Koninklijke Philips N.V. (NYSE:PHG) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And I know you don’t want to comment on the specific products that were withdrawn on Friday. But given the quantum and the previous breakdown of revenue from these products it seems like a fairly sizable headwind, particularly, in the first couple of quarters next year when maybe you don’t have the tailwinds coming through in revenue. So how should we be thinking about that H2 weighting that Abhijit just referred to for 2024? Thank you.

Roy Jakobs: Yes. Let me take the first one. On the €81 million in charge that we took. So as I said when we start to plan patient safety and quality is an important focus area for us and we will put in new efforts to actually improve quality across the portfolio. That actually is where these charges reside from because we are also taking action across all our businesses. And in this case it was in the D&T area that we took the quality action and that is part of the improvement of quality. We also signaled that as part of the plan. We would invest behind that. These are some of these charges that you currently see coming through.

Abhijit Bhattacharya: Regarding the adjustment of 100 bps so let me clarify there are two parts. One is related to the consent decree where we have running costs of the remediation. The second that we mentioned is regarding overall remediation in Respiratory Care, but also for the rest of the company. Now part of that is the legal costs will continue. There is some testing costs that will continue. So, yes, we are at 99% on the remediation of sleep. There is a very small potion that is left. We still have to do the ventilators for which we have a provision now. But let’s say, the last part of the legal costs and testing and other related costs will continue into next year. Your last question was on, yeah, the sizable headwinds.

I also saw it in your note you talked about €400 million of headwinds. I think Roy has clarified the €1 billion is the bottom that we see that was the revenue for 2023 and that is the bottom. So we don’t see any further headwinds to that revenue number going forward. And in our outlook, all of this is taken into consideration.

Graham Doyle: Okay. Super helpful. Maybe just on the — at that point the last point on the €1 billion of Sleep & Respiratory. You have given us plenty of disclosure in the past, so we can kind of reasonably estimate what masks is. It gets us to a number of €700 million or something in that region for all of the other non-mask non-sleep revenue in this division. And if I just go to the US website pretty much every product has been removed by the BiPAP’s which you’re now not selling. So, like it just seems like a large number. Even if it’s half that number, or half of that number, it’s still a big number. That’s why I’m asking, it is there something that we’re missing in terms of sales that’s coming from a different part of Sleep & Respiratory that we either overlook or analysts have overlooked? That will be quite helpful to know and that obviously helps to bridge that 25 gap.

Roy Jakobs: Yeah. Maybe, Graham, so first let me start from what Abhijit said, right? So the €1 billion that’s the number that we built back from. When we talk about digital role to compliance, we saw business that’s where we start from. What you see of course is there are mix shift underneath. We already stopped selling a lot in US, right? So, actually we are building there from already a base that actually was out there, right? We continue with patient interface which was the biggest part which already was in the forecast including consumables and accessories. Furthermore, as you know, we are building back outside of the US, right? So that’s something that comes actually on top of what we’re doing because that was not in the earlier guidance.

So, I think, yes, we have published a list of pruning products, but that’s not part of kind of lowering guidance. No. Actually, we have taken that into the guidance, and we will be building back from here. So, I think that’s where we just really want to be clear that, there should be no misunderstanding that, a, we have taken all in the guidance. So, actually, we delivered 3% to 5% including the pruning that we did in SRC but also the pruning that we did in other businesses, b, that we have reached the bottom and we will build back. So we will make sure we comply as well as that we further restore the business, and what we also said Koninklijke as we will Koninklijke have not included this as part of our guidance and the plan 2023, 2025. We will not go into the specific breakdowns per product line of a business, because that’s what we don’t do in any business.

And it should also not be of your concern as actually reiterated that we have a strong outlook right, and that we are committed to deliver that 3% to 5% growth that profit further step up to 11% to 11.5% and the cash which is a really important focus area. You saw that, we are very much focused on that. We had a very strong close on cash and we will continue that cash discipline moving forward. That totality of Philips that actually we see strengthening and we will after a strong first year where we over delivered on our plan significantly versus what we came out with in January, we want to continue that performance trajectory in 2024.

Graham Doyle: I’m sorry. Abhijit go ahead.

Abhijit Bhattacharya: The cost of repetition, Roy mentioned earlier pruning parts of our portfolio is something that we have been doing for a while also to focus on our high-growth drivers and to get our innovations out there and put scale behind our winning products. So, maybe there is a heightened sense of sensitivity around the pruning in Sleep & Respiratory but just look at it as part of stuff that we do across the portfolio, across the company.

Graham Doyle: No. That’s really helpful. I follow-up for just to make sure I haven’t misunderstood. Thanks a lot guys.

Roy Jakobs: Sure. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Sezgi Ozener from HSBC. Please go ahead.

Sezgi Ozener: I’m so sorry about a few seconds ago. I hope you can hear me now. I will have two questions please and thanks for taking them. One of them on the Respiratory Care portfolio. You said you will — I mean you disclose about this continuation of the sales of these products. You had said in the past that in order to deal with the recall you had quadrupled capacity of CPAP, PPAP production. I know you’ve been undergoing a lot of changes restructuring how much of that capacity has been built away? Or will you — how much of that will you be able to utilize in OUS sales or in other products? And if we think about long-term profitability of Connected Care, my impression was that Sleep & Respiratory Care had higher profitability than patient monitoring.

How does that impact your long-term margins for these segments? And my second question will be, you’re showing much lower inventory levels in all of your segments at the end of year-end. Do you expect further downsize or are these inventory levels sustainable? Will they or should we pencil in some rise going forward?