Stryker Corporation (NYSE:SYK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Michael Matson: Yeah. Thanks for fitting me in. I guess I want to ask one on M&A. So I think you called out that you would be looking to do some more tuck-ins. What are you seeing out there with regard to the valuation expectations from potential targets? It seems like there was — in the past year, there’s been sort of a disconnect between what the buyers are willing to pay and what the sellers want. I mean is that starting to get more realistic now and just maybe you can just comment generally what you are seeing there in terms of deal flow?

Kevin Lobo: Yeah. But there’s, obviously, the stock market reaction over the last year on companies that weren’t making profits was pretty harsh. And it takes time for that, let’s call it, a new reality to set in with people that want to sell. But as a company that is acquisitive and has been acquisitive over time. This could bode well for us over the next couple of years if valuations kind of stay at this level. Obviously, the tuck-ins that — a lot of the tuck-ins we do tend to be private companies, not necessarily publicly traded companies. But we have an active list of companies that we look at. We are focused also on paying down debt, given that we took on a lot of debt for Wright Medical and Vocera, so that’s kind of job one.

Let’s continue to keep paying down that term loan. We still have about $850 million left on the term loan. We want to pay that down. But if we see good opportunities and there of the tuck-in nature, we aren’t going to wait, we will make sure we do that. We can do two things at the same time and continue to pay down debt, but also do some small tuck-ins. And so the divisions are actively pursuing those and we will be ready to strike if the prices are right. But I think this pricing environment is going to be positive. Now profits do matter and there was sort of a period of time where a lot of companies run away from us, to be honest, just on valuation, given that they were growing fast and the valuations were just out of sight. And we just won’t pay just whatever for something, even if we like the technology, we have to make sure it’s going to meet financial returns.

So thanks for the question. We will continue to look and sort of thread the needle between paying down the debt and then being opportunistic where we can.

Michael Matson: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our following question comes from Joanne Wuensch with Citi. You may proceed.

Joanne Wuensch: There is a moment when you were rattling off, rattling maybe the wrong word, all the different growth in MedSurg and Neurotechnoology. And I could not get my head around some of these numbers and I am just sort of curious and maybe this has been addressed. How did this happen? Was this some level of pent-up demand in the capital equipment cycle, was it just the end of the year people have money in their budgets may want let go. Help me understand what this is and do you expect there to be more of a depleted effort in the beginning of this year?

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