Mentice AB

STO:MNTC

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q1

[Unknown Executive]

Welcome, our attendees, to Mentice first quarter report. My name is Magdalena, and I will be moderating this call. I will give the word to our CEO, Göran Malmberg, who will take you through this presentation. [Operator Instructions] And with that, I will say welcome to Göran Malmberg, please, [ presentate ].

[Göran Malmberg, Group CEO & President]

Thank you so much, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining this call. So it will be a pleasure to present the first quarter earnings, which we are pleased with. So we can move into the slides immediately and get going. So please move to the next slide. Thank you. This is just a disclaimer. So a picture of me. So -- all right. So I mean -- [ I meant to say ] we are very pleased with the performance during the first quarter, considering the difficult times we are in. So we had a strong -- overall strong quarter in terms of sales and -- orders and sales. Our medical device industry sector kind of performed 80% above or 84% to be exact above the same period last year. Part of this is orders that was moved from last year. But I think generally, we saw a very good interaction with the segment for the first quarter. And we don't really see any direct impact from COVID-19, at least not in the beginning of the quarter. For the hospital sales, the healthcare systems, teaching segment, as we call it, with the sales to hospitals worldwide, we -- that's really where we see the impact of the COVID-19. So we have a slower sales on this segment. But we are able -- or we were able to compensate that from very strong sales in the 2 other segments. So we saw, as I said in the report, we saw in the beginning of the quarter, a large impact from APAC and then in the later part of the first quarter going into March, we saw that, that also moved to the western world, the U.S. and Europe, and that's going to continue. We can see that, and I'll talk a little bit more about that further on. On the strategics alliances side. So our segment where we interact with and sell through Siemens and Philips and Laerdal, we had a very strong first quarter, which is up 160% compared to the same period last year. Also in the beginning of the second quarter in April or the beginning of May, we received a couple of more orders, the most significant one from a hospital system in Berlin called Charité, it is one of the largest university hospitals in Europe, where we receive an order for -- or Siemens received an order for 3 new cath labs, including the Mentice capability. So that's a very good sign, and we will see that this segment is picking up very, very nicely. From the technology side. We had a launch in the beginning of the quarter. We had another one in the end quarter. But really, we are preparing for a lot of interesting launches -- product launches for the second quarter now. The COVID-19 has clearly impacted us. We -- I think that we have been acting proactively at -- early on in a good way. We have seen the effects of the costs restructuring we have done, and I will explain that. Obviously, the immediate effect we're seeing in Q1 is related to the lack of travel or the travel bans and the fact that the Congress is not happening, but there is an immediate effect. But we also have worked a lot to slow down on the use of consultants and also generally looking at our cost structure. We are not reducing our workforce because I mean, as we say in the report, we don't really have less things to do. We have as much to do as ever. So we really need our people. But despite that, we have been able to reduce costs. We are, for Q1, at the same level cost level as last year with higher sales. And we will see a larger effect of those actions going into second quarter and also next couple of quarters. So yes, let's move to the next slide. So these are just a summary of the numbers here. So from an order intake, we were up 30%-ish, SEK 32.5 million versus SEK 25.1 million. And you can see on the rolling 12, we are above the full year 2019, which is a good indication. And obviously, with the COVID situation, we are extremely pleased with that kind of performance. On the next slides, similarly, we are up to SEK 33.8 million compared to SEK 27.5 million. And you can see there as well that the rolling 12 is also above the full year 2019. The operating result is an effect of -- even if we have increased our workforce quite significantly over the last year, with the changes of costs structure we have done and the kind of reduction of travel and such, we have been managing to be way more balanced. And you can see we are just SEK 0.5 million negative on the operating result compared to SEK 8 million negative or SEK 7.9 million for the same period last year. And same thing here on the rolling 12, we are significantly better compared to the full year 2019. Cash-wise, we were at SEK 43 million so -- which is also the same as the rolling 12. That's above last year, but that's not fair, really, because we had a cash injection for -- during the IPO last year. But we are burning cash, but not significant amount of cash. So we're pretty pleased with our cash position as well. All right. Let's move to the next slide. So if you look for the second quarter, as I say, we -- the corrective action that we implemented for COVID-19 will give more effect here in the second quarter. We have also implemented a kind of reduction of work hours for the month of May. So right now, we will also continue with that for at least 1 month in next quarter. And that gave the direct effect the -- on our cost levels, obviously. We're also obviously applying for the supplements provided by the main governments where we have people, mainly in Sweden and U.S. So that will have some effect as well. So that is obviously what we do. But we can also see that we very, very early on, communicated our willingness to find solutions in this difficult times. And if we look at the situation in the market, and this affects obviously both our direct hospital clients, but it's also indirectly -- or it affects our medical device clients as well who also sell to the hospital market. But the lack of the downtown (sic) [ downtime ] for elective procedures is really also causing the ability for health care professionals to get relevant practice, both for experienced people and team, but even so for junior kind of doctors in training. So in the rest of the world, we call it -- fellows and residents here in Sweden call [indiscernible] doctors. So they typically have training in the clinical practice, and that is not possible at this time. In many cases, the lack of protective equipment just really limits the ability for any of the students to be part of the clinical practice. So here we see an ability to really increase the use of simulation training during these times, both for junior kind of health care professionals, but also the argument here is similar to what we see in the aerospace industry, where obviously, pilots being on the ground for a couple of months and preparing for when flights will start occurring and they need to be ready and they need to be up to speed when this happens again, and I think the same argument goes here for the health care sector. So that's actually been working out very well, and we've got very positive feedback on that, and that's really helping out. What we also have done, which I think I mentioned in the report is that we have rolled out kind of complementary technology really to our clients, our active clients, for kind of conducting web meetings similar to this one, but also including the actual simulator. So the ability for all our clients to perform training with our simulators online. So we have provided the web camera technology and also software licenses that lasts for those kind of remote activities, which also been very -- can receive very -- in a very positive way. It's obviously very difficult to assess the impact of COVID-19 fully for both the second quarter and the year, and we're not doing that. I mean we saw during March that the -- or in April that everything changes really by the day. So it's really, really very difficult to see. I mean right now, we see that the device industry segment and the strategic alliances segment is moving on in a nice way, and the difficulty we have is on the hospital side. We are creating sales on hospital side and we are making headway. I mean Asia Pacific is opening up slowly or at least part of Asia Pacific. So we expect China to move back. I mean we can't travel in China, we can't meet clients in China, same thing in kind of Japan. While other parts of Asia is obviously still very difficult, like kind of India and the other places, where you're probably going in the kind of other direction. But we see positive signs, and we will be able to slowly open up the hospital sector. But it's obviously, as you say, very, very hard to understand what's going to happen tomorrow. What else? I mean we're continuing very good dialogues with the different societies in the world. I mean we had the kind of contract and agreement with the German society for radiology during the last quarter of last year, but we're continuing with similar dialogues with multiple societies both here in Europe and the U.S.. And I think we will see a lot of things happening here in -- for the next year with that, which is very positive for the use of our products. What else? So as I said, we have several -- both hardware and software launches for -- planned for this quarter and also later part of the year. But I mean I think what we will launch now in May and June in this quarter will have a good effect of our client interaction, market interaction. On the medical device industry, we see -- still see that we get a lot of good feedback on the work we do with patient-specific simulation also related to new imaging modalities around ultrasound. We were just typically geared that structural procedures. That's a very, very promising area, and the technology that we have is extremely strong. So that's something that we continue to see a lot of opportunities popping up, initially, mostly with medical device industry, but I think eventually with the hospital side there as well. All right. We can move to the next one which is actually the last slide before the questions. So maybe I'm moving too -- faster, but we'll give you an opportunity to ask questions. So as I said, we will avoid doing any prognosis for the full year due to the pandemic. But I have to state, and we say that in the report, that we are very positive towards the mid- and long-term development here. I mean we are moving in the right direction. We get very good feedback on the directional strategy we have, which we outlined last year during the kind of IPO and we worked on that for many years, obviously. But that is really very comforting in terms of the longer-term development. And we also see that the strategic alliances collaboration here is finally picking up. I mean we expected to see some of that in last year. But we really see now that this is picking up. So we believe that a lot of the drop we, unfortunately, will see in the hospital side, I think we will compensate with the increases for -- with sales from these partners. So this is really picking up in a good way, and we started off the year in a very positive way here. We also did -- with -- this is something that we will talk more about going on, but we have a commitment from kind of Corindus as well here with the robot-assisted surgery, which is now a division of Siemens. That's something we will talk more about going forward, which is also very positive. So yes. I mean overall, I made this short and sweet. I think we are, say, very pleased with the performance we have for the first quarter and also going into this next quarter. I think with the situation and with circumstances around the pandemic, I think we have managed to adopt fully situations and really move in a very good way. We are very agile in terms of our cost structures. We managed to keep that to the level of a year ago despite the increased [ organization ], I think is a good achievement. And I'd say we have really good collaboration in the marketplace and also solid pipeline. But again, I mean from day to day, you don't really know what's going to happen here with respect to the COVID pandemic. So that makes it very difficult. I mean you're driving blindfolded, almost, here. But anyway, positive signs, positive outcome, I think, and we are plugging away in -- as good way as possible here and have a very good view of the future for Mentice. So with that, maybe move to the next slide, again, so the image I don't like on myself. So open up for questions, Magdalena.

[Unknown Executive]

[Operator Instructions] If you have any questions for Elisabet Lund, our CFO or to Göran. Okay. We have a question here from [ Johan ] [indiscernible].

[Unknown Analyst]

Can you hear me?

[Göran Malmberg, Group CEO & President]

Yes. I can hear you. Thank you.

[Unknown Analyst]

It's good. It's good for you as well that it can work from the distance.

[Göran Malmberg, Group CEO & President]

Yes.

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes. A few questions. The OpEx was very much in line with last year, that's pretty comforting. You're taking more actions, as you said, but what -- and I guess,even if the visibility for the full year is very low, as you stated, realistically, the expectations for Q2 should be low, as it's pretty much the peak of disturbances even if it's sort of easing a bit. But anyway, what can we expect in terms of OpEx for Q2? Should it be lower quarter-on-quarter and lower compared to last year? Or what should we expect?

[Göran Malmberg, Group CEO & President]

Yes. [ With respect ], Elisabet, would you want to answer that?

[Elisabet Lund, Chief Financial Officer]

As Göran mentioned here, we are taking corrective actions to lower the cost. So that is the expectation, at least for the upcoming quarter where we already see effects of the savings or the cut downs. But again, going forward, it's harder to say. It depends on the situation where everything else is going. So -- but yes, the answer is yes to that.

[Göran Malmberg, Group CEO & President]

But we can say, [ Johan ], that the actions we have taken with the reduced work hours, both for ourselves and external consultants, we have also -- we have the -- a part of our development performed by consultants, which makes it obviously easier to scale up and down. And we have moved down on the use of resource consultants for the second and third quarters. So that's also having an effect. We expect that we will get back to a little bit more like normal after the summer, September and onwards. It's -- again, it's impossible to say. But in the current prognosis we have, we have assumed that we will have slightly higher cost again going into the end of the third quarter, so September and the rest of the year, but we might need to continue also for the remainder of the year. But as it looks like right now, both Q2 and Q3 will have lower OpEx compared to both Q1 and the same period for last year.

[Unknown Analyst]

That's detailed feedback. And what about medical device? It was clearly rather strong in Q1, and the impression from the call and the Q1 announcement is that you're more concerned about the hospital side, teaching. What -- is it -- could you say anything on the medical device outlook for Q2 and Q3?

[Göran Malmberg, Group CEO & President]

Yes. I mean the products we have, in many cases, I wouldn't say all cases, but in many cases, are related to planned product launches. And typically, we start those projects 6 to 12 months before an actual launch. So at least so far -- and I'm being careful here, the medical device companies have not generally postponed their product launches, at least the one that are maybe 6 months ahead and more. So that -- those projects are still going on, and we have a large pipeline of those kind of projects, both for this quarter and next quarter and the fourth quarter. So yes. I mean we see that continuing. We have had just a couple of situations for medical device now in the first 4 months of this year where they specifically have said that they are cautiously moving their investment forward before the development of the COVID side. So that's happened in this specific situation. But generally, people are preparing and moving on because they don't want to lose time to market with new product launches.

[Unknown Analyst]

That's the more advanced launch projects. It's still reasonably robust in the outlook. And what about the dynamics then for the medical device projects that are being launched in this situation? Is the simulation support used in a different way than normal?

[Göran Malmberg, Group CEO & President]

Yes. The -- that is -- yes. I mean both -- yes. So I mean both the one that require clinical studies, things like that, those are obviously very difficult to conduct in this period of time. So the early stage where you have actually the studies in progress or plans, that is more difficult. That -- there, we might see some delays and have seen some delays. With ongoing projects and sales, I mean people are trying to use our simulators, and I think a lot of our clients have done that very effectively. And we have done as well to do a lot of remote activities like webinars, web-based training, also situation where they actually send a simulator to the clients and have the client run a session with people being online, looking at it all the other way around, the device company running the session. Also, a lot of our clients is spending a lot of time with internal training. We have several activities over the last month, where we have had more than 50 people from a single device company participating in a specific webinar. So we are doing that as well. We're doing 1 webinar in Europe in the morning and 1 webinar in the U.S. in the afternoon every day, where we invite clients to get training and information on specific products. So clearly, they need to adapt and change because there's no one in the world right now, besides maybe parts of Asia and China, where you are -- have the possibility to meet doctors and clients face-to-face.

[Unknown Analyst]

Is this an opportunity that you can -- in this situation, can you offer solutions in a difficult -- different way? Perhaps sort of test trials? Or sort of marketing or -- to increase engagement, the usage of these solutions?

[Göran Malmberg, Group CEO & President]

Yes. We are offering -- or we are conducting those dialogues. We haven't seen -- we haven't been able to close any projects with that argumentation. But clearly, that is a discussion we're having both on the hospital side and the industry side, what we can do with simulation. I really see simulation as an opportunity during these difficult times. I mean as the example I said, I think is the most promising one -- prominent one, with fellows in U.S., for instance, where everyone knows that the bulk of the training they get is by overseeing -- not overseeing, but watching expert doctors or experienced doctors performing procedures. And that is not the case now. So I mean they -- this year's graduating fellows in U.S. will not have the same experience that you generally have. So I mean we see a lot of our clients is bumping up simulation activity, try to contract and provide that experience on the simulator instead of in the cath labs.So I think generally, this will change the behavior -- both our behavior, but I think even more so the behavior of our clients. And I think this probably will stay also after the pandemic. I think we have opened our eyes, and our clients have opened their eyes and see that they will find different ways of actually doing this. I'm not sure that was -- answered your question, but...

[Unknown Analyst]

No, that's helpful. And strategic alliances is clearly making significant progress in healthcare systems. Earlier, the impression is that the Siemens partnership collaboration is especially dynamic. Is that part of this positive trend in Q1 as well?

[Göran Malmberg, Group CEO & President]

Yes. I will see -- I mean on the one -- those 3 -- Laerdal has been moving on in a nice way, and they are increasing their sales in a fairly steady, not that fast growing, but it's a steady pace over the last, say, 12 to 18 months. With Philips, we had all of the infrastructure in place only in January, and we see a lot of activities with Philips now, which is very positive. But they have not moved to any actual sales recently. But with Siemens, as you say, they have now started to ship their newest catalog where we have our integration connected to, and that is really moving very, very fast. And yes, so that's the main contributor to the increased sales from the strategic alliances side, and we are -- yes, we are almost on order level now compared to where we were for the full year last year. So it's been a very strong start for that kind of collaboration.

[Unknown Analyst]

And is it possible to say anything on the outlook and visibility? You mentioned robotics already, but for the cath lab side and generally with the Siemens collaboration and is it [ coming ] quarters?

[Göran Malmberg, Group CEO & President]

No. I mean we had a -- I think we doubled the sales from 2018 into '19 for strategic alliances for Siemens and Philips, and we will continue with similar growth into this year. I'm not going to reveal too much I can't deliver on. But yes, so no, I will refrain from giving you some exact growth numbers, but we expect to continue. As I said, we are almost on par with the full year 2019 already now. So I mean 2020 will be a good year for that.

[Unknown Analyst]

I was not expecting detailed figures, but I was thinking more in line on the dynamics, the visibility and the outlook what you can see in terms of -- Q1 was clearly very good with Siemens. Do you have good reason to believe that it's something that you can see in also Q2, Q3?

[Göran Malmberg, Group CEO & President]

Yes. Yes. I mean, so far -- yes. I mean so far as -- it seems like those larger investment from hospitals and to replace a cath lab or to buy new cath lab is still ongoing, and there seems like those longer acquisition cycles are not impacted by COVID-19, at least not to the level of the things that need to start from scratch. So it seems like that will continue, and we have a massive amount of activities together with these partners, Siemens and Philips, that make me comfortable that we will continue to see good progress in the next coming quarters, yes.

[Unknown Executive]

So thank you, [ Johan ] for all those questions. [Operator Instructions] No? there seems to be no further questions. So I guess Göran, that we will wrap this up.

[Göran Malmberg, Group CEO & President]

Okay. I'm grateful for all of you joining, and I hope you share my view that this was a very good report. I'm not sure the market has seen it the same way, but it's interesting times, as we said. But I mean we look with confidence to the future here. So we are keeping our head down and continuing to work. And I'm sure there's going to be a nice [ ride ] for the future here. So thanks a lot for your -- for you that listened in, and we'll come back to you in the next quarter, if not kind of prior. So thanks a lot.

[Elisabet Lund, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you.