's a really significant shock to the economic system, then that's a different story. Okay. Thank you.

And, ladies and gentlemen, at this time we've reached the end of today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to David Wolf for any closing remarks.

All right. Well, thank you very much. I would like to thank everybody for their questions. I know our first quarter call tends to be a little quiet because we've preannounced our numbers for the most part, and then there's been a lot of absorption of what we're doing. But we look forward to our next conference call, which will be in May. on the first quarter, which, as I indicated, looks like it's going to be a very solid quarter for us. And I guess I would just like to reiterate, as I've done in some past calls, my thanks to our employees for the great work that they do and their dedication to our business and to our customers and to all of our business partners and the shareholders for the support they've shown our company. I'd encourage everybody who's interested to go to our website, which, again, the corporate kind of investor website is www.HamiltonThorne.ltd for more information on our products, initiatives, and certainly further investor information. So with that, I'll wrap up, and thank you very much. Thank you.

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