The Beauty Health Company (NASDAQ:SKIN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Liyuan Woo: Absolutely. In terms of the net installed base, Jon, as you know, we do calculate the churn based on purchase patterns. And given the shutdown period for China specifically and some of the other APAC region countries, that negatively impacted the net installed base. That’s one of the biggest factors, obviously, we continue to look at across the globe as well as we measure the churn. Secondly, I think your second question — sorry. Remind me again, the second question was on…

Jonathan Block: Just the ASP 4Q ’22 versus 3Q ’22 was down sequentially in light of what I think it was recent price increases. Maybe if you can just reconcile that for us.

Liyuan Woo: Absolutely, Bruce. So the ASP, as we mentioned, they actually did go hand in hand with the gross margin trend as well. As we test and learn on the promotion for trade-up, right — remember, we talked about we went aggressive with trade-up when we launched, and then we went very shallow in terms of the promotion in Q3. As we test more in Q4, giving a slightly deeper discount, we saw it does move the needle. But obviously, that negatively impact the ASP as well as gross margin. There’s also partially — as you recall, we’re also marketing these refurbished leads, the last generation system, to different regions. So between distributor sales, given the shutdown in China and some of these refurbished resell in addition to the trade-up, those were the drivers actually move the needle when it comes to ASP for Q4.

Operator: The next question is Olivia Tong of Raymond James.

Olivia Tong: Can you talk about the launch of Syndeo internationally? Maybe compare and contrast your plans relative to the U.S. launch because obviously, it’s a very different environment now versus last year when you launch in the U.S. And then just your thoughts on the contribution from U.S. in year two of Syndeo.

Andrew Stanleick: Thank you for your question. Yes, we’re excited to launch Syndeo in Q2 of 2023. I think the benefit of us waiting a year is that we’ve got all the benefits from the learning and the optimizations we’ve made to our playbook from the U.S. So we’re excited to launch it out sequentially globally from Q2 onwards, a rolling launch focused on key markets, first of all. So we’re excited about that. And for the second part of the question, Liyuan?

Liyuan Woo: The second part of the question in terms of the…

Andrew Stanleick: U.S. contribution.

Liyuan Woo: Yes. So Olivia, as we model out the year, U.S. growth continue to be top of mind for us. And we kind of emphasize the fact that everybody is shooting on Syndeo. This is precisely the reason why we’ve been testing trade-up program. As we’re launching globally, the fact that we are value engineering, we’re optimizing, we actually learned a lot with this IoT product, we continue to believe U.S. play a very significant part. As we emphasize a lot of the upside actually really truly depends on the APAC region, how strongly it comes back. So that’s where really the potential upside will lay for the year.

Operator: The next question is from Margaret Kaczor of William Blair.

Margaret Kaczor: I thought I would start maybe with the gross or operating margins. Just kind of doubling down, I guess, on the cadence during the year. Should we assume kind of adjusted EBITDA maybe is below the range in the first half? And would it be anywhere near as much below kind of the 2022 numbers and then above the range in the second half? All of that leading to this question of, could you reach, I guess, even the mid-20s to finish the year this year?