Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co. KGaA (NYSE:FMS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Robert Davies: Thank you. My question was just on — just in terms of the clinic closures you’re doing, just if you could give us some sort of idea of the or sort of share a view over an installed base or the overall kind of clinic number that you’re taking out? And is there some sort of ballpark figure per clinic or is it too big of variability as you take this out to get some idea of how much cost would come back? And then one other thing I wanted to just touch on was just, your return on capital employed targets, how do the trends towards home care potentially impact that just from a, kind of I guess, capital employed and equipment standpoint and the way that business would run just a different structure over the medium-term? Thank you.

Helen Giza: Thanks Robert. Yes, in terms of clinic closures, we’re targeting around 50 to 100 in this first wave. And that’s on a base of 2,600 in the US. And it’s a pretty quick payback usually kind of 2-ish, two to three years payback there. So obviously, we’re quickly accelerating that and ensuring that we keep our proportionate patient volumes as well. And then on your second question, in terms of ROIC, I think that was always kind of part of a positive business case here with home that, home should positively impact that, because you don’t need as much kind of capital infrastructure. It’s quite capital-light as you don’t need the clinics and so on. So, I think that’s also why we want to continue to make sure we’re accelerating that and making sure it reaches its full potential.

Robert Davies: Okay. Thank you.

Helen Giza: Thank you.

Operator: In the interest of time, we have to stop the Q&A session, and I hand back to Dominik.

Dominik Heger: So I’m sorry that we couldn’t take all the questions, but we’ll need to catch a plane unfortunately. So I apologize for that one. Thank you for taking the time, and the many interesting questions. That was very helpful. And thank you to Helen for doing that again on her own the third time.

Helen Giza: Thank you, Dominik. Thank you everybody. I appreciate there was a lot of data today, a lot of information to unpack but I appreciate your continued interest and support of Fresenius Medical Care. Have a great day, and we’ll talk to you soon. Take care.

Dominik Heger: Thank you. Bye.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded and you may disconnect. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day.