Zimmer Biomet Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:ZBH) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Keri Mattox: No, Josh, we hope you are okay. Katie maybe we can go to the next one in the queue, and then hold Josh back if he dials back.

Operator: We’ll go next to Jayson Bedford with Raymond James.

Jayson Bedford: I guess — I apologize if I missed this, but what was the impact of price in 2Q and of your expectations around price changed at all?

Suketu Upadhyay: It was about 1% erosion year-over-year in the second quarter. I think in the first quarter — I think the average is somewhere around for the first half of the year. We would expect in the second half or somewhere to be between 100 to 150 basis points of erosion. We’re seeing really good traction there for the number of reasons that I’ve talked about at length previously. But again, I think the really exciting thing is we’re starting to see that mix benefit come through from our new product introductions and helping to offset even an improved price erosion profile.

Jayson Bedford: Okay. Great. And then just secondly, on the supply challenges, are these new issues or the kind of legacy carryover issues? And then Bryan, I think you mentioned that you expect this dynamic to continue for some time. Does the impact lessen with each quarter going forward? And any visibility as to kind of when these issues will abate?

Ivan Tornos: I’ll start by saying that we have not seen anything new. All along, there were really 3 buckets that summarize the problem, materials, labor and sterilization, augmented with, frankly, just put demand plan on aside because the demand that we felt kept getting better and better and better. Sequentially, we’ve seen improvement. We’ve seen better forecast accuracy on the demand side. And then as we think about labor, at the Tier 1 level, our labor capabilities are much better than before. We’re hiring people in our sites. When you think about sterilization, we had the right strategies, materials continue to be a challenge, but again, it’s much better than before. So I would say improvement versus the past. And sequentially, we continue to see improvement across both supply and demand.

Bryan Hanson: I mean the challenge, it’s a fixed equation, right? I mean as you start to improve as we would expect in materials, labor and sterilization because we’ve put great planning around that, as demand continues to be strong, it’s going to delay supply recovery. And so that’s what we’re seeing is we’re seeing a great dynamic strength in the marketplace, better traction in our new innovation than we even expected, but that puts pressure on that equation, and it pushes the supply challenges out.

Keri Mattox: Thanks so much, Jayson.

Operator: We’ll go next to Kyle Rose with Canaccord.

Kyle Rose: Suky, on — just circling back on gross margins, strong in 2023, obviously, you walked through some of those benefits. I guess just help us understand maybe how much of an impact inflation in the supply chain has been on underlying gross margins? I mean I understand the positive tailwinds that you’ve outlined earlier. But how much have you truly been offsetting? And I guess just trying to understand how much — when you talk about supply chain challenges and increased unit costs and wages, are we still — is there a potential to see a second shoe drop? And I’m just kind of trying to understand as inventory turns flows through the business if and when we’ll actually ever see that impact through the P&L? And then secondly, let’s talk about returning to a normalized operating environment.

I think we all understand it’s been a dramatic 3 to 4 years. But I guess just — when is it fair to start thinking about when we will be in that more of a normalized operating environment, whether it’s supply challenges the industry is facing, staffing challenges. Just how should we think about actually getting step back to that mid-single digits?

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