Showing posts with label Corporation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Corporation. Show all posts

Saturday, 21 September 2013

Emerging Markets: The Next Leg Up For Boston Scientific Corporation

New FDA approval

Boston Scientific Corporation (BSX) is continuing to expand its range of electrophysiology (EP) products, with U.S. Food and Drug Agency approval, for the IntellaTip MiFi™ XP catheter and 510(k) clearance of the Zurpaz™ 8.5F steerable sheath. Catheter ablation is a electrophysiological procedure in which localized electrical energy is delivered to the heart tissue with the objective of restoring continuous normal heart rhythm and has now become the first line of treatment for patients who suffer from certain kinds of irregular heartbeats. The company's next generation of EP tools is redefining ablation technology.

The IntellaTip MiFi XP is a first of its kind high resolution catheter that provides information necessary to pinpoint locations for ablation, a key element for success. It will be used for ablation of atrial flutter, an arrhythmia condition that affects approximately one million patients in the U.S. The Zurpaz 8.5F steerable sheath provides access to the heart and facilitates the placement of catheters for a variety of procedures, including treatment of atrial flutter, atrial fibrillation, and ventricular tachycardia. It will help clinicians to deliver catheters consistently and safely when undertaking electrophysiological procedures.

Second quarter finances

Boston Scientific reported an adjusted EPS of $0.12 per share for the quarter, compared to $0.11 in the previous year. After excluding amortized expense adjustments, the adjusted EPS works out to $0.18 per share, compared to $0.17 per share in the previous year and the consensus analysts' estimates of $0.16 per share. Revenues at $1.809 billion declined 1% year on year but were ahead of the consensus analysts' estimate of $1.779 billion. Performance in the BRIC countries was impressive with sales growth of 29%. Gross margin increased by 2.32% YoY to 70.7%, and the adjusted operating margin grew by 58 basis points to 19.2%.

The company derives its maximum revenues from the cardiovascular segment (comprising of Interventional Cardiology and Peripheral Interventions). Revenues in these sub-categories were $520 million (down 3% year over year at CER), and $199 million (up 5% at CER) during the quarter. Within the Interventional Cardiology segment, sales of stent systems at $304 million were down 10.6% because of a 9.7% decline in sales of drug-eluting stents and a 22.7% decline in bare-metal stents. The second largest contributor to revenues, Rhythm Management [comprising of Cardiac Rhythm Management (CRM) and Electrophysiology], also had a disappointing performance with a 2% decline in revenues to $511 million. It is clear that new product launches in these segments have not been able to offset the current challenges. The company ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $530 million compared to $207 million at the end of the fiscal year 2012 and long term debt of $4.25 billion. Cash flow from continuing operations amounted to $396 million.

For the third quarter, the company expects to record an adjusted EPS of 14-16 cents per share on revenues of $1.700-$1.860 billion against the consensus analysts' estimates for EPS of 16 cents per share and revenues of $1.715 billion. For the full year 2013, the company increased its revenue guidance to the range of $7.050 to $7.170 billion with an adjusted EPS in the range of $0.67-$0.71 per share compared to the analysts' consensus estimate for revenues of $7.052 billion and EPS of $0.67 per share.

Boston Scientific and its peers

Boston Scientifics' long-term growth rate was only 8.4%, which is lower than the industry average of 10.6%. It also has a much higher forward earnings than its peers, such as St. Jude Medical (STJ) and Medtronic (MDT). The market values Boston Scientific at over 22 times the forward earnings compared to just over 13 times for St. Jude Medical and around 13.5 for Medtronic. For the full year 2013, St. Jude Medical expects to earn around $3.70 to $3.73 per share and, on a constant currency basis, the adjusted EPS could grow by 11%-12% and the dividend yield is 1.90%. Medtronic is seeking growth from emerging markets and is focusing on cost reduction and improvement in operating efficiency. It offers a dividend yield of around 2%.

The investment thesis

Despite looking relatively expensive, there are reasons why Boston Scientific stock is worth buying. The defibrillator and stent markets in the United States continue to be difficult and make up around 35% of the company's sales. However, despite all the problems, the company has posted solid results for the second quarter, beating expectations on both top line and bottom line. Based on these results, the company has raised guidance for both 2013 revenues and EPS. It has a good pipeline of products under development to drive future growth, and the focus on emerging markets is encouraging. It is also investing $150 million over the next five years in China to establish a local manufacturing facility. The rating on this stock would definitely be a "Buy".

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. (More...)

Business relationship disclosure: The article has been written by an Analyst at ResearchCows, ResearchCows is not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). ResearchCows has no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. Any analysis presented herein is illustrative in nature, limited in scope, based on an incomplete set of information, and has limitations to its accuracy. The author recommends that potential and existing investors conduct thorough investment research of their own, including detailed review of the company's SEC filings, and consult a qualified investment advisor. The information upon which this material is based was obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but has not been independently verified. Therefore, the author cannot guarantee its accuracy. Any opinions or estimates constitute the author's best judgment as of the date of publication, and are subject to change without notice.


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National Healthcare Corporation: Undervalued Small-Cap With Growing Dividends And Buybacks

National Healthcare Corporation (NHC) is one of the leading providers of senior health care services. With more than 40 years of history and experience, NHC provides health care services to patients in a variety of settings including 68 skilled nursing centers with 8,803 beds in nine states, managed care specialty units, sub-acute care units, Alzheimer's care units, homecare programs, assisted living centers, hospices and independent living centers. The company also provides supporting services such as insurance, management and accounting.

Investment thesis

The majority of the facilities are leased from National Healthcare Investors REIT (NHI), in which NHC owns a minority stake. Approximately 67% of net patient revenues are derived from Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs. Although private pay and Medicare revenue accounted for 75% of sales, NHC is still strongly influenced by the impact of reimbursements based on healthcare-related legislation, including the Obamacare, which is getting back into spotlight due to being a part of the ongoing debt-ceiling negotiation.

NHC's services will be needed more than ever due to an aging population, with a growing pool of elderly citizens and the high priority of healthcare services on their shopping list, as well as a necessity for the U.S. to somehow manage health care services, whether through setting a framework for a private system or a state-managed system. The nature of health care services virtually ensures that there will be demand for NHC's services 50 or even 100 years from now, whether the system will be financed by individuals directly or through the government agencies.

In the long-run, the government will have to decrease health care spending to help reduce the budget deficit. Hence, the government-controlled reimbursements will copy the inflation at best, and probably lag the inflation rate. On the other hand, this business model of reimbursements at least loosely following the way of inflation ensure that NHC's revenues will at least loosely copy their input prices. The model is similar to utility companies.

I am confident that NHC will be able to use the positive side of the relatively stable and predictable revenue from government-controlled reimbursements which give it partial cost inflation protection and low stock volatility, and accompany this safe, core sales with a privately funded stream, where NHC has a freedom of pricing, documented by YoY comparable revenue increases that surpass the inflation rate (3% YoY increase) and are poised to grow in line with the average inflation in the worst case and faster than inflation on average. The share of this private-source revenue has been steadily increasing and the company keeps being focused on this lucrative area. NHC has great potential to grow the privately funded portion of its revenues.

National Healthcare is a great long-term investment for dividend growth investors with a 10-year, 10.5% annual dividend increase rate, including the challenging 2008-2009 period, which the company weathered extremely well compared to other businesses, and even excluding a one-time extra dividend of $1 per share paid at the end of 2012. The company's common stock pays a regular dividend currently yielding 2.66% and NHC's preferred stock pays an even higher regular dividend with a current 5.5% annual yield and trades 8.5% below its liquidation preference price.

Valuation

From a valuation standpoint, National Healthcare is currently ~25% undervalued and my fair value estimate is approximately $60.90 per share. The downside risk is limited by a strong balance sheet with high tangible book value and the worst-case liquidation scenario would result in a ~33% downside. The steady dividend streams help decrease stock price volatility. The company currently buys back its stock at a 3.5% annual rate which is faster than my long-term 1.5% estimate. The company is authorized to repurchase virtually all of its shares outstanding and if the current faster repurchase rate continues in line with the company's proven past commitment to continuously deliver value to stockholders, the stock offers further 20% upside based on current levels of repurchases.

My valuation is based on the stock price of $48 and 2013 full year EPS estimate of $3.58 that is derived from the real results for the first two quarters, the current YoY sales and EPS trends and the company's outlook for the rest of 2013. I further estimate a very conservative 2% sales growth and 6% EPS growth for the next ten years, followed by flat results.

If repurchases continue at current 3.5% rate

source: author's calculations

Where will the EPS growth come from?

The sales growth will be delivered via slow but steady expansion of the number of beds under management and utilization of facilities that are currently under construction (1% annual sales growth contribution), as well as from sales increased due to an increasing share of private-pay patient services with prices growing faster than inflation (additional 1% annually).

Based on my estimated EPS waterfall, the 6% EPS will be delivered by the basic top line growth described above (2% annually), from improved service mix with higher share of high-margin, private-pay services (1%), as well as from ongoing cost optimization measures (1%). NHC's EPS will be boosted by 1.5% annually from smart uses of its free cash from operations to continue purchasing previously rented real estate at a roughly 14% ROI (purchase price at 7 times the annual rent it used to pay). The final EPS boost of 2% per year will come from a continuous share repurchase program that is under way. Given the company's long and stable history of catering to investors as evidenced below, there is high probability that the share buybacks will continue. The 7.5% gross annual EPS growth will be eroded by a 1.5% fall due to margin pressure and higher leasing costs due to rising interest rates, for a final net EPS growth of 6% per year.

National Healthcare offers 25% to 45% upside potential, growing dividends and strong buybacks

In conclusion of my thesis, the stock is undervalued and offers at least a 25% to 45% upside with slow but steady and resilient growth as well as regular dividend streams and share buybacks.

Based on preference and needs for income or capital appreciation, investors can choose between the common stock that offers unlimited long-term stock price upside potential plus a 2.66% dividend yield and a growing dividend, or a preferred stock with a much higher current yield of 5.66%, but a stagnant dividend which will not increase in the future due to the bond-like nature of this instrument, and a stock price upside potential limited to 8% due to the risk of the stock being redeemed by the company at liquidation preference price. My preference is to simply buy the common stock due to unlimited long-term stock upside potential and dividend growth.

For elderly investors, buying NHC stock can serve not only as a sound long-term defensive stock investment but also as one of the options to hedge part of their future rising health care costs by owning a company that will benefit if healthcare costs rise.

Significance of recent events for the company's strategy

As the reimbursement system is moving from a fee-for-service toward a bundled payment system for a defined medical treatment state or period and as the private payment segment provides better growth opportunities than the government-reimbursement segments, the company has been undertaking numerous steps to increase future revenues and profitability. NHC increased its stake in Caris Healthcare, L.P., a hospice company, from 64.9% to 75.1% in 2012. Recently, Caris has been expanding in its line of business through acquisitions.

The company also announced an alliance with TriStar Health to focus on hospital re-admissions and integrated intervention strategies. NHC also initiated construction of two skilled nursing facility projects with a total 140-bed capacity. In December, the company also announced an agreement to purchase six skilled health care centers from National Health Investors ("NHI"). The centers have been leased by NHC since 1991. Moreover, NHC also announced the extension of its master lease with NHI through December 31, 2026, for 38 skilled health care centers and three independent living centers. Furthermore, the company announced a settlement of disputes with two non-profit organizations regarding the fairness of prices it paid for purchases and leases of properties from the two non-profits.

Excellent financial management and catering to investors

NHC shows a number of activities that prove excellent cash and capital management, as well as long-term devotion to creating shareholder value. NHC has had virtually zero long-term debt in the past five years. As it generates cash from operations, it deploys it to pay regular and increasing dividends to common and preferred shareholders, and recently NHC even approved a stock buyback program. In the second quarter of 2013, the company repurchased common stock worth $100M, translating to a roughly 3.5% annualized percentage of common stock outstanding. Under the ongoing program enacted in 2012, NHC is allowed to repurchase virtually the entire amount of shares outstanding, and I expect the repurchases to continue.

Moreover, the company has switched six additional health care centers from renting to owning by purchasing them from NHI, the REIT from which it leases most of its properties under long-term contracts. The purchase price of $21M was only seven times the annual master lease payment of $3M, which means NHC has bought the properties at a very lucrative price at a roughly 14% annual return on investment. The company should definitely continue using its future free cash to purchase additional facilities instead of renting them, and I am convinced NHC will do so, as the company has options to purchase most of its leased properties in the future. The company has also started building two new health centers. All these activities are beneficial for the shareholders, as they properly manage cash and assets and continue increasing shareholder value. Some great news is that the company can keep increasing all these activities in the future if it generates cash.

Also, did I mention that the management compensation as a percentage of net income generated to shareholders is one of the lowest I have seen?

Financial performance and future outlook

As mentioned above, and as evident from a long-term annual overview of the most important income statements and balance sheet figures, the company has been a conservative and steady grower of earnings and dividends.

(click to enlarge)

source: company SEC filings

The most recent 10Q SEC filing for the second quarter of 2013 reveals that net income for the second quarter was $0.88 per common share, a 7% YoY increase. Revenues were $192M, a 2.3% YoY increase despite the automatic 2% cuts known as "sequestration" that began on April 1, 2013, for Medicare providers. Operating results for the second quarter of 2013, compared to the same quarter last year, were favorably impacted by an improved patient mix, as well as the continued effort to implement cost-saving measures to reduce expenses in NHC's skilled nursing facilities.

Medicare and managed care per diem rates (per day rates) at NHC's owned and leased skilled nursing facilities decreased 0.8% and 3.7%, respectively, compared to the second quarter a year ago. Medicaid and private pay per diem rates at NHC's owned and leased skilled nursing facilities increased 3.0% and 3.3%, respectively, compared to the quarter a year ago.

(click to enlarge)

To sum up the financial results, NHC is showing continued resiliency by managing to grow top line and bottom line YoY despite sequestration cuts, tough general economic environment and one-time legal settlement costs. The government-controlled revenue is falling, whereas the private pay sales are rising above inflation rates on a per diem and per patient day. Private pay is where the future lies for the company, as can be evidenced from the future growth activities that company has in the pipeline.

Growth activities

The company plans to undertake many activities to boost revenues from the private pay segment. In addition to past activities already mentioned, the company expects to begin construction on a 92-bed skilled nursing facility. NHC also entered into a joint venture to build and operate an 85-unit assisted living community. The property is currently under construction and plans to open in the first quarter of 2014. NHC also entered into a joint venture to develop and operate a 14-bed psychiatric hospital focusing on geriatric care, projected to open in 2014.

Moreover, during the rest of 2013 and in 2014, the company will apply for Certificates of Need for additional beds in its core markets and also evaluate the feasibility of expansion into new markets by building private-pay health care centers or by the purchase of existing health care centers. NHC is also evaluating the feasibility of construction of new assisted living facilities in select markets.

Risks

Two-thirds of NHC's revenues are earned under government-controlled programs and are subject to review by the Medicare and Medicaid intermediaries. In the long-run, the government will try to reduce spending to balance the budget, resulting in reimbursements and allowances most likely rising at a slower rate than average inflation.

Conclusion

National Healthcare stock is undervalued and offers at least 25% upside potential under my very conservative growth estimates and 45% upside if stock repurchases continue at the current rate. NHC is an excellent long-term buy-and-hold investment with growing dividends and an attractive and more than sustainable 2.66% dividend yield.

For investors heavily oriented on income, the NHC also offers a preferred stock (trading under the ticker NYSE: NHC.PRA), currently yielding 5.5%, but offering no dividend increase and only a limited 8% long-term preferred stock upside potential.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. (More...)


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Monday, 2 September 2013

Emerging Markets: The Next Leg Up For Boston Scientific Corporation

New FDA approval

Boston Scientific Corporation (BSX) is continuing to expand its range of electrophysiology (EP) products, with U.S. Food and Drug Agency approval, for the IntellaTip MiFi™ XP catheter and 510(k) clearance of the Zurpaz™ 8.5F steerable sheath. Catheter ablation is a electrophysiological procedure in which localized electrical energy is delivered to the heart tissue with the objective of restoring continuous normal heart rhythm and has now become the first line of treatment for patients who suffer from certain kinds of irregular heartbeats. The company's next generation of EP tools is redefining ablation technology.

The IntellaTip MiFi XP is a first of its kind high resolution catheter that provides information necessary to pinpoint locations for ablation, a key element for success. It will be used for ablation of atrial flutter, an arrhythmia condition that affects approximately one million patients in the U.S. The Zurpaz 8.5F steerable sheath provides access to the heart and facilitates the placement of catheters for a variety of procedures, including treatment of atrial flutter, atrial fibrillation, and ventricular tachycardia. It will help clinicians to deliver catheters consistently and safely when undertaking electrophysiological procedures.

Second quarter finances

Boston Scientific reported an adjusted EPS of $0.12 per share for the quarter, compared to $0.11 in the previous year. After excluding amortized expense adjustments, the adjusted EPS works out to $0.18 per share, compared to $0.17 per share in the previous year and the consensus analysts' estimates of $0.16 per share. Revenues at $1.809 billion declined 1% year on year but were ahead of the consensus analysts' estimate of $1.779 billion. Performance in the BRIC countries was impressive with sales growth of 29%. Gross margin increased by 2.32% YoY to 70.7%, and the adjusted operating margin grew by 58 basis points to 19.2%.

The company derives its maximum revenues from the cardiovascular segment (comprising of Interventional Cardiology and Peripheral Interventions). Revenues in these sub-categories were $520 million (down 3% year over year at CER), and $199 million (up 5% at CER) during the quarter. Within the Interventional Cardiology segment, sales of stent systems at $304 million were down 10.6% because of a 9.7% decline in sales of drug-eluting stents and a 22.7% decline in bare-metal stents. The second largest contributor to revenues, Rhythm Management [comprising of Cardiac Rhythm Management (CRM) and Electrophysiology], also had a disappointing performance with a 2% decline in revenues to $511 million. It is clear that new product launches in these segments have not been able to offset the current challenges. The company ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $530 million compared to $207 million at the end of the fiscal year 2012 and long term debt of $4.25 billion. Cash flow from continuing operations amounted to $396 million.

For the third quarter, the company expects to record an adjusted EPS of 14-16 cents per share on revenues of $1.700-$1.860 billion against the consensus analysts' estimates for EPS of 16 cents per share and revenues of $1.715 billion. For the full year 2013, the company increased its revenue guidance to the range of $7.050 to $7.170 billion with an adjusted EPS in the range of $0.67-$0.71 per share compared to the analysts' consensus estimate for revenues of $7.052 billion and EPS of $0.67 per share.

Boston Scientific and its peers

Boston Scientifics' long-term growth rate was only 8.4%, which is lower than the industry average of 10.6%. It also has a much higher forward earnings than its peers, such as St. Jude Medical (STJ) and Medtronic (MDT). The market values Boston Scientific at over 22 times the forward earnings compared to just over 13 times for St. Jude Medical and around 13.5 for Medtronic. For the full year 2013, St. Jude Medical expects to earn around $3.70 to $3.73 per share and, on a constant currency basis, the adjusted EPS could grow by 11%-12% and the dividend yield is 1.90%. Medtronic is seeking growth from emerging markets and is focusing on cost reduction and improvement in operating efficiency. It offers a dividend yield of around 2%.

The investment thesis

Despite looking relatively expensive, there are reasons why Boston Scientific stock is worth buying. The defibrillator and stent markets in the United States continue to be difficult and make up around 35% of the company's sales. However, despite all the problems, the company has posted solid results for the second quarter, beating expectations on both top line and bottom line. Based on these results, the company has raised guidance for both 2013 revenues and EPS. It has a good pipeline of products under development to drive future growth, and the focus on emerging markets is encouraging. It is also investing $150 million over the next five years in China to establish a local manufacturing facility. The rating on this stock would definitely be a "Buy".

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. (More...)

Business relationship disclosure: The article has been written by an Analyst at ResearchCows, ResearchCows is not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). ResearchCows has no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. Any analysis presented herein is illustrative in nature, limited in scope, based on an incomplete set of information, and has limitations to its accuracy. The author recommends that potential and existing investors conduct thorough investment research of their own, including detailed review of the company's SEC filings, and consult a qualified investment advisor. The information upon which this material is based was obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but has not been independently verified. Therefore, the author cannot guarantee its accuracy. Any opinions or estimates constitute the author's best judgment as of the date of publication, and are subject to change without notice.


View the original article here

Thursday, 25 July 2013

The Spectranetics Corporation (SPNC) CEO Discusses Q2 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Executives

Lynn Pieper - Westwicke Partners, IR

Scott Drake - President and CEO

Guy Childs - Chief Financial Officer

Analysts

Jason Mills - Canaccord Genuity

Rick Wise - Stifel

Amit Bhalla - Citi

Brooks West - Piper Jaffray

Charles Haff - Craig-Hallum Capital

Suraj Kalia - Northland Securities

Larry Haimovitch - HMTC

Charley Jones - Barrington

The Spectranetics Corporation (SPNC) Q2 2013 Results Earnings Call July 24, 2013 11:00 AM ET

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to the Spectranetics Second Quarter Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. (Operator Instructions)

As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I’d now like to introduce your host for today’s conference, Lynn Pieper. Ma’am, you may begin.

Lynn Pieper

Thank you, [Sharda]. This is Lynn Pieper with Westwicke Partners. And thank you for participating in today’s Spectranetics second quarter call. Joining me from Spectranetics is President and Chief Executive Officer, Scott Drake; and Chief Financial Officer, Guy Childs.

Earlier today, Spectranetics released financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2013. If you’ve not received this news release or if you’d like to be added to the company’s distribution list, please call Westwicke Partners at 415-202-5678.

Before we begin, I’d like to remind you, management will be making statements during this call that includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws.

These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to be materially different from those anticipated. For a list and description of those risks and uncertainties, please see the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Spectranetics disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any financial projections or forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Furthermore, this conference call contains time sensitive information and is accurate only as of the date of the live broadcast, July 24, 2013.

I’ll now turn the call over to Scott Drake.

Scott Drake

Thanks, Lynn. Good morning everyone. And thank you for joining us on our Q2 call. This quarter we posted strong topline growth of 13%. This is our third consecutive quarter at this growth rate and seven straight quarters of double-digit constant currency growth. Our momentum is being driven by our focused areas of lead management, U.S. peripheral atherectomy and our continued effort to expand globally.

This morning, I’ll breakdown my comments as follows. First, I’ll walk through the quarter’s financial performance for our Vascular, Lead Management and International businesses. I’ll then provide an update and highlight growth drivers for each segment. We’ll then discuss the significant progress we’ve made with our clinical programs. Guy will go deeper into the financials and we look forward to filling your questions.

Before I delve into each business segment, I want to highlight our laser placements. We installed 48 lasers to new customers versus 28 year ago period. This is an all time record for the company and the third consecutive quarter of robust placements.

Recall that Q4 of last year was our previous high watermark followed by a very strong Q1. This increase in our installed base reflects the clinical value customers place on our technology and bodes well for sustained future growth.

Separately, CMS recently announced proposed out patient reimbursement rates for 2014 that were mixed. For Lead Management, the changes were slightly positive. For VI, there are puts and takes in the form of proposed increases in the hospital out patients setting and reduced payments in the office space lab.

Proposed rules for coronary atherectomy were up meaningfully. CMS is now in a 60-day come-in period, the final rules will be announced in November and go into effect January 1. Industry and physician societies are actively engaged and will update as appropriate.

Our Vascular Intervention business delivered $18.9 million, an increase of 9% on a constant currency basis. Our initiatives to drive PAD awareness and the office-based opportunity fueled 19% growth in U.S. peripheral atherectomy.

The lead management franchise achieved revenues of $15.1 million, an 11% increase. I will provide more color in a moment, but the punch line here is that this growth rate reflects the significant amount of time our U.S. field team spend converting smaller GlideLight accounts. Our international team posted revenue of $7.1 million, 22% constant currency increase. Strengthen in Europe and robust growth in Japan highlight these results.

Gross margins remain strong at 73% even in light of significant laser revenue mix in the quarter. Our margin expansion efforts are well underway and our team has traction. To provide context, our disposable margins today are 110 basis points higher than 12 months ago and we expect this improvement to continue.

Production efficiencies are allowing us to move from two to one shift, despite our growth, reducing our direct labor by approximately 20% on an annual basis.

Our net loss was $728,000 or $0.02 per share. This performance is right in line with our expectations and our outlook implies return to profitability in the second half.

As we've previously highlighted, our Coronary business remains headwind. The impact in Q2 was more muted than recent quarters that of 7% decline. We expect this trend to continue yet taper over the back half of the year.

Now let's turn to our growth drivers. As we've previously stated growth in our Vascular business is predicated upon three things, Atherectomy penetration in share gains, capitalizing on the ISR opportunity and the expanding of our product portfolio.

For the eight-consecutive quarter, we've grown our U.S. peripheral atherectomy business faster than the market, primarily driven by our PAD awareness and office-based lab initiatives, as well as growth in the hospital setting. Market dynamics are broadly favorable and the increase in office-based procedures continues.

On the in-stent restenosis front steady progress was made. Our goal is to achieve the ISR indication and demonstrate the clinical value of laser atherectomy both in the near-term and when drug-coated balloons launch in the U.S. The ISR market is very large and underserved, approximately 250,000 procedures per year, about $750 million market opportunity for us.

As Dr. Lawrence Garcia commented at the NCBH conference in May, "the laser is uniquely suited to treat ISR", we agree. We believe the benefit of debulking prior to drug treatment is especially relevant in patients with TASACA Class II and III lesions.

This hypothesis is reflected in the studies conducted by Doctors van den Berg and Gandini. As a reminder, these patients have more complex disease, longer lesions, and represent about 70% of the ISR population.

This quarter we made significant progress in our EXCITE study. Along with acceleration and enrollment, Dr. Carlos Mena from Yale performed the first live EXCITE case at NCCBH.

We now have 184 patients enrolled and our full allotment of 35 sites are active. This represents about 50% increase in our enrollment rate, driven primarily by our recent efforts in new motivated investigators.

Our partnership with the FDA yielded the finalization of our adjunct analysis in early May. The goal of this plan is to demonstrate statistically significant clinical superiority as quickly as possible. We continue to believe that our mid-14 timing is the correct assumption.

On the PHOTOPAC front, 48 patients are enrolled and we've increased the study size to 145 from the original 50 patients, expanding the trial as driven by our confidence in the outcome, our desire to change clinical practice and very much supported by thought leaders.

We're in the process of initiating several new European sites. The big picture is to be the only company with an indication have compelling clinical evidence and as drug-coated balloons enter U.S. labs, draft on the wheel of big companies that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing this market. In summary, our Vascular business is gaining momentum on the sales execution, clinical, and portfolio fronts.

Now, for Lead Management. Our mission is to provide great patient care. We focused our commercial programs, training and education efforts and new product development on this goal. We seek to ensure that every infected lead is safely extracted that all Class II leads are managed with the appropriate treatment and adverse events become a thing of the past.

Our growth is governed and directed by our dedication to this cause. While treatment of patients requiring lead extraction is climbing, the vast majority are still underserved and our efforts around responsible Lead Management will unlock this opportunity.

We grew 11% in Q2. While reflecting strength in the business, this growth rate was softer than previous quarters given our response to customer demand for GlideLight adoption. As we’ve highlighted in the past, GlideLight conversions are clinically intensive and time consuming.

The training requirements are relatively similar, regardless of procedural volume and since we’re deep into conversions, our teams spent time in smaller accounts. These activities were prudent given customer desire to adopt the technology.

We’re turning our attention to new market development initiatives in the second half of the year. Worldwide market dynamics remained strong and thought leaders are urging us to enable better Lead Management. Only a fraction of infected leads are being extracted, reflecting a patient base that is woefully underserved.

Growing interest in lead management was on full display at HRS in Europace in Q2. HRS 2013 may have been the best scientific meeting yet for Lead Management. A full day form was conducted for the first time and attendance required overflow rooms. On a year-over-year basis, Lead Management content increased more than 60% at this show. Lead Management has arrived as a central issue in the clinical community.

On the simulation validation front, significant progress has been made. We believe that simulator training has a significant positive impact on physician’s skills and patient care. We’ve initiated a study named STEEP with Dr. Larry Epstein to prove this hypothesis.

The study has designed a randomize fellows with no lead extraction experience into two groups. One receives only didactic instruction, while the other benefits from didactic and simulator training. The groups are then scored on their ability to perform lead extraction in a simulated environment.

Early results from the first 15 fellows were published by Dr. Melanie Matin at HRS this year. The study has already reached statistical significance on all three primary end points.

Practical skills, procedural complications and forces used. Our goal is to train physicians via simulation similar to the way pilots develop and sharpen skills. We strive to accelerate the learning curve, improve patient outcomes and validate this training platform.

Regarding our product pipeline, our mechanical device programs are progressing nicely. We saw extensive customer feedback and it has been overwhelmingly positive. We are enthusiastic that these tools enhance to maintain our customers need and enable leverage in our training and commercial investments.

For all of the right reasons we are spending above our R&D guidance. This acceleration reflects confidence in our team and very encouraging customer feedback. We anticipate product launches in 2014.

In summary, our GlideLight conversions are on track. We are focusing attention on market development, our organic pipeline is robust and our tech there work to eliminate adverse events in lead extraction is promising.

Internationally, we continue to drive solid results in Europe and rapid growth in Japan. Highlighting recent accomplishments, first we continue to accelerate the pace of new laser installations in Japan and other key international markets that will drive future growth.

Second, we received Japanese Quick-Cross Extreme and Select reimbursement approval in May. We continue to launch of our Quick-Cross product family, a meaningful component to expanding our portfolio.

Third, we are continuing our GlideLight conversions in Europe and concurrently gaining share in Lead Management. Germany and France delivered noteworthy performance as did markets where we've recently gone direct. We expect continued momentum in our existing business as we expand into new markets yielding sustainable, robust international growth.

I'll now turn the call over to Guy to provide more detail on the financials.

Guy Childs

Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. It was another good quarter for SPNC with significant progress made on many fronts, including our strong financial performance. After reviewing the results, I’ll provide our outlook for the full year, which reflects higher revenue expectations.

Second quarter revenue of $39.5 million increased by 13%, both as reported and on a constant currency basis. Vascular Intervention revenue of $18.9 million increased 8%, 9% constant currency, led by U.S. peripheral atherectomy growth of 19%. Crossing solutions revenue increased 4%, aided by sales of the Quick-Access Needle Holder and Quick Capture guidewire retrieval products.

Coronary revenue from atherectomy and thrombectomy product sales decreased 7%. As mentioned on previous calls, the coronary market is not currently a strategic priority but it should be noted the comps in the second half are relatively easier than the first.

Lead Management revenue grew 11%, as we work through converting the remaining target accounts to GlideLight. We’re looking forward to continuing growth driven by increasing interest in Lead Management, GlideLight, market development focused on infected devices and mechanical tools in 2014.

Laser system, service and other revenue increased 34% to $5.5 million. Sales of laser systems were particularly strong this quarter and marched the second quarter of strength in this area. We would expect laser sales to moderate by at least $500,000 in the third quarter from these unprecedented levels.

Laser placements are a better indicator of the strength of customer demand than laser system sales. We're very pleased with 48 placements during the quarter, another record the tops 42 placements in Q4 of 2012.

On a geographic basis, revenue in the U.S. was $32.3 million, an increase of 11%. International revenue was $7.1 million, representing growth of 22% on both and as reported in constant currency basis.

Our gross margin was 73.1%, up 30 basis points from last year. Productivity gains were offset by the strong laser sales. We continue to target gross margin improvements of at least 50 basis points from the 73% during the full year 2012.

Research, development and other technology expense was $5.5 million or 14% of revenue, compared with $4.2 million or 12% of revenue last year. The increase was planned as we ramped our product development activities. We anticipate the launch of mechanical tools in 2014 and have several other projects in early stages.

SG&A expenses of $23.1 million represented 58% of revenue, compared with last year’s $20.4 million, also 58% of revenue. Although, flat as a percent of revenue, the increase spending was led by global field sales and marketing expenses.

We recorded $0.5 million related to the medical device excise tax, which became effective on January 1, 2013. We have excluded these costs from adjusted EBITDA, primarily for comparability purposes versus last year.

It will only be excluded from adjusted EBITDA for 2013. Once the tax anniversaries on January 1, 2014, we’ll continue to disclose it separately, but it will not be carved out for adjusted EBITDA purposes.

We also recorded contingent consideration expense and acquisition related amortization, which totaled $0.4 million. Since these costs are relative new to our P&L, I’ll briefly describe them.

Contingent consideration expense represents the accretion of the difference between the present value of milestone payments and the estimated payment of future milestones. If the actual milestone pay differ from the estimates made in January 2013, that difference will be recorded as contingent consideration expense or benefit in the future.

Acquisition related amortization expense represents the amortization of intangible assets acquired from Upstream Technologies. We recorded a provision for income taxes of $0.1 million in Q2, which brings our year-to-date tax benefit to $0.5 million.

Based on anticipated profitability for the full year, we project income tax expense of $0.6 million to $0.7 million, which implies income tax expense of $1.1 million to $1.2 million during the second half.

The tax provision or benefit is largely a non-cash item given our available net operating losses. However, the provision for income taxes is an important consideration for model updates.

Net loss for the second quarter was $728,000 or $0.02 per diluted share, compared with net income of $636,000 or $0.02 per diluted share last year.

Adjusted EBITDA, which excludes the medical device tax, amortization of acquired intangible assets and acquisition-related contingent consideration expense was $2.7 million versus $3.3 million last year.

This is consistent with our expectations and reflects our investment in research and development targeted at accelerating revenue growth. Tables showing reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures are provided in the press release.

Cash and cash equivalents totaled $119.4 million as of June 30, 2013. We completed a successful financing in May resulting in net proceeds of $92 million to our balance sheet. Excluding the proceeds from the offering, we generated $2.1 million of cash flow, $2 million of which was from operations.

In closing, I’ll update our outlook for 2013. Revenue is projected to be in a range of $155.5 million to $157.5 million, an increase from $153 million to $155.5 million previously and represents an increase of 11% to 12% over 2012.

Net income for 2013 is unchanged and projected to be in the range of breakeven to $0.5 million or $0.00 to $0.01 per diluted share, including the impact of the medical device tax and estimated non-cash amortization in contingent consideration expenses.

Adjusted EBITDA is also unchanged and anticipated to be in the range of $13.5 million to $14.5 million in 2013, compared with $13.1 million in 2012. Adjusted EBITDA provides for comparability between periods and represents an additional measure of the operating performance of the business.

I’ll turn it back to Scott for closing comments.

Scott Drake

So in summary we’re on solid footing. The team is executing well on our growth drivers and we expect them to further expand over the mid and long-term as we feel the positive effects of the ISR opportunity, our new product pipeline, market development and global expansion efforts. This culminates in our goal to accelerate our growth rate long-term, expand margins and achieve meaningful operating leverage overtime.

Sharda, let’s open up the line to questions.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Jason Mills with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open.

Jason Mills - Canaccord Genuity

Thank you very much. Hi, Scott, Guy, thanks for taking the question. Congrats on another good quarter.

Scott Drake

Thank you.

Jason Mills - Canaccord Genuity

So, Scott, I wanted to go back to some of your comments about the outpatient reimbursement changes and specifically sort of juxtaposed to a couple of things. First, the strong growth you put up, somewhat surprising to us the growth you put up in peripheral atherectomy ahead of perhaps the biggest growth driver in that business, ISR still being roughly a year away? What would you think and then sort of it also might have your PAD awareness program?

So if you can sort of take all the dynamics in that market including the most recent changes on the reimbursement side and give us your updated thoughts about how you see both the market growing and you growing relative to the market both before and after your in-stent restenosis indication for a year from now, I think that would be helpful just to put that outpatient changes in context.

Scott Drake

Yes, Jason happy too. So I think we’re growing roughly two times the market rate. We continue to believe that the U.S. atherectomy market is growing in the high single digits to 10% range and as you see here in this core we are growing roughly twice that. And our performance bounces around a little bit but we’ve grown faster than the market now for eight quarters and I think there is three things that are primarily responsible for that.

Number one broadly, the team is just executing well, second, our focus on PAD awareness that you referenced and third, more recently here the increase in the office-based setting, really, really difficult to read through what will ultimately happen in terms of CMS’ proposed rules. At this point it’s really just not a right issue and there’s offsetting penalty so to speak to the good and to the bad on that front.

So very difficult at this time to provide too much color there but I believe the growth drivers that we have in that we’re focused on bridge us very nicely to the ISR opportunity. That is an enormous market that is under served and we believe the clinical data both in the form of EXCITE and PHOTOPAC put us in a great position to capitalize on that market.

So our belief is that overtime that accelerates our growth rate in the Vascular business and we feel very good about our prospects there, along with expansion globally and in the U.S. commercial footprint and broadening the product portfolio and we’ve been a little bit opaque there for competitive reasons. But in sum, Jason, we like the way that that market sets up for us.

Jason Mills - Canaccord Genuity

Perfect. And you’ve mentioned of EXCITE and PHOTOPAC a good segway into my follow-up which is, when do you expect that data will be ready to present in a medical meaning or we see that before an indication approval from FDA or do you have any sense for the venue that you’re targeting?

And then secondly, and I’ll get back in queue after this one, the market development initiatives that you mentioned in passing, that you planned to turn to and Lead Management in the second half. Perhaps if you could provide a bit more color there and sort of just opposed to your comments to the fact that you? Do have some difficult comps in that business in the second half as well? Thanks Scott.

Scott Drake

Absolutely. So Jason as it relates to the PHOTOPAC information, I believe we’re going to have a look when we get to the 50-patient number and I think that’s going to be in between the six and 12 month timeframe from now. Guy, the second part of his question, can you remind me?

Guy Childs

LM the second half.

Scott Drake

Yeah. LM second half growth, I think of few things on that front, Jason. First of all, very strong market dynamics. We expect that continue -- to continue. Growth in that business, as you know bounces around, given how closely you follow the stock now for a long period of time.

I would restate that the time that the U.S. team spent in smaller GlideLight accounts. We believe very much red on the growth rate in the U.S. market in specific territories, where activity was more "normal". Our growth was more in the range of what you've seen here lately and that’s true as well in Europe.

We believe it was still prudent to do that, given customer demand. But we’re now we’re more focused on market expansion there. And I think the guidance that we’ve provided, kind of is instructive in terms of how we’re thinking about it. But that said, we always want to stay on the right side of guidance as you know.

Jason Mills - Canaccord Genuity

Makes sense. Thanks, guys.

Scott Drake

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Rick Wise with Stifel. Your line is open.

Rick Wise - Stifel

Good morning, Scott. Good morning, Guy.

Guy Childs

Good morning.

Rick Wise - Stifel

Turning to, just a bigger picture first. I mean, obviously, very impressive three quarters in a row of 13% topline growth. That’s nicely ahead of your intermediate, if I’m remembering correctly, 10%, 12% growth goal. I guess, given that, is it fair, should we expect that you’re ahead of, you are moving faster through your growth acceleration art than you laid out in properly conservative ways?

And maybe to follow-up on that, you know when I look at your guidance, I appreciate you are increasing it -- the midpoint of the guidance would suggest still 11.5% growth for the year. Help us understand in bar terms why the implied second half slowed down? I noticed some comp issues and some various moving pieces? But just that bigger picture first? Thanks.

Scott Drake

Yes. Happy too Rick and good morning. I think as you point out, solid performance now three quarters in a row of 13% growth, seven double-digit quarters of constant currency growth. A little bit more narrowly we believe that the laser revenue is going to taper, we just don't think it's sustainable at the rate that it is.

I would say that our, in terms of the pace that we are going through our growth drivers, we are pleased with it. We think we are on track to achieve that mid range and long-term growth goals that we've set out. And we think current performance bridges very nicely to the ISR opportunity, market development, lead management, mechanical tools, global expansion, even increasing the U.S. commercial footprint. So it’d be nice to pull in some of the timing expectations.

We’re not ready to do that yet we’ll contemplate that when we get to setting guidance for 2014. So I would say that we’re pleased with where we’re at. We don't think the laser revenue is sustainable. And it's tough to predict exactly when those incremental growth drivers are going to hit. So again, we just want to stay on the right side of guidance.

Rick Wise - Stifel

Yeah. It makes sense. I want to turn it back to the Lead Management question that Jason was asking. I want to make sure I understand your comments. I appreciate the -- your comments about the smaller accounts and time it takes on GlideLight. Is it possible to say, are you a 100% done with that conversion, maybe when are you done, where are you now and so we should feel better about second half, Lead Management growth, what's the message?

Scott Drake

Yeah. I think the way to think about it, Rick, we were very prescriptive with our launch in the U.S. market. And I would say the really prescriptive launch of the device is substantially complete. But we still have roughly a third of our laser sheet volume globally in SLSII.

So, there is a very natural pull but we're being less prescriptive in terms of how our field team spends their time. And given that they spend their time in more “normal ways,” we believe they are going to have more activity in higher accounts and more activity opening up new programs.

We believe fundamentally that better patient care is predicated upon our growth in that business. But as you know we govern that closely to make sure that we're delivering great patient outcomes. So, we feel just very good about that market both in the short terms and longer term as we execute on those other platforms that I've mentioned.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Amit Bhalla with Citi. Your line is open.

Amit Bhalla - Citi

Thanks. Good morning, Guy and Scott. On SLSII, can you just give us a sense for how you're thinking about the future of that product? How long do you continue to plan on selling SLSII in the market?

Scott Drake

Yeah. Amit, good morning. No real specific decisions made there in terms of that. I feel zero pressure on that front. It feels like we have a nice tearing of products with different levels of flexibility, different levels of benefits and commensurate different levels of pricing.

So, I don’t feel like we’re in need of around the cusp above any kind of announcement there on SLSII. And from a regulatory standpoint, in different countries around the world, it would take sometime to get GlideLight approved anyway. So, don’t feel any need to force anything there.

Amit Bhalla - Citi

And then just a follow-up here just on Lead Management again. As you look to the third quarter, the comp you're facing is similarly tough as to what you just faced this quarter, but you also have seasonality that place through in 3Q. Are you expecting absolutely revenue in Lead Management to grow sequentially for 3Q?

Scott Drake

I might ask for some of Guy’s help here. I would say a few things, Amit that will -- that maybe helpful to you. Q3 is always a quarter given vacations and procedural volume that gives us applause every year. This year is no exception to that. It’s always interesting to see what happens in Q3 and particular in Europe.

And there’s two other dynamics in play, number one, last year we had a smaller percentage of our accounts that were GlideLight versus this year. So you are going to have a tailwind there benefiting us from GlideLight ASP. On the other hand, you are not going to -- we are not going to benefit from the product swaps that we benefited from in Q3 of last year.

So you have kind of offsetting components from an LM perspective but we believe that you know continued double-digit growth in this business is reasonable. Anything you want to add to that, Guy.

Guy Childs

Yeah. Just from a seasonality perspective, historically -- the historical trends would tell us that seasonality is more pronounced on the eye side of the business but in years where we’ve grown sequentially Q3 versus Q2, it’s certainly a lot less than some of the other quarters, so important to keep in mind.

Amit Bhalla - Citi

And just a additional one just on laser placements, you highlighted that the record net of placements in total your buybacks or returns were also much higher. I guess past few quarters they have been trending in this low 20 range. How are you thinking about laser buyback returns for the next few quarters?

Guy Childs

Yeah. We actually got a lot tougher on that. We’ve taken lasers out of accounts that have proportionally more volume recently than we did previously given the need to get lasers and the customers that we believe will have more productive utilization of the lasers. The way I look at that Amit is that those gross placements that we have given that we’ve raised the bar on accounts where we have taken lasers out is indeed a good indicator of future sustained growth in the business.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Brooks West with Piper Jaffray. Your line is open.

Brooks West - Piper Jaffray

Thank you. Good morning.

Scott Drake

Hey Brooks, good morning.

Guy Childs

Good morning.

Brooks West - Piper Jaffray

I wanted to start with hopefully some more detail around the laser placements. Scott, can you talk about generally the split to where those are being placed in terms of intended use between Lead Management and atherectomy?

Scott Drake

Yeah happy to Brooks. The laser placement is pretty steady in terms of the split between VI and LM as to what it’s been over the past few quarters and also the mix of U.S. and international placements. The one caveat I would put there is that we continue to have accelerated placements in Japan. So pretty consistent with what we’ve seen the last few quarters.

Brooks West - Piper Jaffray

And then Scott, how should we think about the utilization ramp of a placed unit. And obviously there is going to be some difference between accounts, but is it six months to ramp up, is it a year? How do you think about becoming the contribution of those new placed units?

Scott Drake

Yeah. Broadly, obviously new accounts that we opened grow more rapidly given that you are comparing to a lower base and often you have a very motivated customer there. And the way we look at it is in terms of laser productivity. And we continue to see very positive trends in terms of laser productivity generally and specifically with new laser placements like I said you have higher growth rates.

Brooks West - Piper Jaffray

Okay. And then one on atherectomy for me, I'm wondering what you are doing in terms of market development in the international markets specifically around reimbursement in Europe? And then secondly, Bard has a recently launched it Lutonix balloon in Europe, I think, focusing on below the knee. But I am wondering if you have any anecdotal evidence of kind of pull through for your procedure with that? Thanks.

Scott Drake

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Brooks. Let me ask Shahriar to comment on that question.

Shahriar Matin

Sure. Hi, Brooks. Let me start with Lutonix. Generally, just to give you a macro view, we're not seeing Lutonix very much in many accounts. It will be interesting to see how they do with it the KOL that we've spoken to really have an affinity the Medtronic drug eluting balloon and not so much on Lutonix.

I think the next couple of quarters will really let us know if their major players or they need to publish more clinical evidence before KOL, really get on board with their balloon. Also their infrastructure is not as developed as Medtronic so that might be part of the reason why we don't see them as much as we see Medtronic’s presence throughout Europe.

With respect to reimbursement, we're actively working on reimbursement. I’d say Germany is where we have favorable reimbursement on most of our products. France, we've put some efforts in there as well as the U.K. We're doing that via consultants and really looking at the big five markets and just continuously steadily making progress. Some countries take a lot longer. In France, we may need a clinical study for peripheral atherectomy for lead management we are doing well.

We have reimbursement. We are also actively looking at how we can increase it. So there is a lot of work being done on many fronts. And we think over the coming years it will come to fruition and help drive our continued growth.

Scott Drake

Yeah. I just want to make one more point Brooks on your question. I think the broader picture here is the interesting part for us. We have gone very deep into what’s happening at the tissue level with Dr. Virmani, absolutely the world’s leader in understanding what’s happening at the tissue level and believe very strongly that in those Class II and III, patients which is 70% of the market de-bulking prior to drug delivery is important and that part of our story born out of the studies that Dr. Gandini and Van Den Berg have done is really the punch line for us in that market overtime agnostic to what specific balloon -- drug coated balloon is being used.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Charles Haff with Craig-Hallum Capital. Your line is open.

Charles Haff - Craig-Hallum Capital

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question.

Scott Drake

Morning Charles.

Charles Haff - Craig-Hallum Capital

Morning. First question is on the CMS reimbursement side. I realize this is just a proposed rule or proposed reimbursement now. But if it does go final, you mentioned this quarter you had a shift from hospital continuing to go to the office. Do you feel like that would shift back to the hospital? And if you could give us some sense for how you would manage that or would we see any hiccups in kind of the income statement from that or is that a fairly smooth transition if it did happen?

Scott Drake

Yeah. Again, I just want to reinforce here that it’s so hard to predict what CMS will do, really evidence by the proposal that they’ve come out with to put that in context. Since 1991, they’ve been using the same methodology on their relative value system. And this for the first time ever is a departure for that. And we understand from very good sources that there’s even kind of conflicting views inside of CMS. So I think it’s important that we all understand how dynamic this is.

But to really attempt to answer your question Charles, if everything stuck as it is now, I would say a few things. Number one, these patients need to be treated unequibically independent of what setting there’ in. Number two, I believe that even with the proposed -- even with the proposal, its quite possible that physicians in the office base setting would increase their volume, if possible maybe have another physician join them to makeup for any shortfall in terms of their income.

Third, there could indeed be a shift from the office to the outpatient setting that would be smooth for us and actually have an increased ASP affect as hospital pricing tend to be more stable and higher than the OBL setting. And it’s also possible that we could see increased atherectomy combined with stenting utilization given what they proposed. So that’s reading through whole bunch of hypothetical there but that’s our current point of view on the issue.

Charles Haff - Craig-Hallum Capital

Okay. Great. And my last question is regarding cash, the $92 million of net proceeds that you raised from the recent equity offering and you have positive operating cash flow this quarter. I know you have needs possibly from growing your sales force on the vascular side and it advances the ISR label expansion. And you have simulators that you may want to add, but that’s a ton of cash.

Just wondering if you could kind of give us a sense for tuck-in acquisitions that you are seeing or is there a pretty good pipeline relative to the past or any uses of cash that we should be seeing in the future?

Scott Drake

Yeah. Firstly, you touched on some good ones there. And I would add to it along with expanding the sales force in the U.S. and globally and doing maybe even more aggressive training work that you mentioned.

The other things that we have going on are the R&D portfolio expansion efforts in market development work. But regarding your point on the business development front, I would say if anything we’re more active I think the clarity of our strategy is such that it’s put us in a position to dig very deeply across the businesses, across the globe, looking at things that would make sense.

It would be great to have the right kind of complimentary acquisition leveraging call points and putting something very logical and differentiated in our bag. I would say that if you take a look at our balance sheet relative to our revenues, we're in a pretty normal range there.

We don’t feel as though we have cash burning hole in our pocket. So we will not be at all imprudent as it relates to acquisitions. But we are interested in -- and as we know we don't get any partial credit for looking. So, we'll keep you updated as material things happen.

Charles Haff - Craig-Hallum Capital

Okay. And one quick follow-up there in terms of size as of acquisition, is there any guidance you can give us there. I know there has been some concern in the market in terms of what size of acquisitions that you may consider, any thoughts you would like to share there?

Scott Drake

It's just so hard to comment on that. We've been very clear that we love our organic path and we have a lot of confidence in it. We also are very confident in our performance, I think, reinforced by what we've done now for seven, eight quarters in a row.

So, we don't feel any impatience. And we're going to be very opportunistic as it relates to business development. It's just hard to do more justice to the question as you can appreciate. So, we're looking, we are interested but we are not at all going to be imprudent in our approach.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Suraj Kalia with Northland Securities. Your line is open.

Suraj Kalia - Northland Securities

Good morning, Scott and Guy.

Scott Drake

Good morning, Suraj.

Suraj Kalia - Northland Securities

So Scott, few questions. Let me start out with your commentary on office base procedures. Forgive me, I'm not sure I understood it completely. So last six quarters or so, most of the growth in VI has come from office based procedures and our understanding is this primarily because of favorable reimbursement relative to hospitals. So, if the same as proposal comes true and reimbursement goes down, it is unclear to me, how business would move back to the hospitals, because the laser is the same, patient dynamics and reimbursement is the same for hospital base, somewhat along the line I haven't followed the logic was one if you could walk me through that?

Scott Drake

Yeah. Happy to. I am not sure I can do much better than what I did when Charles asked the question, Suraj. But again, fundamentally these patients need treatment. So I think that's independent of what care setting they are in. I agree with you that the move to the outpatients setting has been instigated by the office based reimbursement that went into affect in January of '11.

And to us it was very clear at least it appear to be that CMS wanted to move procedures from the hospital setting to the office based setting, right. They put very good reimbursement into effect in '11. They increased it slightly in '12, increased it slightly in '13 and the proposed rule is a bit of a change there. But it doesn't change the fact that patients need to be treated, nor does it change the fact that physicians make still with the proposed reimbursement significant money.

So, if there were to be a shift, how would that happen to your more pointed question. It could happen in a couple of ways. Hospitals could acquire those physicians that have gone out in the office based setting. We've seen that trend previously. That could happen here. Hard to know more than what I’ve shared I think at this point.

Suraj Kalia - Northland Securities

Okay. Scott, on the lead removal business obviously a lot has been asked and forgive me if my understanding is wrong here. So I think, so I heard 70% of the customers in lead removal are close that also have been converted to GlideLight. And you know you look at lead removal business for this quarter, sequentially its flat. I mean almost for the last three quarters its flat and the comps are going to get tougher. My understanding was GlideLight is priced at a premium. So if 70% of the customers have been converted over, the net effect was still flattish so to speak even though it was priced at a premium, maybe some procedures were lost or some sales were disrupted. Is my logic flawed there?

Guy Childs

Suraj, just to may be add-on to what Scott said previously, the incremental impact of the training in clinical and service for GlideLight this quarter is just muted because of -- the time commitment is the same. The volume of accounts that we’re focusing on was relatively lower volume. So you also have the tough comp relative to inventory swap outs given at the lower volume accounts.

So now going forward, I think it will be more normalized relative to focus on GlideLight conversions and you have some offsetting things including the strengths of laser placements that we’ve enjoyed over the last several quarters.

So, lots going on there, combined with the fact that this business and you’ve followed us the long time and you’ve seen certain quarters that are outside of the historical trends. And we don’t believe there is anything fundamentally changed in the market or in our business fundamentals. And we looked forward to continue growth in this business.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our next question comes from the line of Larry Haimovitch with HMTC. Your line is open.

Larry Haimovitch - HMTC

Good morning, Scott. Good morning, Guy.

Scott Drake

Good morning, Larry.

Guy Childs

Good morning.

Larry Haimovitch - HMTC

Actually lot of the questions that I had has been long ago answered. So I’ll just back in the queue and look forward to seeing you in Boston in a few weeks.

Scott Drake

All right. Great. Thanks, Larry.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Charley Jones with Barrington. Your line is open.

Charley Jones - Barrington

Hey, just quick one to follow-up. Would you mind breaking up for us a little bit the split between price and volume across any of your businesses, if you won't mind, please?

Scott Drake

Maybe a couple of points, I’d make generally. The growth in the business is globally driven by volume. We have very modest price contribution in the (inaudible) (53:31) business very small and more so in the GlideLight as we talked previously. Going deeper than that, Charley, is probably not anything. We’re comfortable doing at this point but hopefully provide some color.

Charley Jones - Barrington

Maybe I can just add some follow-up then. I appreciate that. But sequentially I understand that, but year-over-year I guess I would think that we would see some fairly significant price on GlideLight year-over-year. Am I missing something about the timing or?

Scott Drake

Yeah. It was more pronounced….

Charley Jones - Barrington

I think it would be ….

Scott Drake

…on the GlideLight front, we've talked that in some length in previous calls, so it's meaningful.

Operator

At this time, I'm not showing any further questions in queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Drake.

Scott Drake

All right. Great. Thanks for your day and thanks everyone for joining us on our Q2 call. We look forward to updating you in 90 days and seeing many of you at investor events between now and then. Thanks so much.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for participating in today's conference. This does concludes today program. You may all disconnect and everyone have a great day.

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CONMED Corporation (CNMD) CEO Discusses Q2 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Executives

Bob Yedid – ICR

Joseph J. Corasanti – President and Chief Executive Officer

Robert D. Shallish Jr. – Executive Vice President-Finance, Assistant Secretary and Chief Financial Officer

Analysts

Jeffrey S. Cohen – Ladenburg Thalmann Securities

Matt S. Miksic – Piper Jaffray, Inc.

Robert Goldman – CL King & Associates, Inc.

Brad A. Evans – Heartland Advisors, Inc.

James Sidoti – Sidoti & Company

Mark Landy – Summer Street Research

Dale A. Dutile – The Boston Company Asset Management LLC

CONMED Corporation (CNMD) Q2 2013 Earnings Conference Call July 24, 2013 10:00 AM ET

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Second Quarter 2013 CONMED Earnings Conference Call. My name is Ayesha, and I will be your coordinator for today’s call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes.

I’d now like to turn the conference over to your host for today, Mr. Bob Yedid at ICR. You may proceed, sir.

Bob Yedid

Thank you, Ayesha. Good morning. Before we begin, let me remind you that during this call, CONMED’s management will be making comments and statements regarding their financial outlook, which represents forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties as those terms are defined under the federal securities laws.

The company’s actual results may differ materially from our current expectations. Please refer to the risk factors and other cautionary factors in today’s press release, as well as our SEC filings for more details on factors that may cause actual results to differ materially.

You will also hear management refer to certain non-GAAP adjusted measurements during this discussion. While these figures are not a substitute for GAAP measurements, the company’s management uses these figures to aid in monitoring the company’s ongoing financial performance from quarter-to-quarter, and year-to-year on a regular basis and for benchmarking against other medical technology companies.

Adjusted net income and adjusted earnings per share measure the income of the company, excluding credits or charges that are considered by management to be special or outside the normal ongoing operations of the company. These adjusting items are specified in the reconciliation in the press release issued this morning.

With these required announcements completed, I will turn the call over to Joe Corasanti, CONMED’s Chief Executive Officer, and President for his remarks. Joe?

Joseph J. Corasanti

Good morning. Thanks very much, Bob. CONMED sales for the second quarter were $193 million, an increase of 1.7% versus the prior year period. This was in our guidance range for the quarter of $191 million to $196 million. Adjusted earnings per share for the second quarter of 2013 were $0.43, again within our guidance range of $0.41 to $0.46 that we provided to investors on our last call.

While adjusted earnings per share was flat compared to the second quarter of 2012, the medical device tax cost us $0.03 this year, so our earnings would have been $0.46 for the current quarter if one excluded the device tax representing a 7% increase year-over-year.

On a GAAP basis, diluted EPS was $0.34 per share compared to $0.36 in the second quarter of 2012, but again adding back the $0.03 hit from the medical device tax would have made GAAP earnings per share equal to $0.37, a modest increase year-over-year.

Adjusted operating margin expanded 20 basis points to 10.8% compared to the 10.6% during the second quarter of 2012 due to higher gross margins as a result of our continued focus on operational efficiencies across our business units, product mix and lower R&D expenses offset by higher SG&A spending due to planned increases in sales and marketing programs. This improvement would have been even more pronounced if not for the medical device burden of 70 basis points.

Adjusted EBITDA margin of 16.9% declined slightly by 20 basis points versus the prior year period due to the 70 basis point medical device tax burden. Cash flow from operations was $17.7 million a slight decrease from last year’s second quarter due to working capital items. Our Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.15 per share, continuing the dividend initiated by the Board of Directors in early 2012.

In the U.S., healthcare utilization in the second quarter was flat based on the metrics we follow, a continuation of the trend we saw in the first quarter. As we follow second quarter healthcare utilization trends, we are seeing major hospital companies report flat or lower adjusted admissions and flat commercial admission. In addition, some large U.S. health payers are also reporting moderate medical cost trends for the second quarter.

As you can see in the press release, we had quite a divergence between the sales trends in the second in single used products versus capital equipment sales. Our single-used product sales were basically flat year-over-year as we saw a mixed picture across our product lines with weakness principally in single use orthopedic surgery products.

Conversely, our capital equipment sales demonstrated a strong 8.6% increase with better sales of surgical visualization systems as Viking sales rebounded nicely from a weaker than expected Q1. On an organic basis, excluding revenues from the Viking acquisition, sales were up 0.1% in the second quarter of 2013.

Now, we’d like to update investors on a few operational initiatives. First, the newly acquired Viking line of 3D and 2D high definition surgical visualization equipment contributed $3.1 million sales in the second quarter, and this was consistent with our expectations. Our sales forces have been trained on this exciting technology, and we have optimistic expectations that customers will embrace the advantages of our 3D systems.

As of any capital product, sales cycle is usually longer within the single-used products. As we have said in the past, we believe that the combination of our 3D visualization systems, and our endomechanical instrumentation designed for minimally invasive surgery is a good alternative to the more expensive robotic systems for many hospitals.

Second, we continue to see good momentum with Altrus, our advanced tissue sealing solution with quarterly sales exceeding $1 million for this quarter for the first time. This marks steady progression from sales of $800,000 in the previous quarter, and $600,000 in the fourth quarter of 2012.

We are pleased with continued execution of that business, and adoption by our surgeon customers. Over the next several months, we will be expanding the office sales efforts in certain of our direct international markets. By the midway point of the year, we expect that CONMED will be able to achieve sales within a $4 million to $6 million guidance range for 2013 that we’ve provided earlier. We are very encouraged by our progress with Altrus, and we’ll update investors periodically.

Third and important component of our business strategy continues to be expanding our margins by selectively reducing cost, the consolidation of our Tampere, Finland manufacturing plant into our U.S. locations is continuing and should be concluded by at the end of the year.

We are seeking opportunities to reduce costs in our manufacturing and SG&A functions on an ongoing basis. This focus on cost and expense levels complements our efforts to grow revenues and improve our gross margins through the introduction of new products.

Now I’d like to turn to our uses of cash. We have and will continue to use the company’s cash to grow internally both through new product introductions and the expansion of our sales and marketing capabilities. We will also seek to make acquisitions of companies, products and technologies as that has been an important part of CONMED’s growth profile.

For example in January, 2012, we signed an important agreement with the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation to be their world wide marketing representative for sports medicine allograft tissue. This was followed by our acquisition of Viking Systems for $22.5 million last October, which at the time of the acquisition offered the only standalone 3D laprosopic vision system available that was both FDA cleared and CE marked. This line was highly complementary to our product lines and leveraged CONMED’s gloabal sales footprint.

Moreover, due to the Company’s strong cash generation and balance sheet capacity, we have sought to return cash to our shareholders, this has been an important priority at CONMED. As Rob will discuss in greater detail, we are close to completing the $50 million share repurchase program we announced last October.

Since the start of the program, we have repurchased about 1.6 million shares of stock for over $48.7 million. So looking at the past four quarters, CONMED has returned over $65 million to its shareholders in the form of regular dividend, and share repurchases.

Now onto our guidance, well CONMED was able to deliver sales and earnings in the guidance range for the second quarter, looking forward we see flat to modestly lower levels of healthcare utilization trends in United States.

Moreover, our international managers are seeing major European governments maintain or impose new controls or cash on healthcare spending. In light of these conditions, we feel that it’s prudent to reduce the top end of our earnings per share guidance range for 2013 to $1.80 to $1.85 as compared to our prior range of $1.80 to $1.90.

We are also lowering the top end of our revenue guidance range to between $770 million and $775 million for 2013 as compared to our prior range of $770 to $780 million. In the third quarter of 2013, we anticipate sales will approximate $184 million to $189 million, and adjusted earnings per share are forecasted to be $0.37 to $0.46.

In summary, we are confident in the CONMED’s story and we are an attractive and well positioned company in the markets we serve. We continue to hold the number two and number three market share positions in our key product lines.

Over the past two or three years, we have been successful in shifting our product mix to single used products that provide and ongoing stream of daily sales. Single used products now comprise approximately 80% of total sales, while the remaining 20% is capital equipment sales that drive our razor, razor blade model. Plus we are using our cash generation to both fund growth and return cash to shareholders to remain full dividend and stock buy backs.

Overall, from an operational and financial basis, we remain positive about the direction of CONMED.

I will now turn the call over to Rob Shallish for a further review of the financials. Rob?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Thanks very much, Joe, and good morning everyone. As Joe mentioned, total sales for the June quarter came in at $193 million, a reported increase of 1.7% from the $189.7 million in the second quarter of 2012, with the bulk of the increase due to the sales associated with the September 2012 Viking Systems acquisition.

On an organic basis, adjusted for the acquisition of Viking, sales were up 0.1%. In constant currency, the total increase year-over-year was 2.3%. Now, I will review our three categories of product line sales disclosures. Orthopedic surgery, general surgery and surgical visualization.

Recall that we’ve revised the sales presentation in our first quarter reporting to simplify our financial disclosures, and make it easier for investors to understand our company. The orthopedic surgery line consists of the sports medicine products plus powered surgical instruments. The surgical visualization products that were previously included in the arthroscopy category have been broken out separately, because our video systems can be used both in general surgery and for orthopedics. This change became increasingly necessary as a result of the Viking acquisition whose 3D systems are primarily used in general surgery.

Lastly, we have combined our electrosurgery, endosurgery, endoscopic technologies and patient care product lines into the general surgery category. Our orthopedic surgery product line experienced the sales decline of 1.9% versus the prior year period. While exports biologics business, which includes the dedicated marketing with MTF grew nicely at over 4%. Sports medicine products declined by 3.3%, and powered surgical instruments declined by a modest 0.9%.

The sports medicine decline was due to three reasons, governmental controls on procedures and spending in Europe, particularly the UK. Our discontinuance of the small line of Craniofacial devices and the effects of currency translation.

Sales in the general surgery product group had an increase of 2.2%, which was driven by a solid 3.1% increase in single use products, while capital sales in this group were down slightly.

Our endomechanical business posted excellent results, up 9.4% year-over-year, and our GI and Pulmonary product line was up 2.8%. These performance were offset by advanced energy previously referred to as electrosurgery down 1.5% principally due to softness on capital products despite an increase in single use products. Station monitoring declined a slight 0.6%.

Surgical visualization, that line with all our 2D and 3D imaging products experienced an increase of 26%. Excluding the Viking product sales, the organic increase of surgical visualization was 4%. Sales for our capital products overall increased 8.6% with solid performances in both international and domestic markets.

By geography, sales in the United States for the second quarter came in at $93 million, at a slight decline of about 1.5% over the prior year period. International sales were $100 million a 3.8% increase from the prior year period, representing 51.8% of total sales.

Foreign currency exchange rates including the effects of the Fx hedging program caused sales to be $1.1 million less in the second quarter of 2013 compared to sales in the prior year period.

Canada and the Americas experienced the sales increase of 12% due to capital equipment sales in these regions. Our Asian business increased 2%, while the European business was down 1%.

Turning now to the other components of the income statement; adjusted gross margins excluding restructuring costs came in at 54.2% compared to 53.2% in the second quarter 2012, an increase of 100 basis points. As we discussed in our first quarter call, we experienced exceptionally high gross margins of 55.8% in that first quarter. And we anticipated that gross margins would decline sequentially in the second quarter because of FIFO inventory accounting that causes the manufacturing variances of the fourth quarter last year, the flow into the income statement this quarter. With all the holidays in the fourth quarter, we usually incur unfavorable absorption variances due to the reduced output in that last calendar quarter of the year.

The GAAP gross margin also improved to 53.3% compared to 52.6% last year. We continue to see progress in gross margins due to our product mix and efforts to control operating costs. As we look out to the third and fourth quarters of this year, we believe the gross margins will be somewhat stronger than the second quarter due to the visibility we have to the manufacturing variances that will flow to the income statement in these upcoming quarters.

Selling, general and administrative expenses for the second quarter 2013 were $77.2 million or 40% of total sales compared to $73.7 million or 38.9% of total sales in the same quarter last year. Although, an increase from last year due to additional sales people and marketing programs, it is sequentially down from the first quarter of this year when SG&A as a percentage of sales was 41.6%.

The medical device excise tax amounted to $1.4 million in the second quarter, and is looked at as a separate line item in our income statement. Research and development spending was $6.6 million for the second quarter, an 8% decrease versus $7.2 million in the second quarter of 2012 as we complete certain R&D projects.

R&D spending as a percentage of sales was 3.4% compared to 3.8% in the second quarter of 2012. We continue to fund meaningful research and development activities, passiveness on our analysis of the merits of individual projects. There will be some variation in R&D as the percentage of sales as individual projects commence or are completed.

Overall, the adjusted operating margin in the second quarter of 2013 grew approximately 20 basis points to 10.8%. For this year, we will include the medical device excise tax as one of the adjusting items to enable comparison to the prior year amounts.

The operating margin using GAAP amounts was 8.1% in the second quarter compared to 9% in the last year’s second quarter, with the decline associated with 70 basis points from the inclusion of the medical device excise tax and from increased restructuring and adjusting costs.

The adjusted EBITDA margin was 16.9%, a decline of 20 basis points caused by the 70 basis point negative effect from the medical device tax. EBITDA margin using GAAP amounts for the quarter was 14.3% of sales. For the second quarter of 2013, diluted earnings per share were $0.34 per share compared to $0.36 in the second quarter 2012. However, the medical device tax cost us $0.03 this year, and so earnings would have been $0.37 for the current quarter if one excluded the device tax.

Adjusted earnings per share were $0.43 per share, flat compared to the second quarter of 2012. Similarly, adjusted diluted earnings per share for the second quarter of 2013 would have been $0.46 or $0.03 above the prior year period excluding the device tax.

The adjustments for unusual items of $3.7 million in the second quarter are reconciled in the press release issued this morning, and include costs associated with ongoing consolidation of certain administrative functions and manufacturing activities including severance and relocation costs. CONMED also incurred litigation costs associated with an ongoing patent dispute.

For the remainder of 2013, we expect to incur additional pretax special costs of $6.5 million to $7.5 million on projects currently in process. Please note that the medical device excise tax is included as a reduction in the adjusted earnings per share as well as GAAP. This tax caused both metrics to be lower by $1.4 million or $0.03 per share than otherwise would have been the case.

Turning now to cash flow; cash provided by operations came in at $17.7 million in the second quarter, somewhat less in the second quarter last year due to a less favorable working capital changes, and negative effects of foreign currency translation. We expect cash flow from operations to improve in the second half of 2013 from the $23.1 million achieved in the first half due to expected higher earnings, working capital management and not needing further funding of the frozen pension plan.

During the second quarter, the Company repurchased 582,000 shares of its common stock, amounting to $19 million. As a reminder, we announced our intention to repurchase approximately $50 million of stock last October. Since that announcement we have repurchased about 1.6 million shares of stock for $48.7 million at an average price of approximately $30.88 per share.

So looking at the past 12 months, CONMED has returned over $65 million to its shareholders in the form of regular dividends and share repurchases. Going forward as one component of our cash use, we intend to repurchase stock to offset shares issued as part of the Company’s management incentive plans.

As of June 30, 2013, our cash balance stands at $38.1 million. Days and accounts receivables were 66 days and inventory days were 153 days. Both of these metrics are in good ranges.

As of June 30, 2013, the debt to book capitalization calculation was 28.7%, marginally higher from the 21.1% at December 2012 as a result of common stock repurchases and The Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation contingent payment of $34 million made in January of this year.

Our effective tax rate for the second quarter was 33.2% on a GAAP basis and 33.8% on an adjusted earnings basis compared to 34% in the second quarter last year on an adjusted basis. For the remaining two quarters of this year, we anticipate a tax rate of approximately 33% per quarter. As we have discussed in the past, the cash tax rate is less than the book tax rate. This year we anticipate a 20% cash tax rate.

Now I would like to briefly discuss our third quarter and full year 2013 guidance. We continue to see flat to modestly negative utilization trends in the U.S. healthcare market. In the international markets, which account for about 52% of our sales, major European governments are imposing controls or caps on healthcare spending.

In light of these conditions, we believe it is realistic to tighten our adjusted earnings per share guidance range for 2013 to $1.80 to $1.85 per share as compared to our prior range of $1.80 to $1.90 per share. Our guidance includes the anticipated effects of the medical device tax and less favorable FX exchange rates.

Similarly, we are lowering the top end of our revenue guidance range, so that we are guiding to a range of $770 million to $775 million as compared to the prior range of $770 million to $780 million. For the third quarter of 2013, we expect sales to approximate $184 million to $189 million and adjusted earnings per share is forecasted to be in the range of $0.37 to $0.42 per share.

With that I will now turn the call back over to Joe Corasanti for final remarks before we open the lines for questions. Joe?

Joseph J. Corasanti

Thanks very much, Rob. I’d like to make a few closing remarks regarding our long-term goals and our track record of growing earnings here at CONMED. We met our revenue and EPS goals in the second quarter and believe we have now set achievable and more realistic revenue and earnings guidance for the full year of 2013.

I would like to remind everyone that CONMED was able to deliver EPS growth of 15% or greater from 2010 to 2012 on low single digit sales growth. The impact of the medical device tax, and changes in foreign exchange rates were headwinds in 2013 that we expected. Healthcare utilization has been modest in 2013 to-date as well.

However, looking forward to 2014, we believe that with modest organic sales growth and neutral FX, we expect to get back to our long-term goal of annual double-digit EPS growth.

We look forward to updating you on our business initiatives during the third quarter 2013 conference call and upcoming investor events appearances. All of the 3,600 employees at CONMED on a worldwide basis are working to achieve our operational and financial objectives for 2013.

Thank you for participating in today’s call and so at this point operator, I’d like to open up the call for questions. Thank you.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Jeffrey Cohen with Ladenburg Thalmann. You may proceed.

Jeffrey S. Cohen – Ladenburg Thalmann Securities

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Can you discuss any new products that have been introduced over the past few quarters or any soon to be introduced products as far as the R&D pipeline goes?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Well, Jeff, we usually launch a lot of new products at the academy, at the AAOS, association with the surgeons. And this year, one of the big launches for us is the lithium-ion battery for the power instruments that’s doing extremely well for us. We’ve got some competitive advantage with that product, it’s able to expand very long autoclave cycle up to 18 minutes. So we think we can take some share in our European markets with that products, so that’s doing very well.

Coming up, I would say by the end of the year and by Q1, we are launching about eight new products. Probably not going to tell you exactly what they are, but I can tell you the categories that they are in. We will be coming out with something new in video and advanced visualization, in general surgery, the Endosurgery product line area we will be launching probably about three new products. In sports medicine, we have got three new products coming out there as well and also in general surgery, the advanced energy group is coming up with a new piece of capital equipment probably by Q1, Q2. So those are the top areas for the new product development to look forward to.

Jeffrey S. Cohen – Ladenburg Thalmann Securities

That’s superb. It’s very helpful. Has there been any change in pricing of Altrus?

Joseph J. Corasanti

Well, with Altrus, we are seeing pricing come down slightly, particularly with the five millimeter device. We are very pleased with the Altrus’ it’s growing, we are getting new accounts on every quarter, the sales that we have are sticky, surgeons that have converted like this product and desired to continue to use the product.

Our cost is coming down, which of course we talked about that over the last several quarters, so with increased volume and with other manufacturing efficiencies and other factors, we are able to bring the cost of the product down, and so that’s one of the reasons where we are hopeful to get some traction outside of the United States and some markets where pricing is actually even more of a factor.

So as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, we are initiating the sales of Altrus in several of our direct markets and even in some of our dealer markets where we are starting the selling process.

Jeffrey S. Cohen – Ladenburg Thalmann Securities

Okay, that’s very helpful. And could you talk about generally speaking how the environment is out there as far as acquisition targets or any pipeline or any M&A activity this market are less fertile more fertile than you are seeing a few quarters ago?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

I think we actually have seen a slight pickup in activity there. We think that, I mean with the acquisition history this company has had 24, 25 deals since 1993. We are shocked quite a bit of properties, and so we do get a lot of offerings across our desk. I would say, yeah, the activity has picked up in the last probably two quarters.

Jeffrey S. Cohen – Ladenburg Thalmann Securities

Okay. I am not sure if I missed it or if you folks talks about it, specific numbers or growth rates on the MTF business for the quarter?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Yeah Jeff, MTF was up about 4% compared to the second quarter last year. So we are slightly seeing some traction from some of the changes we have made in the marketing structure. So I think as we have talked in the past, we have added sales people into that particular category and that seems to be working out pretty well for us.

Jeffrey S. Cohen – Ladenburg Thalmann Securities

Okay. And could you comment a little bit on, so your forecast for this coming quarter Q3, you’ve got $184 million to $189 million and $0.37 to $0.42, adjusted correct or I just wanted to confirm that.

Joseph J. Corasanti

Yes, correct.

Jeffrey S. Cohen – Ladenburg Thalmann Securities

Okay, so it’s adjusted?

Joseph J. Corasanti

Yeah, the restructuring or other costs.

Jeffrey S. Cohen – Ladenburg Thalmann Securities

Okay. Q2 2012 was $0.43. You have a little bit of seasonality in the third quarter typically?

Joseph J. Corasanti

That’s correct.

Jeffrey S. Cohen – Ladenburg Thalmann Securities

Okay. And no reason to expect otherwise, expect similar type of seasonality for the quarter?

Joseph J. Corasanti

Yeah, you are correct. The third quarter historically has been the softest vacations in Europe, surgeon vacations here in the U.S. all cause surgeries to be a little bit less. I think other orthopedic companies have the same profile.

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Yeah, I mean our experience that seasonality trend is very consistent.

Jeffrey S. Cohen – Ladenburg Thalmann Securities

Okay. Could you just briefly discuss – you are talking about $6.5 million to $7.5 million of consolidation costs for the third and fourth quarter? Could you besides the device tax, what are the special costs that you see associated with that and is that inclusive of the two facility consolidations, are they close to complete or when do you expect both to complete?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Well, first of all, on the medical device taxes in that number, so that $6.5 million to $7.5 million relates to the closure of those two manufacturing facilities; the one in Tampere, Finland that we have been working on for about six months now. And the Viking location in Westborough, Massachusetts, the location will stay there for marketing, R&D, administration, but the manufacturing that was done there in Westborough has been moved to our Largo, Florida plant and to some extend the Mexican plant.

So those are the two consolidations that are going on at the moment with regard to manufacturing. There are some costs on the administrative function in both of those situations too, so that’s why we have got a couple of different categories for those costs.

And the final thing is patent litigation that we have disclosed in our filings with regard to that was some sports medicine products. So those three things are the total of those special charges.

Jeffrey S. Cohen – Ladenburg Thalmann Securities

Okay. Could you be more specific on the time issues as far as the cost and the total costs that are allocated for that?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Of the total, for the remainder of the year, it would be between $1 million and $1.5 million.

Jeffrey S. Cohen – Ladenburg Thalmann Securities

Okay, got it. And lastly I am sorry for all the questions. Just one more, just from 30,000 foot standpoint as far as the macro level, when you look at the disposable products versus the capital equipment products, this is really in the first quarter and quite a number of quarters, where are you seeing an uptick in the not the disposable side, but the capital equipment side, do you think this is sustainable or are you seeing it bottom put in here or there are any kind of macro trends that you can read from the data?

Joseph J. Corasanti

The capital equipment business is volatile and we have had as you pointed out, quite a few quarters of negative results. So the comparative numbers are rather favorable I guess you might say because of prior year weaknesses, and when we have one or two large orders for $1 million here, $2 million there, that can really spike the trend one way or the other. In this particular quarter, we had benefit of some of those kinds of things. So I don’t know if I can see any change and trend, but it’s a volatile situation.

Jeffrey S. Cohen – Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc.

Okay, perfect. That does it for me. Thanks again for all the questions.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Miksic with Piper Jaffray. You may proceed. Matt Miksic, your line is open. Please proceed.

Matt S. Miksic – Piper Jaffray, Inc.

Sorry, I had you on mute there. Thanks and good morning. I wanted to follow-up on a number of questions here, but the last one on hospital capital. I guess when you started, or Joe, when you talk about where you expected trends to be, I think maybe and where you set out your business planning assumptions for the year, it felt a lot more uncertain I guess than the results that we’re seeing here in Q1 and Q2 and the trend that we've seen across some other players. I mean is it fair, I understand it’s volatile and the orders can move it around, but is it fair to say that it’s maybe not as bad as you thought it would be? What are your thoughts on that? And I have a number of other questions.

Joseph J. Corasanti

Well, I think our expectations for video for the year was that it would be flat. For this quarter, the organic video capital growth was 4%. The remainder is the Viking product line, which when we say we expected Viking sales to come in as expected, that’s focused on Viking. And we are pleased with the 3D technology and we’re very pleased with the pull through of that. It’s doing a couple of things for us. It’s giving us pull through on the endomechanical products and some of the other disposables, but then it’s also, if you will, a deal sweetener with your standard 2D type of deals and request for proposals. So it’s helping us with 2D capital as well.

Matt S. Miksic – Piper Jaffray, Inc.

And is it fair to say just having that, being in front of accounts with that is maybe sort of putting you into more situations to drive growth in some of the other products as well?

Joseph J. Corasanti

Exactly. Yeah, and so we’ve got the sales force. Pretty excited about the fact they’ve got the 3D system to pull through their endomechanical products and some other disposables. It gives an opportunity. It’s a door opener to get into some accounts that might not otherwise be invited into for customers that have enjoyed the use of robotic surgery products that come with 3D technology.

We think there is opportunity to offer both customers 3D technology who want to do standard laparoscopic surgery with it, all right, who have just tried the robot and maybe feel that they don’t need the robot any longer, but they still don’t want to give up 3D technology. We have that offering for them now. So we think that’s an opportunity as well.

Matt S. Miksic – Piper Jaffray, Inc.

I don’t want to make too much of this and there’s a lot of other things obviously going on in your business, but I mean, the place where you fit in and what has become a little bit of a debate between sort of the endoscopic approach to general surgery and the recent push into that segment by some of the larger robotic surgery players. I mean I know that was some of the rationale, Joe, for doing this deal was that you offered this sort of mid-ground alternative. But, I mean, it feels like from a distance that that’s a hot debate among I guess purchasing managers, CEOs and clinicians. Are you finding that you are getting pulled into that this sort of first half?

Joseph J. Corasanti

I don’t believe we’re being pulled into the debate. I think we’re just simply being offered an opportunity to show 3D technology to customers who have previously enjoyed the benefits of 3D, and one of the benefits of 3D in laparoscopic surgery is time savings and we’ve heard reports now from the field that it can save up to 30 minutes sometimes in certain laparoscopic procedures when you’re doing standard laparoscopic surgery without robotic systems. So that, I guess, we’re just looking at the upside rather. We haven’t looked at any negatives, and I don’t think the negatives really presented themselves to us just yet, very, very new to us. So here we are.

Matt S. Miksic – Piper Jaffray, Inc.

Well, yes, just to be clear, I mean I pulled that in a good way, not as part of the solution maybe. But that’s helpful. On utilization trends I think, Rob, you mentioned a craniofacial product that was discontinued. I understand the OU.S. pressure. Can you talk, maybe quantify the impact of the craniofacial product in terms of the impact in the quarter or how much longer it would impact the growth there? And what other U.S. factors are you seeing?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Well, that one particular product line, Matt, was under $100 million of sales in the second quarter last year. We had no sales at that particular line this year. So that, I mean, marginally that was a factor in the softness in the orthopedic group and we decided that it just wasn’t profitable for us to maintain that business and that’s why we’ve discontinued it. I don’t think any other factors in the United States have changed it all from our general – from our comments in the past and what we said this morning. We see general stability, if not weakness, in procedures.

New products, I think are well doing for us. But in some of the products areas, which are tried and true, more of a commodity-based than the actual number of procedures being done such as mechanical shaver blades, we’re seeing declines in that particular business, because of a number of procedures that are being done. So, all I think that the economy is still affecting us and we would like get back to higher percentage growth rates here. Some of the new products that Joe mentioned or alluded to, a few moments ago, I think will help us as we go into the future, but we need the economy to help us as well.

Joseph J. Corasanti

And I think the most interesting information for us is to hear about, essentially European governments limiting the procedures that are allowed to be performed in a given quarter, given year. Mandated slowdowns in surgical procedures, that is a bit troubling for us. We don’t think it’s a permanent situation, but for the time being at recent, say, first and second quarter that was something that is very interesting to us.

Matt S. Miksic – Piper Jaffray, Inc.

And to drill down, Rob, just a little further on that slowness, these are things like ACL repair, meniscal repair, your sort of bread-and-butter sports medicine procedures?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Well, that will be right. Our shoulder business still continues to expand. But I think that’s becaseu some of the new products, very frankly, and the pricing. So we are probably taking a little bit of market share result. It’s hard for me to determine whether it’s procedures or what’s happening on procedures exactly there because the shoulder business is growing. The knee business is a little bit weaker and that maybe just due to procedure growth frankly.

Matt S. Miksic – Piper Jaffray, Inc.

Okay. And one on Altrus, just to clarify, Joe. I didn’t understand whether you were saying that by midyear you’d be on track to hit the middle of the range you had laid out for 2013 or whether at midyear you feel like you are on track.

Joseph J. Corasanti

No, we know that we’re on track to give guidance for the year, yes.

Matt S. Miksic – Piper Jaffray, Inc.

Okay. And any color there on what the supply performance has been like or what you see as the key catalyst to continuing to hit that number?

Joseph J. Corasanti

Well, supply is very good. Performance remains very good. We continue to get very good reports regarding the non-stick performance of Altrus and we’re finding that in certain procedures. It’s truly the preferred device because the competitive device is just simply don’t perform as well in certain procedures.

The key for us in growing this business is to continue to have surgeons identify Altrus as the preferred device not – so we need clinical preference, not just clinical acceptance. So what happens and as probably goes back this will be a comment that was probable applicable 12 months ago or eight months ago or so would be that our sales force would seek clinical acceptance from their surgeon customers. And so, then when you get in front of materials management, well, then the decision is completely in materials manager’s hand, and so they compare two products that are clinical acceptable and they just start talking about price at that point. So we really need to drive clinical preference without surgeon customers and we’re doing that now.

Matt S. Miksic – Piper Jaffray, Inc.

Okay. Rob, on the SG&A line, you talked a few times earlier in the year and today about the investment in sales. Can you quantify that in terms of basis points or dollars annualized or in the quarter?

Joseph J. Corasanti

Matt, we’ll have to do that because there’s lot of moving parts. So let me just say that we have added sales people in our organization, particularly in the Sports Tissue & Biologics area and I think that’s been helpful in seeing growth with the sports medicine tissue products. Internationally, we’ve added people over the course of the last several months. So that accumulates, if you will.

So there’s no one thing to point to a net increase just in general. More sales people, which we think is beneficial in the longer term, as well as our medical education programs that we have. So we’ve expanded that over the last several months. And I think you were there, Matt, when we opened or had the Analyst Day in Largo, Florida at our medical education center, and we’ve also opened one in New York City now. So, longer term we think those things will be very beneficial to us.

Matt S. Miksic – Piper Jaffray, Inc.

And maybe just in terms of percentage increase in the sales heads or the heads approximately to give us an idea?

Joseph J. Corasanti

I don’t know if I have that figure to be honest with you, Matt.

Matt S. Miksic – Piper Jaffray, Inc.

Okay, that’s all right. And then I just have a couple on the cash side. You’ve been repurchasing, as you talked about, you continue to pay a dividend. It would be helpful to maybe just understand is the next change that we see given the environment, Joe, as you described in assets on the market. Is the next significant change we see a strategic investment? Or given the environment and what you’re seeing in the pipeline are you stepping up repurchase? Maybe something on your priority there?

Joseph J. Corasanti

Well, I think the priorities remained the same, absent a really good – to make that strategic, use cash the way we have been using cash for our dividend and buying back stock.

Matt S. Miksic – Piper Jaffray, Inc.

And last, just a clarification on this restructuring cost you mentioned, Rob. Obviously the patent litigation I would imagine is cash that $1 million to $1.5 million. How much of the rest of that is cash?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

The whole thing would be cash. It’s the cost of moving stuff from one place to another and the cost of travel, severance cost. So it’s by and large all cash.

Matt S. Miksic – Piper Jaffray, Inc.

Got it. Thanks so much.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Robert Goldman with CL King. You may proceed.

Robert Goldman – CL King & Associates, Inc.

Joe, it sounded to me as if you lowered your growth expectations on EPS beyond this year. Previously you spoke about 15% annually. Today I heard double-digit. Did you mean to downscale the projection or are we still at 15%?

Joseph J. Corasanti

Our long-term goal is to remain it 15%, and I suppose we just choose to say double-digit today. But thanks for the clarification. We’re with low-single digit top line sales growth we should be able to do. We’ve done in the past, deliver 15% EPS growth.

Robert Goldman – CL King & Associates, Inc.

Are you talking about annually or some annualized period multi-year in the future?

Joseph J. Corasanti

So when I say so. But three years before this year, so 2010, 2011, 2012 on low-single digit top line growth, sales growth we deliver 15% or better EPS growth. So we think we can have that same performance in 2014, 2015, that type of – those are our goals and we think the business is setup and positioned to do that.

Robert Goldman – CL King & Associates, Inc.

Okay, so since you are still looking at 15% earnings per share growth next year, I need some help in getting there. X the medical device excise tax you did about half that in the second quarter. Where are you going to be doubling your growth next year?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Well, on a cost side, as I was mentioning, we’ve made some investments in sales and marketing programs that have caused our SG&A to increase more than it normally would. So from next year, I don’t think we would see those same kinds of increases so on the cost side, from an SG&A perspective, SG&A should remain – I am sure it will go up because of inflation, but it’s not going to be the kinds of increases then we’ve been having.

Therein addition, we expect traction from some of these newer products that Joe alluded to, so a combination of greater topline growth and moderation in SG&A costs.

Robert Goldman – CL King & Associates, Inc.

And give us some anecdotal evidence that increasing the sales force will result in leverage, so that you can ramp up your earnings per share growth?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Well, I think our experience has been in the past Bob where we have added sales people, it just provides greater coverage to our hospital customers on a geographical basis very frankly. So to the extent that there is more time and our sales people can spend with individual customers, we found that that increases the overall performance.

Initially, when we had sales people, they tend to be not as much of a payback, because there is usually extra costs with the new people, we tend to guarantee commissions for a period of time, which is a sunk cost if you will before they really get going with increased sales. So, the investments that we’re making now, we believe will be beneficial to us in future periods.

Robert Goldman – CL King & Associates, Inc.

And then finally on the share repurchases, based on your guidance, your shares will have gone a net from about 28.7 million in the fourth quarter of last year to 27.6 million at the end of this year. What should we expect it to be by the end of next year?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Well, I think for now Bob, we’ve pretty much hit our goal of repurchasing at $50 million. So except for perhaps some small purchase in stock that we anticipate over the next several weeks and months, I’m not expecting the share count to change dramatically from the, let’s say 27.5 million, 27.6 million that you mentioned.

We’ll continue to review that obviously based upon the cash flow of the business and whatever may happen on an acquisition front, but for now, I’d say that our goal would be to pay our dividends, review acquisitions and to the extent that there is casual October then think about stock repurchases.

Robert Goldman – CL King & Associates, Inc.

So at this juncture there is no target for share repurchases for next year?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Correct.

Robert Goldman – CL King & Associates, Inc.

Okay. That’s it.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brad Evans with Heartland. You may proceed.

Brad A. Evans – Heartland Advisors, Inc.

Joe, Rob, good morning.

Joseph J. Corasanti

Good morning, Brad.

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Good morning, Brad.

Brad A. Evans – Heartland Advisors, Inc.

How are you guys doing?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Good, kind of cold.

Brad A. Evans – Heartland Advisors, Inc.

Get well, I just want to preface my question by just applauding the management and the Board of CONMED. I think you guys have done an admirable job of pulling the levers that you have in front of you, being proactive on the cost front, taking costs out. The dividend I think was a huge step in the right direction and we just applaud that. The share repurchase program, I think that the organic growth obviously has been – I think we are all frustrated by that, but there have been some internal missteps to be fair, but the macro hasn't been terribly conducive either.

So the bottom line is that I think you all have done a great job and the question that I have really is, you look at how the Company is valued in the public markets today and so on a forward basis maybe next year you are trading less than call it 7 times, 7.5 times forward EBITDA, I mean its silly season in medical device M&A these days, guys.

I mean we are seeing multiples that are routinely 14 times, 15 times EBITDA. And you guys have an incredibly valuable franchise that I think the public markets are just massively mispricing. And I guess the question I have for you all is – I mean this very respectfully because I just – I want to understand what your thoughts are. But I just wonder why it’s not in the shareholder's best interest to maybe, hire a bank and see whether a strategic surface that would rectify the 50% or greater discount of the company is currently bearing in the public markets versus what the private markets might bear?

So I don't mean to be – this is not a bombastic or confrontational question, I am just curious what your thoughts are and why that’s not the path we should go down?

Joseph J. Corasanti

Well, we don’t know if that’s not the path we should go down. It’s a question for our board. And the strategists are well aware of the company as we are well aware of strategists and I am assuming well the companies do what we do and now we routinely look at other companies and I guess the plan is to sort down, but the opportunity always exist, I mean for anything to happen. And I am not as accelerated by hiring a banker or doing anything else. So, but again, its kind of difficult, so I think to talk about that on an earnings conference call, just for our board to discuss, and I really will prefer to leave it at that. I guess I’m really not prepared to talk about that at this point and I don’t know if this is the right kind of a topic for our quarterly earnings conference call.

Brad A. Evans – Heartland Advisors, Inc.

Well, you guys keep on doing the right things that you’re doing and hopefully if that valuation discount will rectify itself, it’s a massive dislocation relative to the private market, so keep up the good work you guys, we appreciate it.

Joseph J. Corasanti

Thank you. Brad, the only thing I guess I would add is that we have seen a very nice appreciation in our share price over the last 12 months. And so I do think we’re getting recognized. I wish our bottom-line earnings were increasing substantially like we think they and we’ve talked about headwinds. But even with minor increases in our earnings, I think the stock is appreciated quite nicely. So I think we’re getting recognized in the public market and I think our board does take that into consideration when they look at what the future appreciation might be just running the business as we’re doing.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jim Sidoti with Sidoti & Company. You may proceed.

James Sidoti – Sidoti & Company

Good morning.

Joseph J. Corasanti

Good morning.

James Sidoti – Sidoti & Company

It’s kind of tough to follow Brad's question, but I will give it a shot. Last six quarters or so you've done a real good job with MTF. And I am just curious, are there other opportunities with MTF or possibly other firms to distribute biologic materials?

Joseph J. Corasanti

Yeah, the MTF partnership has been very good for us. We’re very happy to have that, it’s been working out extremely well for us. We’ve had some growth in this quarter. We had our recent review from our international organizations that they’re beginning the sales process for the Cascade product, which is that PRP product. So that – it’s registered in our international and foreign countries and so that will present some up sight for us as well. But nothing surfaced so far, Jim regarding any other biologics you never know. I can’t say, we’re spending lot of time seeking other things out in that area but nothing surfaced so far, but something if something does, we’d probably take a look.

James Sidoti – Sidoti & Company

I guess the other part of that was, is there anything else that MTF has now that they are looking for a distribution partner for?

Joseph J. Corasanti

Now that we’re aware of and they have several distribution partners for others tissue, now we have – just to remind everyone on the call, we have the exclusive right to promote and sell the sports tissue in biologics and they have partnerships for derma and I believe neural, spine, or other area. So, I think they’ve got most of their partnerships taking care of.

James Sidoti – Sidoti & Company

Okay. And then as you look ahead, you mentioned some weakness in US procedure rates and also some weakness with government budgets overseas. Of the two, which one do you think is most likely to start to turn around first, the U.S. situation or the European situation?

Joseph J. Corasanti

I probably would imagine that the European situation turns around first. I think that what we’ll see there and we’ve seen this in the past as there is a backlog of procedures and well once case comes to mind and that was in the UK about five years ago and that had huge, huge backlog of – I think I was shifting new procedures and they ended up, in fact, they ended up bringing in surgeons from South Africa and they set up a special clinic to relieve the backlog of cases that had built up and that was a nice spike in business for us, because we opted in that special clinic with a lot of products. So I would guess that release is our first.

James Sidoti – Sidoti & Company

Okay and thank you.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Mark Landy with Summer Street Research. You may proceed.

Mark Landy – Summer Street Research

Good morning folks and I apologize, I have been juggling three calls this morning. I think just generally an overall question, you've spoken about slowing down of kind of a single use and then this quarter a surprise uptick in capital. In terms of the high deductible plans, et cetera, how should we start thinking about the second half versus the first half? And then, specifically with hospital budgets, you get to the second half of the year and it becomes a use it or lose it capital environment. So, I mean, should we start thinking about the second half of the year being materially stronger than the first half for CONMED or is it just too early to start thinking that way?

Joseph J. Corasanti

Well, do we believe that the second half should be stronger than the first half. It’s a little bit difficult to exactly turn that out between the third and fourth quarters because there is, the third quarters as we mentioned, is always a little bit soft and the fourth quarter tends to be the best. So, between those two quarters, if we total the build together, we do think that the second half should be better than the first, particularly because the first quarter was a much weaker than what we had expected.

So we saw our base come back here in the second. So, but I don’t know if that’s because of just the overall economy or high deductible plans as you mentioned, European controls, all these things are factors that are very difficult for us to forecast.

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Yeah, the only thing I can add is that one thing that is certain is that, in the second half of this year, we will have more experience with lithium ion batteries, our line up product, 3D videos. And so, there is a pipeline for all of that and hopefully we’ve been in recent terms of the 3D capital items and closed some of the deals and pipelines and then of course just staying more attractions with batteries and line up, some of the other products that we’ve launched.

Mark Landy – Summer Street Research

So I guess as I am looking at the second half of this year, suppose I look at my model and perhaps some of the guidance that you have given, with the single use probably leading the way versus capital products. Should we think about perhaps capital being more of a contributor versus single use products as you were entering the year and looked at this new way of reporting? Or do you still think that single use is going to significantly outperform capital products as contributors grow?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

No, I think that there is some likelihood of the capital products, that might do better than what we had anticipated at the beginning of the year. We’ve got the Viking systems, 3D systems, and the lithium ion battery as Joe mentioned. So I think that those gain traction, we could see benefit in the capital products. That as I mentioned, it’s a very volatile area, a few transactions of $1 million, $2 million each can definitely skew the percentages.

Mark Landy – Summer Street Research

And then with respect to Altrus, how much of that is product replacements or being caught up in the product cycle versus the hospitals willing to just buy the new equipments?

Joseph J. Corasanti

In the case of Altrus’s that’s fixed in our disposable products category. So, there is an energy source, piece of capital but that’s placed with the customer who is using our very expensive single use disposable.

Mark Landy – Summer Street Research

Hence, so basically the use of Altrus essentially isn't – our electrosurgery is kind of getting older, you are placing it and so there is absolutely no kind of product cycle there with respect to placing it?

Joseph J. Corasanti

That’s correct. There is no capital that we’re charging for Altrus.

Mark Landy – Summer Street Research

Okay. And then, Joe, little bit I think on Bob's question kind of looking at to get to the 15%. I guess one of the areas you didn't touch on is kind of the R&D and the regulatory environment. Do you see that picking up much for CONMED or do you think that it's kind of a growth in an R&D budget that is slower than the overall revenue growth?

Joseph J. Corasanti

Well, the R&D budget as everyone recognized has come down slightly over the last three years. We are still getting really good production on of our R&D group. So it’s simply much more efficient. We’re developing the right products and we’re getting them right the first time out to market. So, I just think we’re doing a better job of less dollars in R&D.

We’re also getting and we’re focusing our attention on some of the products that are already launched and getting those products registered in countries faster and China is a great example, you know the registration process there is one year and we haven’t done a great job there. In the past, we’ve had some starts and stops, so it’s getting parts registered there. So we have a number of new products and I am telling about products that have been launched three years ago, they’re not still not been sold in China. We’ll have to dig there for us and so we need to get that correct. We’re doing that. So again that just improves the return on investment that we made for our R&D efforts.

Mark Landy – Summer Street Research

All right, so you spoke a little bit about regulatory, but what about kind of the QC QA side with Global Harmonization Act, et cetera, given that you are global? How does the budget for that kind of look relative to what it has been because that certainly – the cost there certainly should be going up?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Yeah, you’re correct in pointing that out. We have increased the size of our QA department for the corporation and again it’s more focus on registrations. I think we were a little bit behind in that area and we paid the price there, because we have not had new products being sold in some of these growth markets, emerging markets if you will, I mean even Brazil, it’s a great market for us. We had tremendous growth on Brazil. We could be doing better if we get some product register there, in China and some other Asian countries.

Mark Landy – Summer Street Research

In terms of Brazil, I mean you didn’t mentioned, did you have any products that have been brought since through Europe under country of origin versus capacity, well they all being approved through now the CONMED and (inaudible) system?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

No, I think it’s the latter, I don’t recall bringing anything in under European type of approval.

Mark Landy – Summer Street Research

Okay, so there is no rest to any other products in Brazil, just basically upgrading of their regulatory environment.

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Not that we are aware of.

Mark Landy – Summer Street Research

Okay, that’s all. Thanks very much.

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Thanks.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Dale Dutile with The Boston Company. You may proceed.

Dale A. Dutile – The Boston Company Asset Management LLC

Good morning, can you hear me.

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Yeah, fine Dale.

Dale A. Dutile – The Boston Company Asset Management LLC

Census brought up earlier, I just want to confirm my understanding, the lion share of what you call amortization is really related to equipment placed in the hospital, it gets amortized, I’d called depreciation, but you called it amortization over a period of time. Is that correct?

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Yes, that’s right.

Dale A. Dutile – The Boston Company Asset Management LLC

But, it doesn’t hit capital expenditures, it hits your working capital accounts.

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Its effects inventory, yes.

Dale A. Dutile – The Boston Company Asset Management LLC

Inventory, so even though it last longer than a year, it’s considered inventory as a current asset.

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Correct. If we get the equivalent back, we made solid…

Dale A. Dutile – The Boston Company Asset Management LLC

Right.

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

It’s just like historically how we’ve done that.

Dale A. Dutile – The Boston Company Asset Management LLC

But I mean, generally amortization is a non-cash expense type of thing, but really this is a cash expense, it just gets amortized over few years, so I would argue that your EBITDA multiple is actually higher than it looks along the surface because of the cash expense that people are considering non-cash and it doesn’t hit CapEx, if you adjust for that, I would argue, your EBITDA multiple of 0.5 to 2 points higher than what it looks. So I just want to make sure my understanding of the accounting treatment is correct.

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Well, you are absolutely correct on the accounting treatment, I think that – I guess you and I have talked about this in the past and I had arguments going the other way, which none of which come to mind at the moment.

Dale A. Dutile – The Boston Company Asset Management LLC

Right. If it is equipment that you're placing that's going to last a few years it probably should be considered CapEx and so, we could think of cash flow as either free cash, but EBITDA – I mean it is like getting included nowhere. There is a real cash expense you are spending on an ongoing basis, it's not picked up in EBITDA and it's not picked up in free cash flow, if people look, it's not in your CapEx.

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

It isn’t free cash flow, because…

Dale A. Dutile – The Boston Company Asset Management LLC

Right, but not EBITDA.

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

But not EBITDA, yeah.

Dale A. Dutile – The Boston Company Asset Management LLC

Okay. It is unique.

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

Take a look at the cash flow statement. You will see that inventory was a negative item in the working capital section of the income statement.

Dale A. Dutile – The Boston Company Asset Management LLC

Exactly, right. And it is (inaudible).

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

But inventory dollars are actually down in this quarter, which were typically mean that we have plus to the cash flow statement, the difference is the amortization.

Dale A. Dutile – The Boston Company Asset Management LLC

All right. Fair enough. Okay, it's a little trickier than most and I think it gets hidden and it is ignored if you're just looking at EBITDA. And it is a big number every quarter, every year it is more than $10 million. So I just wanted to clarify my understanding. Thank you.

Robert D. Shallish Jr.

That’s okay.

Operator

There no further questions in the queue at this time, I’d now like to turn the call over to Joe Corasanti, Chief Executive Officer for closing remarks. Please proceed.

Joseph J. Corasanti

I’d like to thank everyone for joining us today on CONMED’s second quarter earnings conference call. We look forward to talking to your for the third quarter conference call. Thank you very much. Goodbye.

Operator

Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.

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