Hologic, Inc. (NASDAQ:HOLX) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Casey Woodring: Got it, that’s helpful. And then maybe just if I can sneak one more in on the international piece saw very strong growth there above the fleet average, I think 33%, constant currency in breast. I know, international revenues inherently lower margin. You’ve talked about that before. But curious if you’re doing anything there to drive that contribution margin higher, and investments you’re making outside the US and how should we think about international margin expansion versus the fleet average kind of moving forward? Thank you.

Steve MacMillan: Yes, we’re really proud of what the international team has been doing and looking at selective pricing opportunities. They’ve been very disciplined on the cost side, so that we’re still dilutive. Our international growth is still diluted, certainly to the gross margin, and it touch on the operating margin. But our team’s being very disciplined and try to help lessen that gap over time.

Karleen Oberton: Yes, and I think there’s opportunities as we go direct in key markets, not only do we see better revenue performance, but that is usually typically accretive to the margin line as well.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Derik De Bruin with Bank of America.

Derik Bruin: Hi, good evening. Hey, sorry, I don’t do — I typically don’t do sports references. So I’m, I won’t make one. But just out of, so I know you say that the markets not trench warfare, but I mean, you do have, I mean, you do have really strong competitors in viral load testing and STI testing. How should we sort of think about what your market shares are? And what’s around? Because I mean, clear, I mean, there’s, is it the market? Is the market to the testing or expanding for these? Or are they stagnating? I’m just curious about sort of like market growth? And then can you talk a little bit about what’s your pipeline beyond BV, CV/TV and just, what other sort of like diet, what other sort of like molecular assays can be sort of be added? So it’s question on like, what’s the market expansion opportunities in some of these markets that are more, I would say competitive and hadn’t historically grown a lot? And versus what’s the new pipeline? Thanks.

Steve MacMillan: Hey, Derik, starting on, there certainly as we face very formidable competitors. And there’s a lot of hand to hand combat. The flip side is, and I think it is the piece that people consistently miss, is how much opportunity there is to expand our markets, right? Let’s go to surgical for a moment. Nobody ever would have imagined that MyoSure would have someday gotten to be as big as NovaSure, when we first launched it. And now it dwarfs NovaSure, and is still growing strongly as we’ve come out with BV, CV, BV, CV may become our largest assay, it’s sometimes it’s hard to fully understand the impact in the end size of the market creation that we’re doing. So we just want people to understand it’s hard to fully identify because we’re growing and building these markets.

And when you look at even some of the data that we got from the Global Women’s Health Index, where women’s health sits, and testing sits globally, is still a fraction of what it should be, right? If you consider that only 10% of all women in the world got tested that should for STIs, that alone would say the market is probably 10x. Now, we’re not going to realize that in the next five years either. So to call the total available market, truly 10x because it’s not quite accessible at that level. It’s we’re in between. So, I think the gist is we continue to pioneer new products, new assays, and grow and create these markets over time.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Mike Matson with Needham and Company.

Mike Matson: Yes, thanks. Thanks for taking my questions. I want to follow up on the earlier question just on the gantries in the mammography business side. I understand that you’ve made a number of enhancements and so forth, but I believe the platform’s fairly been around for a while now. So, I mean, is there any, and I know you’re not trying to be a capital focus, boom bust and all that stuff, but it seems like every company’s got a kind of launching new platform every once in a while. So I mean, is that something we could see in the near term maybe?

Steve MacMillan: Yes, completely. So first as a reminder, recall that we did launch our 3D performance and then our 3D. And what we’ve been doing is gradually improving, and working in better imaging, better detection all through. So it’s not like we’re selling a 10 year old product, even though we’d be up at it’s now 10 years, a little 11 years since we got the 3D approved, but we’ve been selling newer products along the way. And having said that, we are working on additional hardware and gantry changes as well, that will evolve here, over the next few years.

Mike Matson: Okay, thanks. So just in and then just on M&A, I think there was another question kind of about, the areas that you’re looking at. But I guess I wanted to ask about just potential size of the deals, because I feel like you’ve kind of hinted or maybe directly commented in the past that you are potentially open to larger deals if you found the right thing. And by larger, I mean kind billion plus.

Steve MacMillan: Yes, I think, we would consider something in that range. If it brings significant revenue, and frankly, EBITDA. So, we’re not going to embark on something of that size for a science project or something early stage or something that’s losing money, I would say, you would only expect us to do something like that we have the capacity. But it would have to be a pretty special asset. There’s not a lot of things, but there are a few things we’re looking at in that range. And we continue to be incredibly disciplined, but it will be established businesses that we think, we can improve upon in terms of their ability to contribute to us. So thank you.