Sotera Health Company (NASDAQ:SHC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So that does have an impact. We know MDR has slowed down a little bit in Europe, which was having a big impact. And then we’ve done a really nice job in our biopharma area over the last couple of years, and that’s a little choppier than we’d like. But overall, we’re really confident on where the Nelson business goes long-term. You also saw the step improvement in margin in the second quarter that we told you to expect being the first quarter is always the lowest. And when you look at where those margin levels are at. That’s pretty consistent with what we see here near term. But in the midterm, we expect it to get to — mid- to longer term, we expected to be in the mid-30s as we’ve told you in the past.

Casey Woodring: Got it. And then just a couple of quick follow-ups. So CapEx expectations are ticking up a bit on the year. Curious if that has anything to do with further facility upgrades following the EPA proposal or if it’s something else. And then just on leverage, how should we think about the cadence of debt paydown over the next few quarters, particularly important here given the rising interest rate environment? And then what should we be modeling for interest expense for the back half of the year? Thank you.

Jonathan Lyons: Yes. Let me unpack a few of those. I think taking in turn, I think your first question was around CapEx. We’ve got about $100 million we’ve spent through the first half of the year. Really, all our programs are on track. We’re out in front, I think of the EPA regulations a little bit as we’ve been going on in our facility enhancement solution. So there’s no real change on what we’ve been doing there. We’re executing our plans and really driving that improvement across our network. The biggest thing that changed is we have this rising rate environment is — and some pretty extensive CapEx programs as we have an uptick in capitalized interest that’s pushing us into the second top end of the range. And to give you a flavor, it’s a little north of $10 million in total capitalized interest for the company for this year.

I’ll take your last question, failing to remember the second one right off the top of my head, around debt paydown, or actually that was the second question, sorry. We’re evaluating a little bit of debt paydown. We feel really good. The team did a nice job by giving the term loan in place and improving our liquidity position. So we feel really good about the liquidity position that we have. And we’re considering debt paydown as we look at the back half of the year and over the next year, but no immediate plans just yet. And then just lastly, as you think about interest expense, we do expect an uptick in interest expense in the second half. There was about $60 million of interest expense in the first half. We’d expect about a 40% increase versus that number in the second half.

And it’s really driven by a couple of factors, most notably the increasing rate environment we are in, and we have some hedges that were advantageous that are rolling on a little more advantageous than the hedges that we have remaining. And then, we have the annual or a full 6 months of the term loan that came in at the beginning of February.

Operator: And the next question is from Matthew Mishan from KeyBanc.

Matthew Mishan: I guess that you completed two expansion products in the quarter? Does the softer volume environment impact your ability to kind of build those over the near term?

Michael Petras: I’m sorry, Matt, I didn’t hear that last part, you trailed off.

Matthew Mishan: All right. Does the softer demand environment impacts your ability to kind of fill those — that fill that extra capacity over the near term?

Michael Petras: Over the near term, no, actually, one of those is actually doing very, very well. So I would say not.

Matthew Mishan: Okay. And then, Michael, I think Nelson Labs has been a recurring negative theme for almost a couple of years now. I guess how much time do you personally plan to spend on Nelson Labs in the second half like digging in on that business?