Alcon Inc. (NYSE:ALC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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David Endicott: Yeah, Larry, actually, now Aerie is up year-over-year and TRx is up year-over-year and share is doing pretty much exactly what we thought so we feel very good about what’s going on there. I think if you look to the TRx’s in particular that’s probably your best indicator of how we’re doing and that’s audited data you could find. I think directionally we continue to be interested in it, but we’re not anxious about it, we’ll be very disciplined going forward about RX. But I do think eye drops is a business that we know well, we’re good at and we’ll continue to kind of over time add things into that portfolio either internally or externally through our own efforts with the Aerie R&D group, which we’re excited about, for example, AR512, we’ll see how that does. But I think directionally beyond that, we can come up with some other good ideas that I think add some real value both I guess organically and externally.

Lawrence Biegelsen: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question is from Matthew Mishan with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Brett Fishman: Hey, guys. This is Brett Fishman on today from Matt. Thanks very much for taking the questions. I know it’s a little late in the call, but just wanted to ask at a high level, if you could walk through a couple of the factors that led to a change in your view of what the market looks like going into the second half? Like what really changed incrementally in the three-month period that gives you more confidence that recent trends can be sustained for the rest of the year?

David Endicott: Well, Matt, I think it’s really just the underlying fundamentals on for example productivity per machine that we’re seeing in surgical. We keep a pretty good eye on what the throughput in ORs is and we can see that pretty visibly because we have a very large share of the cataract equipment. And so, we saw more, we’ve certainly been growing our footprint. So we’re growing equipment share on the ground, but we’re also — we monitor how many procedures per machine is going on and we’re seeing an uplift in that metric. And so, directionally, I think what you’re seeing is what we had hoped for, which was staffing improving and I think directionally ORs getting back to work and that has been what we’ve been kind of counting on it.

So I think we see a little bit of that on the Surgical side. And on the consumer side, we’ve seen a steady movement of a mix return. I think our underlying demand by patient volumes is solid and we were worried in the first half if you go backways. We didn’t see kind of through the first quarter any reason to change our outlook because there was nine months in front of us that lots of things could happen on. I think as we sit here today, we are almost eight months into the year and I think we believe that probably anything that happens even if it was a macro change is manageable inside of the guidance we just gave you. So we’re trending towards the high end of it. And assuming that things kind of continue on, we should be in a really nice spot.

So I think I don’t really see anything right now on the horizon that we should be particularly concerned about affecting demand at the market level.

Brett Fishman: All right. Great. And then just as one quick follow-up on contact lenses. Just curious if you could provide a brief update on how you’re currently thinking about the launch of PRECISION7 and maybe just touch on some of the feedback you’ve gotten from optometrists ahead of that product launch? Thanks very much.

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