Medtronic plc (NYSE:MDT) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Turning to capital allocation, we continue to prioritize investments and innovation to fuel and sustain our long-term growth. We’re disproportionately investing in some of the fastest growth markets in medtech. And we have a long-standing track record of returning capital to our shareholders, primarily through our strong and growing dividend. And to the extent that we don’t find high growth, high return, tuck in M&A we would expect to return additional capital to our shareholders by retiring shares. Now turning to our guidance. Given our second quarter outperformance and continued strength in our underlying fundamentals, we’re raising our full-year guidance today on both the top and the bottom line. We expect fiscal ‘24 organic revenue growth of 4.75%, an increase from the prior 4.5%.

For the third quarter, we’re expecting organic revenue growth to be in the range of 4% to 4.5%. And while the impact of currency is fluid, based on recent rates, foreign currency would have an unfavorable impact on full-year revenue of $100 million to $200 million, including an unfavorable impact of $0 million to $50 million in the third quarter. On a comp-adjusted basis, our third quarter guidance represents acceleration from the second quarter, and we expect this trend to continue into the fourth quarter, as we’re ramping a number of recent product launches in the back half of the year. In diabetes, we’re projecting the U.S. to return to growth in the second-half of the year on the continued adoption of 780G and the associated CGM and consumable sales.

In Medical Surgical, we have the continued rollout of the Hugo surgical robot and GI Genius. In Neuroscience, there’s our AiBLE ecosystem in spine, our inceptive closed loop pain stem device in Europe, and we’re awaiting FDA approval for both Inceptiv and our Percept RCDBS device. In Cardiovascular, we’re ramping our TAVR and PFA launches in Europe, starting the rollout of EV-ICD in the U.S. and Europe, and we are now starting our Ardian sales in the U.S. This all gives us confidence in the continued durability of our top-line growth. Moving down the P&L, our margins this year continue to reflect the impact of currency and inflation. And some of the volume-based procurement tenders in China that were expected in the first-half have shifted to later in the year.

That said, we’re focused on continuing to drive efficiencies in our expense base, and we’ve got our global operations and supply chains centralized to take advantage of our scale. As you know, stabilizing our margins and then improving from there remains a top priority. On the bottom line, we’re raising our fiscal ‘24 non-GAAP diluted EPS guidance to a new range of $5.13 to $5.19, an increase from the prior range of $5.08 to $5.16. While we expect FX and tax to be a few pennies more unfavorable in the second-half, we are pleased with the momentum we have demonstrated and our pipeline from here. For the third quarter, we expect EPS of $1.25 to $1.27 and on foreign currency, based on recent rates, we’re seeing an unfavorable impact of 6% on full-year EPS, including an unfavorable 5% impact in the third quarter.

Before sending it back to Geoff, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I want to extend my gratitude to our 95,000 employees around the world, who come to work every day to deliver on our mission. You all play important roles in alleviating pain, restoring health, and extending life for two patients every second, which makes this world a far better place. Back to you, Geoff.

Geoff Martha: Okay, thank you, Karen. Now I know GLP-1s have been on your mind, as the promise of these drugs has certainly had an outsized impact on medtech stocks, including ours, over the past four months. So I thought it would be helpful to share with you our view on their potential impact on our markets. Now, GLP-1s are clearly an exciting class of drugs for patients, and the select data presented at AHA suggests the potential for a large market. That said, the key takeaway from our analysis is that outside of a modest impact on the bariatric surgery market, which we believe will be temporary, we don’t see these drugs impacting Medtronic’s growth outlook, even long-term. This expectation is based on our extensive, science-based work.

Like many of you, we’ve modeled potential uptake and impact based on epidemiology, based on what we’ve seen historically with other drugs, and based on the relative risk reductions and adherence rates seen in select. So given the select results showed smaller impacts on the more obese patients, we believe that bariatric surgery will remain the gold standard for addressing obesity. We also know that many of the patients that try these drugs do not stay on them for more than a year, likely due to durability, side effects, or affordability, which creates opportunities for new patients to consider surgery. For these reasons, we believe the current headwinds on U.S. bariatric procedures will stabilize over the next several quarters and return to growth by calendar year 2025.

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